04 / CUBO · FOUNDING DESIGNER · 2017–2021

The memory became as important as the surveillance.

I joined before Cubo was a baby-monitor company and became its founding designer—owning the brand, app, and website as the remote team in Taiwan grew from 5 to 40+.

Role: Founding Designer
Ownership: Brand + marketing → app → web
Team: 5 → 40+ · US ↔ Taiwan
Focus: 0→1 · AI · Research

Read the case ↓

250K+Units sold

20+International
awards

1,000%+Crowdfunded twice

4.6Amazon
rating

CuboAi baby monitor mounted above a crib beside the CuboAi mobile app — PRODUCT OVERVIEWThe monitor and app working as oneAI-powered safety, sleep, and automatically captured moments in a single family experience.

01 — THE SETUP

Computer vision was getting better. Earning a place in a child's room was getting harder.

I joined before Cubo was Cubo, as one of the first team members beyond the founders. Early validation showed the original sleep-apnea concept had limited reach. New parents described a broader problem: baby monitors had barely changed in a decade, while the fear that a baby might stop breathing remained.

By 2017, the team was building computer vision for real homes: detecting crying, motion, sleep, covered faces, and even the subtle chest movements associated with breathing.

The real problem was earning trust. We were an unknown startup asking parents to put AI and a connected camera beside their child. Working remotely from the US, I led product experience design with the founders in Taiwan as the company grew from 5 people to more than 40.

Sleep apnea
concept→AI baby
monitor→Daily
memories→Global
brand

Cubo founding team and research participants meeting with parents and pediatric specialists — EARLY RESEARCHLearning from parents before becoming oneHome visits, family conversations, and pediatric input kept the product grounded in real concerns.

02 — THE CHALLENGE

Designing an experience parents would trust—before I was one myself.

Build a monitor that could grow with the family—not just watch the baby.

One early breakthrough was the camera's ability to identify and capture meaningful moments. I proposed turning those automatic captures into a timeline of the baby's growth.

The team worried the images were repetitive. But interviews with more than 100 families taught us that, to parents, every photo of their child was different—and worth keeping.

That finding cemented Cubo Moments—a second product pillar alongside live monitoring, with memories organized by date, age, and milestones.

Cubo Moments timeline organizing automatically captured baby photos by date and age — CUBO MOMENTSFrom automatic captures to a record of growthMemories organized by date, age, and milestone instead of disappearing into another camera roll.

THE SAME TEST, APPLIED TO PRIVACY

Research also showed that a live camera might capture private moments such as breastfeeding or changing clothes. We added a Sleep Mode shortcut and connected it to the physical lens position: rotate the lens down to activate Sleep Mode. Later, timed Sleep Mode restored monitoring automatically because tired parents told us they would forget to turn it back on.

03 — WHAT I DID

Designed the company people met before they ever trusted the AI.

Defined the company parents would meet.Working closely with marketing, we studied 13 brands and 16 apps across more than 400 screens, explored 40+ names and 50+ logos, and ran ten rounds of refinement. Parent interviews—not internal taste—set the naming criteria.
Designed the app end to end.Worked directly with the CEO and CTO across setup, live monitoring, alerts, sharing, Moments, and the daily flows that had to work for parents—even at 3 a.m.
Together, we built a continuous research loop.Across the broader program, we ran 150+ home tests and collected 8,000+ surveys. A marketing-run parent group gave us candid answers in hours, not weeks.
Built a system to scale.Designed the app to accommodate a growing set of features, then created the Cubo Design Library and transitioned it to the in-house team in Taiwan so the product could keep growing, even without me.

DESIGN FOUNDATIONOne system across brand, web, and productThe identity and CuboAi Design Library gave the growing team a shared foundation to build from.

Five CuboAi app screens showing alerts, live monitoring, setup, Moments, and sleep analytics — PRODUCT EXPERIENCESafety, monitoring, memories, and sleepA feature-rich product organized around what parents needed to understand at a glance.

04 — WHAT HAPPENED

The product found a market—and the experience produced results we could measure directly.

250,000+Units sold across more than a dozen countries

1,000%+Funding target reached on both ZecZec and Indiegogo

20+International product and design awards

4.6Amazon rating

3×Website conversion after redesign

>2×US session duration for Cubo Ai Plus; bounce rate fell 8%

CuboAi retail packaging on the production line beside product awards and recognition — IN MARKETFrom the production line to families worldwideRetail packaging and a selection of the recognition CuboAi earned after launch.

“Allen has been my go-to designer since 2017, when he led design for Cubo—owning everything from brand identity and logo to the full app and UI design. What sets him apart is the combination of strong design judgment and real collaboration: he gives honest, professional feedback, brings multiple directions to the table, and iterates fast. Working across time zones, he even helped us validate designs with users in different markets. Flexible, aesthetically sharp, and reliable—when I founded my own company, he was the first person I called.”
Steven S. · CTO and co-founder, Cubo · Co-founder, Jidou.ai

05 — LOOKING BACK

I joined before I was a parent—and I wasn't the one using Cubo at 3 a.m.

My own kid and I eventually ended up in product testing. But before then, research and conversations with parents showed us what mattered, what was top of mind, and how we should design Cubo.
The more we listened, the better Cubo became.