Udit Desai
I’m a software engineer specialized in building user interfaces and interested in designer-developer collaboration. I’m currently in my final year of computer engineering at the University of Toronto and I'll graduate in April 2022.
In the past:
- Built the frontend for a project from the ground up at Sanctuary Computer
- Developed prototypes, APIs, and UX principles for subscriptions at Shopify
- Led development on websites for large and small clients alike with friends
- Designed and built creative websites and tech curruiculum at HXOUSE
- Organized hackathons and workshops to teach programming to fellow high school students at a non-profit I cofounded, Cipher
Links:
- Follow me on Twitter, where I tweet about sports, tech, music, and my work
- Contact me via email, especially if it’s about a new project I can contribute to
- View my resume, for a more compact view of my experience
- Check out Good Books, a growing list of books I enjoyed reading
Besides work, I love watching and talking basketball, looking at clothes, reading about science and inspiring stories, and making smoothies.
Sanctuary Computer
I collaborated remotely with developers, designers, and strategists from across three studios (Sanctuary Computer, XXIX, and Manhattan Hydraulics) to build client and internal projects during the summer of 2021 as a software developer intern.
Work + learnings:
- Developed an extensive functional component library and the overall frontend for a client project
- Built features for the new product pages at index-space.org
- Learned effective push-based communication, how to work with clients, and gained experience working in a decentralized and autonomous way
Shopify
I worked on the pre-purchase team during my 7 months at Shopify as a UX developer intern. We worked on the buyer-side experience for the highly-anticipated subscriptions feature.
Work + learnings:
- Built new portions of Shopify themes to ideate and validate new Liquid APIs for selling plans (subscriptions)
- Engineered improvements between products and variants on storefronts in scripts used by all first party Shopify themes
- Collaborated extensively with designers to create buyer-facing user experience guidelines to be used by subscriptions apps on Shopify
- Learned to be user-obsessed when making decsisions about the product
HXOUSE
HXOUSE is a non-profit organization founded by The Weeknd and La Mar Taylor to help foster and innovation and oppurtunity for creatives. I worked with a team of four developers to build projects and ideate plus propose a new tech-focussed curriculum.
Work + learnings:
- Built and designed new interactive website (hxouse.com) in collaboration with the XO design team
- Built and designed several microsites for new HXOUSE projects (shop.hxouse.com, alyx.hxouse.com, conversations.hxouse.com)
- Ideated and proposed new tech-focussed programs for creatives
- Learned how to pitch new ideas and how to think outside the box and push beyond previously held boundaries
Freelance Work
I work with friends on select technology projects for large and small clients alike usually in the form of a creative website or ecommerce store. We like to work with clients in creative industries like fashion, music, and technology.
Work + learnings:
- Designed and developed three-dimensonal interactive microsite to sell NBA G-league NFTs (gleaguenfts.com)
- Designed and built webstore for Yeezy alum Mark Seekings new brand Seekings (seekings.co)
- Crafted a portfolio website for production studio Andras (andrasii.com)
- Other websites worked on include pierrebassene.world, atypic.cc, jiazhangfilms.com, and cilar.ca
