Hello, I’m Joe.
Product Designer · 13+ Years Experience · Taipei
Getting it right is harder than making it pretty.
I’m best at turning complicated ideas into something people find easy and engineers can actually build — SaaS, IoT, software platforms. These days I use AI to take it the whole way.
I started in visual design and ended up in product design. One thing never changed: it has to do more than look good. I believe design can make the world clearer.
Selected work
Four projects, each written up with the constraints and the trade-offs
What I work on
Thirteen years, four shipped platforms
Product work that survives contact with engineering — research, interface, design system, and the code that ships it.
- Product design
- Design systems
- Smart home & IoT
- Web & app
- User research
- Prototyping
- Design to code
- AI pipeline
- Motion
- Visual identity
Built with this pipeline
Side projects, all live — go press them
ReshiTrip
Photograph a Japanese receipt; it reads the amounts and files the expense.
Vision API · Web
Pace
An anti-KPI voice health journal — say one sentence, it's logged.
Voice · Figma · React
LunchLuck
A spinner that settles the daily what's-for-lunch argument.
Web · Motion
Job Tracker
Applications, interviews and replies on one legible board.
Local-first · Web
How the work actually happens
Five steps, no handoff between them
01IdeaAsk until the requirement has a shape: who uses it, where they get stuck, what done looks like. Get this wrong and everything after it builds the wrong thing.
02FigmaComponents, variants and tokens built once. This isn't drawing screens — it's writing down the rules, so every screen after it lines up on its own.
03Claude CodeClaude Code reads the design file and writes the components. No handoff doc, no back-and-forth about spacing.
04Visual reviewAutomatic screenshots, compared against the design round after round, until both sides are the same thing.
05ShipDeploy, then sync what actually shipped back into Figma. The design file and the live product stay one thing.
I also write about it
Latest on Medium — written in Mandarin
- Medium
Aura.build, part two: three routes from a DESIGN.md to something real
A plain-text design system is one thing. Turning it into something that ships, changes and keeps growing is another.
- Medium
Aura.build: paste a URL, get a whole design system
Design systems are moving from a Figma file nobody can open to plain text an AI reads instantly. That rewrites what handoff means.
- Medium
GPT-Image-2: first impressions from a UI/UX designer
Text rendering went from 90% to 99% accurate. That's not just a number — it changes what AI is for in a design workflow.
What makes me different
I came to product design through graphic design and photography, which is probably why I care as much about how something reads as how it works. Thirteen years in, most of my work has been the same task in different clothes: take a requirement that has no shape yet and turn it into an interface people understand and engineers can build.
Recently that's meant smart home and IoT products at D-Link, a design system that runs across four shipped products, and an AI-assisted pipeline I use to go from Figma to production without a handoff. Before that, Armorize Technologies.
- Years of design experience
- 13+
- UI error rate reduced
- −70%
- Product visibility lifted
- +50%
- Faster delivery via AI
- +30%
Kind words
From LinkedIn
People I've worked with, in their own words.
Joe is a wonderful designer and a great guy.
I had the pleasure of working with Joe over the course of nearly four years. Joe is professional, hard working, and very capable. Joe was constantly improving his skills and evolving his personal style throughout the entire time we worked together and it showed high quality of his work.
Joe meets his deadlines, produces quality work and is a pleasure to have as a part of any team or project.
I'm very pleased to recommend Joe Chen because he is a passionate, professional and hard-working designer who can precisely turn product owners' imaginations into vivid visualizations. For several years working in a fast-paced industry, Joe has demonstrated his abilities that handle challenging tasks reliably and deliver high quality outputs constantly. And his easy-going character provides a great balance to the team. I enjoy working with Joe and looking forward to having chances to work together again.
From 2007 to 2010, I was responsible for all website content, corporate marketing materials and product literature at Armorize Technologies. In this capacity I worked closely with Joe Chen.
As senior visual designer, Joe was a principal member of the marketing team. His skills as a graphic designer, his attention to detail, and his willingness to work long and hard towards the best-possible end-product were key in building up the company's sales and marketing portfolio.
Joe is a consummate team player. I would welcome the opportunity to work with him again and would have no hesitation in recommending him to future employers.
Joe is a talented, self-motivated, and detail-oriented GUI visual designer, who utilizes any technology and communication skills he can to accomplish the everyday's work. He's also very concentrated at work while he has multiple capabilities. It's been a great pleasure to work with Joe, as much as with his honesty and kindness.
