I am a front-end engineer, architect, and designer with a passion for user-centric approach to building web applications. I have a strong background in both the technical and visual aspects of application building, and I build elegant interfaces that solve real user problems while balancing performance and functionality.
How can one be both a designer and an engineer? While such dualism is rare, it is a part of my nature: I fluently speak two very different languages, I read poetry and solve Olympiad math problems for fun, and I combine visual beauty and functional elegance in my work. While most people come from either a pure engineering or a pure design background, I have been tremendously lucky to accumulate both. My undergraduate degree is in computer science, and my graduate degree is in computer science with emphasis on human-computer interaction. In parallel, I have also had many years of experience in graphic design, including stints at such legendary design powerhouses as the Imagination Group and the Design Machine, a multi-year research project at the MIT Media Lab, projects for a whole range of clients from Samsung to UC Berkeley, and design awards like the CSPA's Gold Circle.
I primarily specialize in front-end projects (web sites, web applications, standalone application UIs) because that is where the disciplines of engineering and design naturally combine. I strongly believe that beautiful and logical visual design comes from building for the user, while satisfying the necessary constraints that arise as part of the development process. For any given project, I see my job as elegantly reconciling the two sides either by becoming a communication bridge between the existing engineers and designers or working in both capacities at once.
I am also interested and highly skilled in building brand identities. While it is widely believed that such projects are primarily in the realm of graphic design, good graphic identities have many tricky technical aspects. A great identity must be appropriate and understandable for the audience a brand is trying to reach; the symbols used should be flexible enough that an identity can be updated and expanded as a brand branches out to different areas; and an identity should be technically implemented in a way that allows a wide variety of uses, from billboards to business cards, and from websites to embroideries. When I approach an identity building project, I carefully consider all of these aspects and keep my process transparent to the owner of the identity.