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,

  • emailmei@mitra.studio
  • calcal.com/meilin
  • readmitra.studio/journal

If it's personal,

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