Hi, I’m Nico. I’m a service and product designer in Vancouver.

role

Founder; service design, build, operations

methods

Service blueprinting, role modelling, bilingual service design, AI review workflows

output

A live platform: scheduling, classrooms, lesson records, billing

My tutoring practice ran on six apps and a lot of memory. I designed the service model and built the platform that replaced them: one sign-on for four roles, Mandarin beside English on every family surface, and AI-drafted lesson notes that only a teacher can publish. Live with families since June 2026.

role

Service design on the back end; data-flow mapping, regulatory audit, cost case

methods

Practitioner interviews, jobs to be done, archetype personas, data-flow mapping, a three-pass regulatory audit

output

Current-state and corrected data-flow maps, an AI field map with named refusals, a pain, fix and rule board, a tagged cost case

We spent six weeks designing a phone-based reintegration service. Then four interviews established that nobody is released with a phone and institutional IT is air gapped. The design moved to the parole officer, the only person present at both ends of a sentence, and a three-pass audit against the Privacy Act and sixteen commissioner’s directives rewrote the system behind it.

role

Service design, blueprinting, AI architecture

methods

Service blueprinting, stakeholder mapping, adversarial critique, AI systems design

output

To-be blueprint, AI architecture, per-role dashboards

A seven-person art studio ran on five workflow boards that barely connected. I read them as one student lifecycle and rebuilt it department by department. My first service-design project.

role

Product & interaction design, native build (solo)

methods

Interaction design, notification design, SwiftUI

output

Shipped macOS app: spaces, per-service notification control, sealed sessions

I gather the services you keep open all day into one native window, then spend the design on the hard part: keeping a dozen apps from all shouting at once. You govern the notifications, spaces match how your day splits, and two accounts of the same service stay sealed from each other.

role

UX/UI design, research, front-end

methods

Classroom observation, contextual interviews, prototyping, usability testing

output

Live bilingual web app, indexed by writing move, language-tagged for screen readers

My students kept switching between writing apps and dictionaries while drafting English sentences, losing their train of thought every time. Useful Words sits in one screen with examples, translations, and connector phrases ranked by how learners move through a sentence. Mobile-first because that is where the writing happens.

role

UX/UI design, build (solo)

methods

Prompt-structure iteration, design critique

output

Live web tool: five lockable slots, mood bias, shareable build codes

I rewrote the generator toward stranger, more specific seeds, and a design critique tightened the interface. It was never meant to generate a good story, just to give someone a useful place to start.

role

Concept, UI/UX design, build (solo)

methods

Speculative design, SwiftUI prototyping

output

Source-available macOS app, seven releases, 663 downloads

I built it because the conversation about AI in classrooms had become a checklist of what to ban. WatchMeType reproduces a human typing rhythm, varied pauses and corrections included. It can fool a teacher, easily. The harder question is what we are trying to detect, and whether teaching has to mean policing.

role

Designer, facilitator (eight years)

methods

Instructional design, iterative material redesign, learner observation

output

Lesson plans, handouts, assessments, learner-centred materials

For eight years I watched where students got stuck, restructured the material, and tested whether the change worked. The vocabulary changes when I switch industries; the instincts carry over.

role

Product & interaction design, usability testing (solo)

methods

Interaction design, usability feedback, SwiftUI

output

Shipped macOS app, 17 releases, open source

A menu-bar app that finds a GIF and drops it on the clipboard in a click. A copy leaves nothing on screen, so the design had to prove it worked, and the best fixes came from watching real people use it.

role

Audience research, campaign copy

methods

Post-level analytics, before-and-after comparison against the page's own baseline

output

Forty posts over five months; one format produced 92% of all likes

A Hong Kong condom brand entered the North American market on a hard sell, and the first six posts averaged seven likes. The format that replaced it asked for nothing and earned eleven times the response.