Teresa
Tran.
Design Engineer.
Areas where humans compensate for a system
Background &
Approach
My path into design engineering has a specific origin point. On a small team building an application from the ground up, I was the only one interested in designing the interface. I obsessed over layout, user flows, color palettes, and typography to make something genuinely pleasing and easy to navigate. It worked.
My background spans the visual and performing arts, biological sciences, and a long habit of paying attention to how things fit together — how a space feels, the choreography and tempos behind and translations between systems, the difference between a form that feels considered and one that clearly wasn't. Design language, like spoken language, can be purposeful, decorative, or haphazardly put together. I aim for intentional.
This direction is deliberate. Time away from the industry gave me space to pay attention differently — traveling, observing systems and interfaces without the pressure of building them, sitting with grief. Loss has a way of clarifying what's worth doing and when. This was worth doing, and now was when. I want to make things and experiences that make someone's life a little easier, and ideally more enjoyable — because what's living if it can't be enjoyed?
- 10 years engineering · currently full-stack
- M.S. Computer Science · CSU Fullerton
- B.S. Neuroscience · UCLA
- Visual systems, natural systems, and language systems
- Names things carefully; mentally models systems
- Design systems; DX, information architecture
- Always learning