born on the coast of the pacific ocean. grew up across beijing, seoul, & stuttgart. east asian by culture with a streak of futurism. studied interaction design at tsinghua. published researcher & public speaker. shipped 40+ products across 12+ countries. built 8 teams. raised $3m through an ico & went through y combinator rapid growth. these days i've downshifted to an island in thailand. resident of georgia. outside of work, i make experimental underground music & paint colorful abstracts. i share my tropical home with a black cat called figgy. come visit.

i find it easier to solve other people's problems than my own. maybe that's why i love this work. i see broken things everywhere, in products, in systems, in life, & i can't help but tweak them for better. design is how i process the inner & outer worlds. i'm just lucky to be paid for it.

design is surfing the chaos. you take something complex, unknown, & reshape it until it feels like nothing was designed at all. all the interaction happens on a thin invisible surface connecting two worlds. the less noise, the better. the best design disappears. good products just work, easy on the eye, joyful to use, & memorable. design is modest & peaceful.

i care about functional products that feel cozy, soft on people, & sharp on craft. my work is guided by a few simple values: empathy & kindness over growth at all costs, curiosity over certainty, & collaboration over ego. i believe technology should give more than it takes, honor people’s time & attention, leaving them a little lighter. if we can make things useful, honest, a bit goofy, & quietly joyful, that’s the kind of product i want to spend my life building.

we can go full academia & double diamond everything. we can follow intuition & be the pirates. we can chase what users, clients, & investors want. we can be artsy & expressive. all of the above? in the end, it's the market & time that prove us right or wrong. i don't commit to one approach anymore. i mix & match to fit the task, team, & product. i love vibe coding as much as running user research or building information architecture. every project starts with 5w1h.

a decayed family by nikolai semyonovich leskov
the secret language of cats by susanne schötz
man & his symbols by carl gustav jung
rest by alex soojung-kim pang
deep work by cal newport