Hello! My name is Aditya Jain. Welcome to my handcrafted playground on the web.
I am an award-winning design engineer with a deep background in frontend engineering, data visualization, and rapid-prototyping. I hold a Master’s degree from NYU’s ITP Program.
In the past I have had the privilege of working with the wonderful people at
I was born and raised in New Delhi, and now live in the concrete jungle of New York City with my spotted
cow dog, Eleanor. She's a handful.
I grew up with computers and in many ways consider myself to be a child of the pre-social media internet. I spent a lot of time on Wikipedia and building my own blog using HTML and CSS.
While in college I discovered a love for Art & Design, and decided to pursue them along with my educaton in Computer Science. I spent most of my early career specializing in Data Visualization and Interactive Frontend Development, utilizing low-level web technologies to build highly performant web experiences.
In English, the word design is both a noun and a verb (which tells one a lot about the nature of the English language).
As a noun, it means - among other things - ‘intention’, ‘plan’, ‘intent’, ‘aim’, ‘scheme’, ‘plot’, ‘motif’, ‘basic structure’, all these (and other meanings) being connected with ‘cunning’ and ‘deception’.
As a verb (‘to design’), meanings include ‘to concoct something’, ‘to simulate’, ‘to draft’, ‘to sketch’, ‘to fashion’, ‘to have designs on something’. The word is derived from the Latin signum, meaning ‘sign’, and shares the same ancient root.
Thus, etymologically, design means ‘de-sign’. This raises the question: How has the word design come to achieve its present-day significance throughout the world? This question is not a historical one, in the sense of sending one off to examine texts for evidence of when and where the word came to be established in its present-day meaning. It is a semantic question, in the sense of causing one to consider precisely why this word has such significance attached to it in contemporary discourse about culture.
The word occurs in contexts associated with cunning and deceit. A designer is a cunning plotter laying his traps.
Vilem Flusser, The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design
I find myself privileged to be in a profession where I can build the world that I'd live to live in, sometimes in small ways and other times at scale. We are fast approaching a world where the speed of building is going to strain the quality of technology, and by extension, the socio-economic fabric of our society. Now more than ever, designers need to realize and reaffirm their fiduciary responsibility to the world they are building for.
Towards that end, I'd argue that design is, quite simply, a practice in thoughtfulness.
When I think about collaboration I think about Casa Batlló in Barcelona. The picture you see is from the main living room of the house. Gaudí realized his vision after he collaborated with some of the best artisans of his time to create a master piece of colored glass and curving oak. You can create magic when you collaborate with people who are really passionate about what they do.
Photo by Mstyslav Chernov
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
Alan Kay
I think people who are really serious about frontend development should make their own backend systems. I strive to learn as much as I can about the underlying systems that I build on top of, and I think that it has made me a better developer and designer. Everything you see on this page was imagined, designed, built, and deployed by me, from the React code to the CloudFront distribution.
That’s not to trivialize the role of specialists, and I can‘t imagine doing what I do without the help of millions of people who I have never met, as is the case with everyone who works in this profession because we stand on the shoulders of giants.
- The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design, Vilem Flusser
- The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online, Judith Donath
- Interaction of Color, Josef Albers
- Linotype: The Film, Doug Wilson
- Eloquent JavaScript, Marijn Haverbeke
- A Tour Through The Visualization Zoo, Jeffrey Heer, Michael Bostock, and Vadim Ogievetsky
- Babette's Feast, Gabriel Axel
- The Public Sphere, Jürgen Habermas
- "Papers, Please", Lucas Pope
- "Disco Elysium, Robert Kurvitz
I have deep empathy for the human condition and how it feels to be human in a post-modernist world is the overarching question that drives me and my work. I remind myself that the systems we build operate within the context of the gamut of human experience and also affect it deeply, from the magic of when things just work to the frustration of when they don't and the suffering that they cause as a result.
In my free time I like observing and learning about the different systems and institutions that affect the human experience, from hard infrastructure to financial markets and interest rates. I want to know more about this petri dish that I exist within, and better understand how socio-economic conditions affect the world around me.
I also think its just kinda fun, yknow? This section is about fun. Anyway, here is a little heatmap of the S&P500 companies today, sized by market cap, with labels for companies with a market cap greater than $300 billion.
I am also a watch nerd, and have been learning how to make my own mechanical watches with a little help from watch kits that you can buy from Alibaba. Sometimes I design dials with code. Working in a small universe and getting lost in tiny details is a great way to relax.
Here is a dial based off an old Calatrava 'Discoball' reference in 36mm showing your local time