Product designer & front-end developer, based in Ho Chi Minh City

Who I am

I'm Quân Đỗ, a product designer and front-end developer in Ho Chi Minh City.

There's a language to software, about where things belong and how they behave, and I've always been tuned to it. If I'm using an app and the padding is off by a few pixels, I'll still be thinking about it a week later, which is a terrible way to own a phone and a very good sign I picked the right job. It's also why I don't stop at the design. Developing it too is how I end up with something I'm actually happy to use.

I've worked inside a big product team, and led a couple of small ones. On the large product that meant handing my designs to engineers I worked closely with, and on the small ones it meant running the board and writing the front-end myself.

What I believe

What I can't leave alone is the same work being done twice, like a person typing the same data into two different places. Most of what I'm proudest of started as exactly that, a bad process somebody had quietly accepted as routine.

Convoluted software like that is the most satisfying thing in the world to fix. The difference is immediate, and it makes people like technology a little more, which as somebody who works in it is reason enough for me.

The thing I'm least reasonable about is consistency. If creating one thing opens a modal sheet, every related thing should open a modal sheet. That is a lot of feeling to have about a modal sheet. It's also the part of the job I enjoy most.

How I work

I'm most useful when the brief is thin. Give me a goal and a deadline and I'll start with observation and research. People work around a bad process without noticing they're doing it, and that's usually where the core issue sits. Fix it there and what gets built is better to use, not just newer.

I care most about the things nobody puts in a brief. Spacing, tokens, the way something moves. Those are what separate an app that feels finished from one that feels assembled.

Everyone is working out where AI belongs right now. Mine gets the labour and the parts I've already decided, never the deciding.

I'm proud of what I put my name on, and just as glad to hear what somebody else would do with it. Whenever I've built something alongside other people, the product came out better for it.

Experience

Timezone

Ho Chi Minh City. I work 9am to 9pm local time, which covers a full working day across Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Korea and eastern Australia, and European mornings.

Skills

What's next

I'm looking for a full-time role on an in-house product team, ideally something mobile. Taiwan or Singapore would be the dream, and I'd be just as happy building from here with a team anywhere.

Mostly I want people to build with. I've been the only engineer on everything I've made, and there's plenty I can only learn from people further along than me.