Year
2026
My Role
UI/UX Designer
Responsibility
UX Flow / UI Design / Front-end Development with Claude Code
Problem: Two friction points in a casual ceramics group
Muddy Club is a small group of friends who meet weekly to make pottery in a private studio. There's no formal tuition, no curriculum — people bring photos of pieces they want to make, and the teacher demonstrates the technique.
Two pain points kept showing up:
Firing fees are confusing.
Costs are based on the volume of each piece, with conditional rules that aren't obvious to newcomers. Every quote has to be calculated by hand, and the studio owner had no easy way to keep track of income.
Reference-driven work looks the same.
Without structured lessons, everyone's references came from Instagram and Pinterest. The finished pieces ended up echoing the references they walked in with — derivative, not original.
Phase 1: A billing tool, on the phone
I built a calculator that turns the studio's pricing rules into a single input → output flow. Members measure their piece, type in dimensions, and get a quote. The conditional logic stays hidden inside the tool.
Below the calculator, I kept the pricing rules visible so members can see exactly how their fee is being worked out.
Used weekly by the teacher and members. The teacher uses it to issue quotes; members use it to estimate cost before starting a piece.
The turn
A few weeks in, I noticed a different problem — not about money, but about creativity. Everyone's work looked similar to the reference they brought.
If users could shape, glaze, and explore in 3D before they touch the clay, they could walk into the studio with their own design — not someone else's photo.
So I extended Muddy Club into a pottery simulator.
Solution: A 4-step ceramic studio in the browser
Shape → Handle → Glaze → Decorate.
Mirroring the physical order of pottery.
The flow itself becomes a soft lesson. You can't glaze before shaping; you can't add a handle to a fired piece. New users absorb the working logic of pottery just by following the flow.
Reversible, not rigid.
The four step circles at the bottom are both progress and navigation. Tap back to step 1 from step 4 to make the vessel taller. The flow is a suggestion, not a rule.
Restrained craft visuals.
Beige base, single accent (terracotta brown), 4px spacing system, almost no decorative UI. The simulator is a creative tool — visual noise gets in the way of the user's own work.
Built with AI as a partner
This project was built with Claude Code reading designs directly from Figma via MCP. I owned the UI/UX direction and design judgment; Claude handled implementation. Working alongside AI lets a solo designer ship and iterate at a speed that wasn't possible a year ago.
Outcome
The billing tool is in active use at Muddy Club. The simulator has been tested with members and is on its third major iteration (currently v2.1), with feedback continuing to shape the product.
