What led you into design?
I think it's a lot of things – me drawing from a young age, studying fine arts in high school, being an internet kid and browsing sites like Tumblr, making posters with text and graphics in Photoshop, jailbreaking my iPhone to install custom iOS themes/tweaks...
What does a typical day look like?
I'm finishing up my last year of college and also doing part-time design and engineering work, so most of my days are spent on those responsibilities. I don't really have a set schedule for when I wake up, go to sleep, or do things in general, at least for now. I find that I work best when I follow my curiosities for the day and let things naturally take their course. This disposition extends to my side projects – if there's an idea I find interesting, I'll jump in and work on it almost immediately, not stopping until I finish it.
Other than that, I spend maybe a bit too much time on Twitter/X and collecting things on Are.na. If I have time in the evening, I'll play some video games, read, or watch anime (right now it's Dandadan).
What's your workstation setup?
It's just me and my laptop for now. I spend about half the time at my desk at home and the other half on the top floor of the CS building at Tufts (pictured). Maybe skewed towards the latter, because the wifi there is faster, lol.
Where do you go to get inspired?
Video games, street signs, restaurant menus, Are.na, Twitter, anime, manga, posters, album covers, stationery packaging, supermarkets...
What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?
Online: soot.com
Offline: I can't think of any right now so shoutout to transparent water bottles for ⑴ holding my water ⑵ keeping me hydrated and ⑶ allowing me to see how much water I've drank/is left
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
In terms of works I can show, probably my personal site, military zine and high school fine arts exhibition. They're all bodies of works, but in different forms, representing my self at different stages of life.
What design challenges do you face at your company?
This isn't company specific, but it's something I've been chewing on... nowadays, I design mostly in code rather than using a design tool, which makes it slightly awkward when collaborating with other designers, because we'd have to review designs over a live prototype without a proper Figma mockup of it to iterate on, introducing friction.
I don't know if this makes sense, but it sure would be nice if there were standardized primitives between code and design. I want the ability to convert a webapp or SwiftUI code into shapes and text on Figma, like how you can kind of do it the other way around with Dev Mode.
Anyway, I'm really curious to know if anyone else feels the same way, or if I'm missing some crucial workflow... let me know!
What music do you listen to while designing?
Any advice for ambitious designers?
Honestly I should be the one asking for advice, but I'd say follow your curiosities and keep making stuff.
Anything you want to promote or plug?
I've been listening to a lot of Singaporean bands lately – Carpet Golf, CURB, Sobs, Long Live The Empire.
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