It started with my video Donut Selfie, a technique for taking a new type of selfie. Beats by Dre hired me and used the Donut Selfie as inspiration for the biggest campaign they'd ever done, promoting the Solo Selfie headphones and the newly released iPhone 6. The 60-second spot premiered on the Thanksgiving Day football game and features Kylie and Kendall Jenner, Serena Williams, Nicki Minaj... and me!

I produced and directed this video of a woman's 100-day weight loss journey at a 24 Hour Fitness. It went viral and was covered nationally and tweeted by celebrities like Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels. 24 Hour Fitness gave a yearlong membership to the woman in the video, which was announced on air to 3 million viewers on the Dr. Oz show.

I love working with startup founders because the videos are often more fun and creative. One of my favorites is this video I directed of baby clothes attacking a mom in stop-motion. I also occasionally make Kickstarter and Indiegogo videos, like the one for Flipband, which raised more than $50,000. If you'd like me to create your video, let's talk.

I’d wanted to learn to dance since I was a little kid, but didn’t start because I never thought I could get good. When I finally decided to learn, I filmed myself learning to dance over the course of a year. The video went viral, with 5 million views.

It’s been a crazy experience - I got to go on the Queen Latifah Show and have spoken and danced at conferences like Google I/O, TedX (watch video of performance), and Ignite. Here are my tips to learn how to dance and to make a viral video.

Giveit100 is a place for people to make inspirational progress videos from their practice footage. I got the idea for it after my dance video went viral, and built it with my co-founder Finbarr. Giveit100 had over 70,000 members with a combined 30 million video views. Some of our members have gone on to be featured in their own viral videos. Lakeisha’s 100 days at the gym and Estella’s 100 days of push-ups each have over a million views.

Buzzfeed calls it "a new way to take photos that look like magic." Director Ross Ching and I spent a week looking for the steepest streets in San Francisco to create this illusion. By tilting the camera so it lines up with the sidewalk, the people and houses all look tilted. The video went viral and the effect was even re-created on a Japanese game show. Zooey Deschanel called it the "coolest optical illusion on the Internet".

Blog Posts

• 10 ways to make a video go viral (#1 Google result for "how to make a viral video")
• How to become a designer without going to design school (#1 Google result for "how to become a designer")
• Evolution of Magazine Covers (trended as #1 top recommended article on Medium)

Read more on my blog and follow me on Medium for my latest posts

Dance Videos

• Girl Learns to Dance in a Year (5 million views)
• Tilting the Streets of San Francisco (1 million views)
• Robot Breakfast (360k views)

Follow me on Instagram or Facebook, where I share my dance practice footage

Art & Music

• Gravity Room, an illusion photo booth that makes people look like they're flying
• Paper Creations, colorful paper origami
• Awesome Baby Name, a funny hackathon project I made with Finbarr, used by over 400k people
• Bye Bye Excel and I, a goodbye song I wrote for my co-workers when I left Microsoft

Patents

• U.S. 20140019899 Location-Dependent Drag and Drop UI
• U.S. 20130091411 Document Data Entry Suggestions
• U.S. 20130339903 UI Differentiation Between Delete and Clear

See all 11 patents

Popular topics include: How to Make a Viral Video, creativity, changing careers, and my Girl Learns to Dance in a Year video. I've spoken at Google I/O, Stanford, TedX, and many others.

To book me, contact me at karenxcheng [at] gmail [dot] com.