ABOUT
Matthew Liang — product designer,
former biologist,
Tufts grad
DESIGN SKILLS
UX Research
Competitive Analysis
Information Architecture
User flows
Wireframing
Prototyping
Design Systems
Accessibility
TOOLS
Figma
Lovable
Lovart
Stitch
Claude Design
Cursor
BACKGROUND
From agar plates to interfaces.
I spent four years studying Biology in college, and what I remember most isn’t the data. It’s the the smell of agar plates warming under a microscope lamp, and the patience of waiting three days to find out if I’d done something useful or wasted a week.
Biology taught me how to be a designer before I knew I’d become one. I learn to observe before I intervene. I learn that my hypothesis is probably wrong, and the experiment exists to tell you how wrong. Most of what I do now (usability testing, iterating on a flow, killing a design I love because the data doesn’t support it) is the same loop I ran on petri dishes, just with humans and pixels instead of cells.
Good design, like good science, is mostly the discipline of being wrong on purpose.
I was born and raised in China, and have lived in the US for a decade. Switching between Mandarin and English taught me to notice the assumptions baked into how people read, scan, decide, and trust. A flow that feels obvious to one person can be opaque to another, and I’ve learned to design for the user in front of me rather than one in my head.
WHAT I VALUE
Evidence over intuition
Six users beat one strong opinion.
Translate, don’t assume
Design for the user, not the imagined one.
One unrelated thing
Survived a sandstorm in a desert once.
Iterate fast, decide slow
Explore widely. Commit when the evidence is in.
Matthew Liang | Product Designer
ABOUT
Matthew Liang — product designer,
former biologist,Tufts grad
DESIGN SKILLS
UX Research
Competitive Analysis
Information Architecture
User flows
Wireframing
Prototyping
Design Systems
Accessibility
TOOLS
Figma
Lovable
Lovart
Stitch
Claude Design
Cursor
BACKGROUND
From agar plates to interfaces.
I spent four years studying Biology in college, and what I remember most isn’t the data. It’s the the smell of agar plates warming under a microscope lamp, and the patience of waiting three days to find out if I’d done something useful or wasted a week.
Biology taught me how to be a designer before I knew I’d become one. I learn to observe before I intervene. I learn that my hypothesis is probably wrong, and the experiment exists to tell you how wrong. Most of what I do now (usability testing, iterating on a flow, killing a design I love because the data doesn’t support it) is the same loop I ran on petri dishes, just with humans and pixels instead of cells.
Good design, like good science, is mostly the discipline of being wrong on purpose.
I was born and raised in China, and have lived in the US for a decade. Switching between Mandarin and English taught me to notice the assumptions baked into how people read, scan, decide, and trust. A flow that feels obvious to one person can be opaque to another, and I’ve learned to design for the user in front of me rather than one in my head.
WHAT I VALUE
Evidence over intuition
Six users beat one strong opinion.
Translate, don’t assume
Design for the user, not the imagined one.
One unrelated thing
Survived a sandstorm in a desert once.
Iterate fast, decide slow
Explore widely. Commit when the evidence is in.
ABOUT
Matthew Liang —
product designer,
former biologist, bilingual, Tufts grad
DESIGN SKILLS
UX Research
Competitive Analysis
Information Architecture
User flows
Wireframing
Prototyping
Design Systems
Accessibility
TOOLS
Figma
Lovable
Lovart
Stitch
Claude Design
Cursor
BACKGROUND
From agar plates to interfaces.
I spent four years studying Biology in college, and what I remember most isn’t the data. It’s the the smell of agar plates warming under a microscope lamp, and the patience of waiting three days to find out if I’d done something useful or wasted a week.
Biology taught me how to be a designer before I knew I’d become one. I learn to observe before I intervene. I learn that my hypothesis is probably wrong, and the experiment exists to tell you how wrong. Most of what I do now (usability testing, iterating on a flow, killing a design I love because the data doesn’t support it) is the same loop I ran on petri dishes, just with humans and pixels instead of cells.
Good design, like good science, is mostly the discipline of being wrong on purpose.
I was born and raised in China, and have lived in the US for a decade. Switching between Mandarin and English taught me to notice the assumptions baked into how people read, scan, decide, and trust. A flow that feels obvious to one person can be opaque to another, and I’ve learned to design for the user in front of me rather than one in my head.
WHAT I VALUE
Evidence over intuition
Six users beat one strong opinion.
Translate, don’t assume
Design for the user, not the imagined one.
One unrelated thing
Survived a sandstorm in a desert once.
Iterate fast, decide slow
Explore widely. Commit when the evidence is in.