Work — Bao To
Every project by Bao To, a design engineer and studio artist in New York: AI-era product work, design systems, and full-stack builds, filterable by kind. Each entry opens a case study.
BAO TO
DESIGN ENGINEER
I build & scale intentional interfaces, workflows, and systems.
Recently, I've been:
- Solving multimedia workflows and digital sketchbooking.
- Learning content processing w/ ffmpeg & diffing algos.
- Designing from first-principles.
- Making art in my tiny bedroom.
- Going to every single cafe in NYC.
Scraps (joinscraps.com)
Full StackDesktop & Mobile
AI Visual Thinking Canvas 0->1 for creatives.
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DemoStudio
Full StackFFMPEG
Make better-looking software product demos. #7 on ProductHunt & 2500+ users.
Zen Editor
UX of AIDiffing Algos
AI Document Editor that syncs with Google Drive.
NotetakingLM
Weekend ProjectUX of AI
Designing a Graph-RAG LLM-based notetaking workflow.
Capsule
HackathonUX of AI
1st Place @ Rice Designathon 2025. Reimagining digital journaling as a hunter-gatherer process.
Whatarethechords.com
3-Hour ProjectFull Stack
Search Agent for Guitar Chords. 3-hour full stack project with 15k+ queries ran.
iMessage Polls Concept
2-Day ProjectConcept Design
Polls feature for group chats using Apple's Design System. 2-day concept design project.
Grapevine
BlockchainPrediction Market
Community-based prediction market built on Solidity, Hardhat, Chainlink. Making community participation fun through blockchain-powered forecasting.
Open Source & Internal Infra Tools
SageSure Design System
Design EngineeringDesign Systems
Designing infrastructure to speed up design systems workflow by 4x during internship.
Figma MCP Server
MCP ServerAgentic Design
Pull entire design systems and tokens into AI coding IDEs with one call. 24000+ users.
Figma Copilot Plugin
Figma PluginUX of AI
Analyse Figma Frames with AI. Figma plugin exploring UX of AI. 1200+ users.
Websites & Experiences
ADI Website
Web Design
Website for the biggest tech club at Columbia University.
Design@Columbia Site
Web DesignMotion Design
Official website for Columbia University's Design Club.
ActualFood Platform
Product DesignDesign System
Designing a staff-patient communications & management system for nutritional science company.
Uspire B2B Marketing
UI/UXWebsite Design
Redesigning B2B website and creating marketing materials for an AI ed-tech startup.
Hooda Halal Website
Web DesignFramer
Website design for Hooda Halal restaurant.
Tom's Restaurant Website
Web DesignWix
Website design for Tom's Restaurant.
Hackathon Projects
Virtual Dolly (1st Place @ NYC Startups Hackathon)
AI VideoGaussian Splats
Human-in-the-loop camera director for AI video generation. Create cinematic dolly shots within Gaussian splat environments using virtual cameras and multi-image inputs to video gen APIs.
Speech Tablet App Redesign
App RedesignAccessibility
Redesigning a speech therapy tablet application for improved accessibility.
Climbfire
VRGame Dev
VR game for Meta Horizons Game Creator Challenge.
Futon (Sponsor Award @ YHack 2024)
HackathonAR/VR
Dorm hopping platform for college students.
Welly
App DesignHealth
Health and wellness app design project.
Productivity Tools
Slides PDF to Notes Converter
AutomationProductivity Tools
Google App Scripts Extension to help students take notes in class more easily.
Docs-synced Desktop Notes App
Desktop AppProductivity Tools
Desktop app that syncs notes directly to Google Docs for seamless note-taking.