karina chow

engineering & design consultant

Hello World, I'm Karina! ��

I'm a creative technologist exploring the intersection of art, psychology, and technology—through products, museum exhibits, games, interactive clothing, or whatever else might make someone smile.

Professionally, I help early-stage startups ship products—whatever that takes. Sometimes it's frontend code, sometimes it's a pitch deck, sometimes it's UX research or animation. I've run my own small software contracting agency, KACHOW! LLC, since 2020 and occasionally rope in some old colleagues to work with me on larger projects.

I also work part time as a New Media Exhibit Technician at the Exploratorium, an interactive science museum in San Francisco.

Prior to that, I worked as a software engineer for over a decade in San Francisco: as a data engineer at Yammer, a frontend engineer at Honor, and a frontend infrastructure team leader at Patreon. I've spoken at conferences on frontend infrastructure and design systems, as well as on disability, accessibility, and mental health in tech.

I hold a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University and a Masters of Professional Studies in Interactive Telecommunications at New York University.

Interdisciplinary in nature

Starting something? Chances are, I can help.

creating wireframe UI designs
making interactive prototype demos
consulting with startups on their UX
auditing products for UX improvements
conducting UX research with potential users
developing product design systems from scratch
illustrating for physical merchandise

building webapps from scratch
making delightful CSS animations
leading frontend infrastructure teams
communicating technical concepts to the layman
mentoring budding junior engineers
designing frontend interview processes
advocating for web acessibility

...and easy to work with

(Or so my old coworkers and clients say!)

Beyond her collaborative spirit, Karina is a highly skilled engineer who played a pivotal role in two separate redesigns at Patreon. These projects were immense in scope, affecting every aspect of the user experience. With a small team, Karina executed her responsibilities flawlessly, leading to a seamless go-live experience during the latter redesign. We launched in the evening to minimize user impact, and to our delight, the complete redesign went live without a single flaw. Karina's leadership, technical expertise, and creativity have been invaluable to our team. I wholeheartedly recommend her as a remarkable engineer and a wonderful teammate.

Ben BayardFormer Staff Engineer at Patreon

I thoroughly enjoyed working with Karina. She delivered a high quality Adobe Animate animation design and a demo video for our product idea. She was creative, dedicated and brought a lot of energy and humor. I would love to work with her again!

Amit DuvediPrincipal & Co-founder at Growth Accelerators

Karina can help you turn an app idea into a design that developers can start building. She has a talent for understanding both the user experience and the technical constraints, making her an excellent bridge between concept and implementation.

Jeff StarrCofounder of Broker2Broker

We worked with Karina and her team at Mutations to prototype an app for the commercial real estate industry. She quickly grasped our complex domain and delivered an intuitive, polished design that helped us communicate our vision to investors.

Chris CrabtreeCofounder of Broker2Broker

Even in my free time, I'm always making things...

KACHOW! Digest

Sometimes I write things, and no, I don't use AI. I write about mental health, web accessibility, technical recruiting, and about the tech industry in general. Sometimes I even write about random topics, too.

You can view all my articles and follow me on Medium.

MoMD

Museum of Modern Dribbbles

I'm almost always working on graphic design, animation, and/or illustration projects. If you'd like to see what I've done for my own projects or for clients in the past, this is the place to look.

View on Dribbble or Instagram