Summary
Category
Data Annotation
Org
Side Project
Product
Tanmigo.com
Role
Sole Designer, front-end developer (AI-assisted)
Core Challenge
- 01 Underutilized backend metadata for UX
- 02 "Blank-sheet anxiety" during user annotation
- 03 Fragmented video retrieval and organization workflows
Impact
- 01 Shipped production-ready code and launched the beta
- 02 Onboarded 5+ active beta users
As a designer, builder, and tango dancer, I designed the end-to-end experience and shipped the front-end myself.
TBD
Tool
VS Code
Front-end Development
Figma
Design System, Prototyping
Gemini CLI
Code Review
GitHub
Version Control
Claude Code
Agentic Coding
Lovable
Prototyping
Core User Journey
- Ingestion
- Annotation
- Curation
- Workspace architecture
- Visual Foundation
Background
Tango is a dance where you can practice for ten years, and still feel like a beginner.
Problem Space
Eight of the ten dancers I interviewed have playlists and curations to study tango movements outside of the dance floor.
- 01 Videos are scattered across YouTube, phone albums, Instagram, and Facebook; various sources leading to chaotic collections
- 02 One video contains nuances that make how you save and annotate it important
If we look at a single second of captured tango, what nuances can we see?
(yes, that's me!)
Design Strategy
Designed the data before the screens
Before sketching a single wireframe, I designed the metadata structure for annotations: what gets captured when a video comes in, and what makes a moment findable again later. That structure ended up deciding most of the UI for me.
Information Architecture
The core decision: the system captures what it can know on its own, and dancers add only what they know. That's what keeps a thousand-clip library manageable.
Rapid prototyping
From first concept to usability testing in 8 hours. Early on, the UX audits and rebuild ideas felt abstract when I tried to communicate them. I used Lovable as a sandbox to demonstrate multiple clickable iterations. Shortlisted ideas then moved to my local dev environment, ran through the test plan, and shipped once they passed.
2 hours
A working prototype in Lovable
Two hours in Lovable got me a working prototype, not a mockup: real clicks, real data fields. Its job was to determine which version of iteration is better, define priority, and leaves question worth real user testing.
6 hours
Quick sync + Information Architecture + User Testing
Ideas are grounded by interviewing in person and remote through card sorting. Insights moved quickly to a new branch, followed by a test run to make sure they were safe to merge.
The risk of building high-fidelity so quickly — here is how I see things.
I see design as a tool for communication, aligning constraints with different mental models. As a solo designer working with engineers, abstract card sorting or low-fidelity prototyping often fails to resonate. They don't show how things behave in various use cases, nor do they answer the "what-if" questions that every developer cares about. Building high-fidelity prototypes is how I reach consensus and define priorities with engineering.
To me, that is the essence of design: we design for better communication.
Visual Foundations
I still have my pixel-perfect moments: gathering design feedback on how things should look, moving blocks to test out ideas, and establishing an accessible design system that agents can reference.
Refining user behavior through iteration.
This design system was later imported into CSS.
The "Failed" Moment
There is one iteration I eventually gave up on, but it taught me a lot. While working on the annotation journey, I identified a gap in how users find specific annotations and tested a solution on Lovable. However, it ended up confusing users. Having a sequential panel and horizontal annotation strips at the same time left them unsure of where to look.
Lesson learned: Stick to one primary element; having two primary elements only confuses users. Clear intention keeps the UX grounded.
Live Product
YouTube → Tanmigo: A One-Stop Annotation Journey.
While these features are currently in active development, you can explore the functional MVP at www.tanmigo.com.
Becoming a better designer
Shipping my designs changed how I design.
Once every state I sketched was mine to build and test, my components got simpler, and edge cases got named before the build instead of during it. Nothing teaches design restraint like implementing your own work.
Building from idea to pull request, I design with more intention.
Read more
Developer experience in Claude Code
Claude Code
Restoring a sense of agency in AI coding tools, tested with a working prototype.
The capture dashboard behind Codec Avatars
Meta
Redesigning the internal tool that orchestrates 300+ camera and sensor streams, as the team's only designer and a daily operator of the system. (Details abstracted under NDA)