Nathan Cheng

I built Trickpad so I could control dictation and other writing actions without needing to touch my keyboard. It maps Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad gestures to keyboard shortcuts, system actions, URLs, and scripts, including different bindings for individual apps.

I already used dedicated apps for window management and automation, so I didn’t want another large utility. Trickpad acts as a lighter connection to those tools through their existing hotkeys and deep links. Its complete configuration lives in a readable, plain-text TOML file, which makes the setup easy to inspect, back up, and maintain with a coding agent.

I soon decided to flesh it out as a public product. That pushed me to account for workflows beyond mine, including trackpad edge and corner clicks, macOS gesture conflicts, system controls, and apps that interpret synthesized shortcuts differently. I also built the documentation, agent-guided setup, packaging, updates, icon, storefront, and product site needed for it to stand on its own.

Invitation suite and website for a friend's wedding, built out from a shared moodboard of illuminated manuscripts, medieval tapestry, and tattoo flash. The save-the-date artwork became the site's hero, rebuilt in CSS so the J and X tiles fade into an arc under two layered radial-gradient masks, with soft parallax over it. The invitations came last and are their own drawing, taking only the deep purple and gold of the site's later sections.

Julia is a backend developer and had already wired an RSVP flow to a Google Sheet through Apps Script, where guests looked up their party across several pages. I rebuilt it as a single surface that prefetches the whole guest list on open, so searching is instant and one person can answer for everyone in their party. Filling it out went from about 18 seconds to 9 in my own testing.

I built this site after growing tired of fitting my portfolio into static site builders and general-purpose CMSs. I wanted direct control over how the work is organized, presented, and connected, without treating every unconventional interaction as a workaround.

The site began as a Next.js frontend with content in Sanity and media in Cloudinary. In 2026, I consolidated it into one codebase so written content now lives as MDX files alongside the application, while images and videos live in a single Cloudflare R2 bucket. Content changes travel through the same review and deployment process as code, and the files remain readable in Obsidian and by coding agents.

The homepage supports three views of the same work: a visual grid, a project list, and an overview of past roles. Filters and active views persist in the URL for shareability, while direction-aware transitions preserve a sense of spatial continuity between them.

I built the surrounding content system to support custom article layouts, shared media metadata, automatic video derivatives, and Markdown versions of the public pages for AI agents.

Building the portfolio in code also made polishing it more enjoyable. Instead of moving between Figma and an approximation of the final interface, I created a /lab section where I can experiment directly with the real components. While working with Claude and Codex, I can turn an idea such as animation timing, shader behavior, spacing, or visual treatment into a set of controls, compare variations in context, and carry the values I choose back into the site.

A range of design work across our product, website, and supporting systems.

My initial sales and support role gave visibility into where users were experiencing confusion. That shaped what I built next: walkthrough videos and tutorials, new product and support pages, and a reimagining of our flagship product. The redesign proposes replacing its menu-driven interface with a guided workflow built from interface primitives, grounded in Microsoft’s WinUI guidelines.

I also shaped the design on a website refresh, working with an external agency on the wireframes and content restructuring. After their handoff I kept iterating on the visual side, polishing colors, diagrams, and layouts.

Most recently, the role has grown to include some of the underlying systems engineering myself.

Collaborated with early-stage startups to make their pitch decks more digestible and compelling, clarifying narratives and helping founders distinguish their companies from competitors.

Various posters and collateral for social events

Identity work for a neighborhood chess club, inspired by the jagged rhythm of South Philly’s mosaic tiles. The mark resolves into a board and a knight built from the initials, and opens up animation possibilities that represent calculated, mathematical thinking (a la the animations of @beesandbombs on Twitter).

Family business providing supplies to Philadelphia schools that aren't otherwise obtainable through standard processes. The owner wanted a simple website with just essential info, contact details, and featured items. To make it admin-friendly, I used Airtable instead of a complex CMS, allowing her to easily update content through a familiar spreadsheet format.

A prototype for a drawing tool allowing users to "paint" with color-filtered selections of a pre-defined image. The original image remains hidden to encourage an improvisational approach to painting and remixing. Featured on the front page of CV in December 2021.

How might shaders and 3D layering allow users to reimagine the original images in more expressive ways? What opportunities are there to intersect this kind of image remixing with video frames and motion blending?

An iOS game prototype that turns sleep science into a playable 3D world for kids. I pitched the concept and was elected to lead a team of four to build it in a double-credit software development intensive at Wesleyan, run by the founder of Bethesda Softworks.

The game maps the brain's sleep stages to an adventure (keeping neurons firing, clearing toxins, repairing systems, and synthesizing memory), so kids learn the science by playing. I led production and set the art direction, designed level structure, cleaned and UV-mapped meshes, and built motion graphics for the teaser and keynote.

We took the concept from pitch to alpha, user-tested it with kids at a local elementary school, and delivered the final pitch to industry judges from AFI, Harmonix, Warner Bros. Games, and Demiurge Studios. They awarded us first place for "most original concept and execution" and "highest quality business presentation."

Interface & motion design for a bespoke web gallery that brings visitors into the sparse, "zen" feeling of coffee table photography books & museum exhibits, along with the humanistic touch of Duane Michals' work & outlook.

Mockups, visual language, and UI design for a founder's exploratory phase emphasizing luxury aesthetics and high-end materials. The hexagonal motifs represent a gift box, gemstone, and message bubble, while contrasting the typical dainty, ornate designs often seen in jewelry marketing.

I'm curious how the platform could have carved out a more distinctive niche beyond visual differentiation.

Big Sur changed Mac app icon styles in 2020 (rounded squircles to match iOS and iPadOS). I wanted a cohesive look in my dock without waiting for developers to update their apps, so I redesigned the outliers in the new style and shared them on macosicons.com, where they’ve been downloaded over 3,000 times.

Wesleyan’s film studies program is centered on theory and form analysis, but for my thesis I opted to make a short film (one of 21 made that year). I wrote, directed, and edited an 11-minute production with a 16-person crew across 40 hours of shooting and a $2,800 crowdfunded budget.

I took cues from Krisha and Punch-Drunk Love, letting energetic camerawork and sound design carry much of the opening without dialogue.

A jury of 5 film professors (including AFI board emeritus Jeanine Basinger) and 3 anonymous Hollywood professionals awarded my film with honors and the Frank Capra Prize “for creating a senior film that is fully cinematic and uses the tools of filmmaking at the highest level,” and for “exemplifying Capra’s skill in telling a human story that contains both humor and pathos.”

Student films for "Sight & Sound" led by Steve Collinsy; ~1 week per film. Tools—16mm Bolex film camera, Steinbeck flatbed film editor

Short studies in projection mapping, fractals, and layered motion—mostly explorations of depth and timing.

Experimentations with umbrella forms.