about me

I am told I often resemble myself

My name is Amanda Chan. I am a senior UX/UI designer in New York City that's worked for big-name corporations, small start-ups, non-profits, and freelance gigs. Additionally I am an organ donor and blood donor. One of these things happens more than the other.

Good design wields the power to promote understanding, expedite tasks, and convey complex information succinctly by intertwining aesthetics with usability. It's not about "making things pretty" but understanding cognitive frameworks, well-established principles, and tailoring interfaces and journeys accordingly.

Through brainstorming sessions, workshops, and iterative approaches, design can help crystallize those half-baked ideas into something people can use and interact with in the real world. Whether I am the only designer or collaborating with several others on a project, I will coordinate with multiple cross-functional teams to help launch these products.

Outside of design, I relish international travel and make an effort to see a new country every year. Learning from other cultures helps us all to see the familiar in new ways, pertinent to design. Brain teasers, puns, podcasts, behavioral science, and social psychology are my other loves.

Smattering of my activities outside of design

AR Camera Filter

Hand-triggered particle system

AR Filter: Mystical Hands

Using Procreate, I drew a tiny fireball and exported it. With SparkAR's hand tracking, I imported my drawn fireball, added a particle system, and exported an AR filter that any one can play with on Instagram.

Spring 2023

AR Camera Filter

Inspired by Roy Lichtenstein

AR Filter: Lichtenstein Yo'Self

First of all, camera filter names have a max character count, so I had to shorten it somehow. Secondly I just thought it would be a fun way to learn SparkAR better by seeing if pulling in flat 2D assets alongside face tracking would help achieve a Lichtenstein effect.

It needs considerable refinement, but I liked the option to tap for different hairstyles, as well as getting a bonus teardrop if you make a face. View camera filter on Instagram.

2020

Custom Handwriting Font

Download the TTF

Handwritten Font

One of my dear friends often writes letters to her pen pals, which inspired the idea to develop a custom font for her upcoming birthday, as well as offer the opportunity for me to learn how to use software like FontForge. While I have a tablet now, I did not back then, so I painstakingly used the pen tool in Illustrator to trace each letter and number from old greeting cards and postcards I had received from her over the years.

I saved each character as an SVG, individually imported them into FontForge, then adjusted the spacing as needed for export. As a bonus, if you type the pound sign, it outputs her signature.

Download the CK font to try it out yourself!

2021

3D Model & Print

Totem from Monument Valley game

3D Model & Print

Totem from the beautiful mobile Monument Valley! I used TinkerCAD to make this object. Unlike other 3D models of this beloved character, I made it so that each cube can turn individually to more closely resemble its in-game movement.

View Totem on Thingiverse to print or remix your own!

2015

The Gothamist

Makeup as Star Trek's Jaylah

Red Carpet Event

While I was taking the subway downtown, a photographer on the train introduced herself as being with The Gothamist. Could she take a picture? Naturally I agreed, so while I am one of many, I appear as part of the Best Halloween Costumes on the Subway, a gallery I love browsing every year, which certainly made the time it took to do my own makeup worth the effort!

The Gothamist
October 31, 2016

Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters Performs Live at Madison Square Garden

Red Carpet Event

Premiere for Fantastic Beasts

Red Carpet Event

We won tickets to the premiere as well as a chance to walk the red carpet! To be fair, we walked it before any of the celebrities showed up, but it was still exciting to get the opportunity. The contest asked us to ponder where a portal to Hogwarts might be on the Lincoln Center campus.

View our winning entry on Imgur, which I took from a series of edited photos and assembled into an animated GIF.

Alice Tully Hall
Lincoln Center
November 10, 2016

Image from https://offendmenotweb.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/pit-underground4.jpg?w=820

Sketch Comedy

Life as a Half-Llama

Sketch Comedy: Life as a Half-Llama

There was a period where I explored creative writing through sketch comedy and took a few classes from The People's Improv Theater, also known as The PIT.

Out of all the terrible scripts I wrote over three six-week courses, this one received a live reading and best audience reception out of everything I wrote.

In short, it is a satirical interview where a half-llama comments on impossible beauty standards because they'll never measure up to looking like centaurs.

Read the script on Drive

2016

Open Mics

Playing covers

Open Mics

This image is from 2015 when I played in Astoria, Queens, but I have attempted open-mics a handful of times over the years, playing acoustic covers in Shenzhen, China, as well as Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Multiple years

Hand Model

As seen in Gizmodo

Hand Model

Back when I worked for MakerBot, our product team had just finished a release of the MakerBot Shape Maker app for the iPad, which let people customize a range of objects for printing, just by adjusting a few sliders across multiple parameters.

As a few media outlets wanted to write about this product launch, we need to provide some assets; I remember going downstairs to a cafe at our Industry City office location, swiping a few screens, and letting my design peers snap a few different shots.

Read full article on Gizmodo

2015

Photo Credit to GiorgioBramante on Flickr

First World Limericks

Some silly rhymes

First World Limericks

As the name may imply, this was a short-lived poem series that lamented upon the struggles of the privileged while ensuring that lines one, two, and five always rhymed. Many are about food.

View all limericks on Tumblr

2014

Live Shows

Supporting bands I love

Live Shows

When I am able, I love being able to catch my favorite bands and musicians live in concert. When the Foo Fighters played Madison Square Garden, it ended up being my most-viewed YouTube video out of all the live videos I've uploaded.

View attended concert list on Drive

Multiple years

UP2U

The one time I was in a band

UP2U

I was once in a band with my students in China! We rehearsed most weekdays, and we eventually had two live shows. Both were quite well-attended, probably better than if I'd tried being in an indie band playing random bars in New York, haha.

Hilariously Mentos Gum came out with a product a few years later that shared an eerily similar name and spelling as our handcut logo, made by Wing, our lead singer.

View live show on YouTube

2008

Editing silly videos from my travels for fun