JOURNAL · VOL 04 · WK 17 · MITRA STUDIO · SG

Mei Lin, senior designer
at Mitra.

— a working journal, kept honestly.
← this one is so true

01About me, briefly.

I design product surfaces that feel like they were made by a person who actually cared — not the kind that get shipped on a Friday and apologised for on a Monday.

Six years in. Two at an agency in KL, four at Mitra. I sit closest to the engineers — that's the bit nobody warns you about in design school. The taste is the easy part. The hard part is showing up to standup with a working prototype while the brief is still being written. *

I like quiet interfaces, generous whitespace, and the kind of typography that doesn't yell. I think density is a virtue when the user is a professional, and a sin when they're not.

↘ ask Aria
about Wed.

02What I ship in a week.

Not a job description. A diary. The actual entries from last week, lightly redacted.

  1. Mon04.21 i.Onboarding flow, v3. Cut step 2 entirely. The PM was right; I just needed to see it on a phone at 6am.
  2. Tue04.22 ii.Component audit. Found 14 button variants. Should be 4. Wrote a memo nobody will read; will demo it instead.
  3. Wed04.23 iii.Pairing with Aria (eng). Two hours on focus states. Worth every minute. Ship it next sprint.
  4. Thu04.24 iv.User interview, ×3. Dental clinic owners. They do not want an AI assistant. They want a calendar that doesn't lie.
  5. Fri04.25 v.Drawing day. No screens. iPad + pencil. Eight thumbnails for the dashboard rebuild. Two are good.
  6. Sat04.26 vi.Reading. Finished The Shape of Design, again. Still right.
← the good ones

03Three habits that stuck.

Most habits I've tried bounced off. These three didn't.

Friday is for paper.

No Figma. No Slack. A pencil, a sketchbook, and one problem. The week's best idea almost always arrives between 2pm and 4pm.

// since 2022

Ship the ugly one.

The first version is meant to be shown, not loved. I send it before I'm ready, every time. It saves a week of polishing the wrong thing.

// since 2023

Read the codebase.

Once a fortnight I open the repo and just read. I can't write much, but I can tell what's expensive to change. Designs got 30% smaller after I started.

// since 2024
↓ email is best.

04How to reach me.

If it's work,

If it's personal,

  • are.naare.na/mei-lin
  • letterboxd@meilin
  • teastill oolong, always
— with care,
Mei.