Hi there! I'm Stella.

I’m an interaction designer finishing my master's in HCI at the University of Washington.

I like working on things that are difficult to design: enterprise platforms, AI workflows, and systems with a lot of moving parts.

About

Hey there! I'm Stella, an interaction designer finishing my master's at the University of Washington.

Right now, I'm completing my Capstone in partnership with Optimizely to work on how AI agents embed into enterprise product workflows. Before that, I contracted at Affirm, where I helped replace a slow, engineer-dependent deal process with a self-service platform. Prior to that, I spent three years at SuperWorks, a Bay Area design agency, to design websites, branding, animation, and illustrations for 10+ clients. My experience across agency and product environments has strengthened my ability to move fluidly between systems thinking, visual design, and strategic problem-solving.

How I think about design

I began learning and working as a creative since 2014, and since then I’ve led product design projects, gone to art school, worked on two design degrees, built installations and exhibitions, and sold art. I also had the opportunity to mentored by architects, industrial designers, digital product designers, and HCI thinkers.

Inspired by Mike Monteiro’s “A Designer’s Code of Ethics,” I reflected on my relatively nascent journey as a creative to develop a manifesto that snapshots my personal design journey and philosophy at this point in my career.

Part One: The Foundation

  1. Design is a philosophy and should be practiced as such.

  2. The first lesson of design is to unlearn one’s current frameworks.

Part Two: The Values

  1. The designer is a consultant, not a laborer.

  2. A designer is as good as their pitch.

Part Three: The Craft

  1. Good design finds balance between the spectrums of infinite regress and infinite escalation.

Part 4: The Commitment

  1. Design is “whatever it takes.”

Read more :)

Outside of work, I like to…

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© Stella Sun 2026