Luisa Vasquez
Creative Developer | Data Viz, She/Her
About
I wear many hats: designer, developer, and artist.
I recently completed my Master’s in Data Visualization and Analytics at MICA. I won the Capstone Award for my thesis project on Sock Knitting.
Before that, I worked in tech as a Product Designer and Design Technologist for 6+ years. I’ve imagined the future of frontline work through augmented reality tools, written about rapid prototyping, and built tools for anyone to create powerful and beautiful digital maps.
I’m interested in how data can help us build insightful tools and tell better stories. I’ve also been exploring how data can inform an artistic practice by quilting my personal data.
When I’m not looking at screens designing, coding, or wrangling data, I’m drinking coffee, getting outside, or working toward my goal of creating a hand-made wardrobe.
Work Experience
Participating in a 12-week batch to grow as a data visualization developer and creative coder. The Recurse Center is the retreat where curious programmers recharge and grow.
Design lead for Mapbox Studio - a tool for creating beautiful and performant maps.
Design lead and technical prototyper. Launched several zero-to-one products and built dozens of augmented reality prototypes using Unity and C# to help de-risk product direction and encourage bluesky thinking.
Open Data Kosovo (ODK) is a digital humanitarianism non-profit. I volunteered there during the summer supported by funding from the Dickey Center for National Understanding at Dartmouth College.
Education
Masters in Data Visualization and Analytics. Capstone Award winner for thesis project: sock-data-viz.vercel.app/
Majored in Computer Science and Digital Art; Minored in Human-Centered Design
TA for Full-Stack Web Development, Design Thinking, and 3D Digital Modeling with Maya
Side Projects
In an age of fast fashion, hand-knit socks are a small luxury. This project aims to encourage other makers to overcome their fear of sock knitting and discover a new joyful hobby.
Tools: Svelte, D3.js, Figma, RAWGraphs, R
A (somewhat) daily creative code challenge based on the October prompt list (Peachtober) by artist Sha'an d'Anthes.
Tools: p5.js
Exploring "walkable" areas in Charlotte, NC based on what matters to me. I worked on this project as part of my mentorship with the Data Viz Society. Many thanks to my mentor Hannah Dormido!
Tools: HTML/CSS/JS, Mapbox
A visual storytelling piece that combines data from the Urban Institute with hand-drawn illustration to highlight the issue of school segregation in America.
Tools: HTML/CSS/JS, Scrollama.js, Datawrapper, R
Weekend code experiment: Playful Pop-Up Windows
Tools: Vanilla JS
Weekend Experiment: A small step exploring the bigger question of what hyper-personalized UI could look like on the web - what if all of our interfaces responded and dynamically updated to best respond to our tolerances for cognitive load and visual stimulus.
Tools: React