WorkAboutPlayground
About

Kaitlyn Duan

A product designer studying Statistics Major, Economics Minor at University of Waterloo. I grew up in the arts, assumed I would end up somewhere technical, and found design sitting right between the two.

Read my full story below
Kaitlyn Duan seated by the window of a record and coffee shop, wearing a black cap and vest
Story

How I Got Here

I’ve always liked making things look and feel good.

Growing up, I was into pretty much every creative thing I could get my hands on. I did ballet, piano, violin, traditional and digital art, plus sports like badminton, swimming, and figure skating.

At the same time, tech was always around me.

Most of my family works in IT, so I naturally assumed I’d end up in software engineering or data. I studied math and liked the logic and problem-solving side of it.

Then my sister introduced me to design.

She started showing me cool websites and digital experiences, and I got hooked. I loved that design could be visual and creative, but still grounded in logic, systems, and how people actually use things.

It felt like I had finally found a place for both sides of me.

Design let me combine art with the way I already liked thinking about problems. What really keeps me interested is people, how they interact with things, what feels confusing, and what makes an experience just click.

Since then, I’ve gotten to work across a few different kinds of projects.

I’ve designed experiences for Warframe at Digital Extremes, worked at ITSP, built my own art business, Awowogei Arts, and now I’m helping build Buzz Baby, an app for children and parents that’s getting ready to launch.

Through all of it, I keep coming back to the same thing.

I like the space where creativity, technology, and logic overlap.

I care a lot about storytelling, systems, and the little details that make something feel easy to use. I want my work to feel thoughtful without feeling complicated.

Outside of design, I’m usually gaming, travelling, or making something. I play League, Valorant, TFT, and whatever random game I’m into that week. I also run a gaming YouTube channel and recently got back from Mexico.

At the end of the day, I don’t just want to make things that look good.

I want to make things that feel good.

Toolkit

Skills

Tools

FigmaSketchAdobe XDUser TestingZeplinAdobe Creative Studio

Technologies

ReactHTML/CSSPythonC++OpenAICopilotLovable

Design

Product ThinkingInformation ArchitectureUser ResearchUX StrategyInteraction DesignPrototyping
side quest: Awowogei Arts

The art account grew up and got a storefront.

@awowogei_arts started as somewhere to put the drawings. It became a self-built shop for custom prints, grown through a Discord community I actually talk to and search data I actually read, rather than ad spend.

$6,000/moARR
+60%Organic Search
+500%Followers

If any of that sounds like your kind of thing, I would love to hear from you.

Say hi