I am a multidisciplinary product leader, designer, software engineer, and educator based in New York.
With over 9 years of experience bringing products from concept to launch, I currently lead the digital product team at the Eames Institute and also teach at Parsons.
Work Experience
All things digital at the Eames Institute.
Design and execution of brand identities, digital products, and collateral for various clients. Services also include long term design and content strategy.
Select clients: Princeton, Miko McGinty, Karel Martens, Adam Pendleton, MGMT design, Friends Indeed Gallery, Innisfree Garden, CUE Art Foundation, Rivers Institute, The Brooklyn Rail, Orchard Analytics, IDSR Architecture, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
Led product design and design engineering for a trust & safety startup. Collaborated closely with the CEO on rapid prototyping of key features, helping achieve product-market fit. Also provided design leadership, shaping the design system and establishing core design values.
Over my 3+ years at MoMA, I led product design and front end development of the Museum’s public-facing digital surfaces. This included the entirety of moma.org, which is visited by 14 million visitors a year, as well as in-Museum way finding, digital signage, and in-gallery interactive experiences.
I performed user research and prototyping, led product inceptions, and managed certain products from conceptualization to completion. I was responsible for hiring full time staff and contractors. I also played a significant role in the redesign of the Museum’s website in 2019, and helped lead the Museum’s digital and content strategy throughout COVID.
I developed a bespoke Atomic CSS library which bakes in the Museum’s design system into CSS classes. This involved building Vue based UI components for use across many products and platforms.
Designed and developed websites for the ICA London, Radio Athènes, Materia Abierta, and more. Developed screensavers for Mac OS and apps for iOS. Designed books and collateral for Yale School of Architecture and the Sternberg Press series, The Contemporary Condition.
Software design and prototyping for a client relating to healthcare services. Designed prototypes of a mobile van sharing service for a automotive client.
Design and build of SPAN 2016 website. Contributions to Material Design libraries.
Design, development, of websites for TREsPASS, World Press Photo, and more.
Developed heuristics for sentiment analysis used in highlighting Google Play store reviews.
Projects
Led the design process and front-end implementation for introducing Single Sign On for all MoMA’s digital surfaces (moma.org, store.moma.org, and membership.moma.org). This included untangling tricky UX patterns and merging two different existing account sign in processes. We also had to pay particular attention to brand expression as each stakeholder wanted their own sub-brand expressed.
Collaborated with Google Creative Lab to design and build a new tab extension for MoMA, randomly showing works of art from the Museum’s collection. (2023 Webby Award NetArt Winner)
Codeveloped a living design system in CSS and JavaScript, which we lovingly called “Sol” after Sol LeWitt. This included core units such as page spacing, type sizes, and even custom calculation to include baseline alignment and cap spacing. Since our brand relied so heavily on type to express itself, we always championed clear and considered typographic information architecture throughout the website.
Worked closely with marketing and communications to ensure COVID-19 precautions were considered and communicated at all parts of the digital and onsite visitor journeys. This included thinking strategically about all visitor touch points online and in person, as well as helping write the copy that the Museum used for its COVID messaging.
In response to COVID-19 and to reduce environmental waste, we transitioned from a printed visitor guide to a digital only one. I worked with Michael Fehrenbach to design and build the new digital visitor guide, focusing on shipping MVP features and strategizing on a clear user journey for our visitors from online to in-gallery touch points.
As part of the 2019 expansion, MoMA introduced a suite of 31 digital screens interspersed throughout the Museum. These digital screens served as digital wayfinding in concert with the screenprinted signage. I was co-lead developer on implementing the designs of these screens in Vue, pulling from our CMS to render constantly up to date information. I also worked closely with design to tighten up the screens prior to the reopening of the Museum.
Designed, built, and shipped visual and UX changes to moma.org, as part of our 2019 redesign. Continued to work very closely with Graphic Design to ensure and consistent brand expression and accessibility in our new visual language, and championed good design across the Museum with other collaborators. With Michael Fehrenbach, built Sol a bespoke Atomic CSS library that includes our core design system metrics.
Exhibitions
BSA asked sixteen American artists and writers to compose "new" open letters, letters that will honor the influence of Broodthaers' original documents by taking up the mantle of speaking to the world now, in 2022.
Studio Ercan–Li contributed a design which makes use of the EURion constellation, an anti-counterfeiting pattern many currencies use, which pushes against the notion that open letters should be widely distributed.
An exhibition organized by Joe Scanlan and Eric Li that brings together over forty artists, graphic designers, musicians, and writers whose work engages the alphabet.
w-t-f is a show that primarily focuses on my relationship with graphic design at Princeton and the challenges of practicing it within the context of the visual arts program. It attempts to address the difficulties of presenting graphic design outside of its context and explores my interest in reconciling the differences between having an independent visual arts studio practice and producing “traditional” printed matter, such as posters and logos. The show also focuses heavily on my interest in the process as being equal to, if not more important than, the finished product and the challenges of conveying these ideas in a space that has traditionally focused on showcasing the finished product. This interest in process stems from Max Bill’s essay, “Continuity and Change,” where he discussed design and gestalt as continuously testing and evolving a form in order to push it to some idealized “true form.” Whether that form exists remains an open question. After all, What’s True Form?
Speaking
A talk about my practice and career, focusing on the topic of “Why I Do What I Do.” Given at Parsons as part of their Communication Design yearly lecture series.
Gave a talk about my career and practice, and gave a workshop on the history of the web, and HTML.
A talk about the product design process for digital at MoMA, including our bespoke tooling for creating our website.
Studio Ercan–Li gave a talk on our design practice and work to Anthony Zukofsky’s SVA class.
For Mindy Seu’s class at Yale, I gave a workshop on content management systems as part of the design process.
Writing
An essay about rethinking the “furniture” of the web, and how we can use the internet more mindfully.
With David Reinfurt, wrote a series of essays that grounded the first Are.na Annual about the history of the internet, and the attention economy.
Awards
Features
Contributor to essay by Matt Owens on how MoMA’s bespoke Atomic CSS library bakes in our design system to make design and developer handoff easier.
Spoke about the role of Marcel Broodthaers’s seminal piece and how it straddles design and art.
An interview with Jonathan Zong and I on our collaboration throughout college and our thesis work.
Education
Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, Tau Beta Pi Honor Society, Jim Seawright Award in Visual Arts