Guest checkNo. 001
I examine things.
Product reviews and design analysis. Looking closely at physical products, interfaces, services, packaging, and artifacts.
Everyday objects, examined through use.
Design provenance · UX & product design by Rin Chu
Observe. Think.
Make. Publish.
I’m Rin Chu. I make products, examine everyday objects, and share what I learn.
Provenance of Design is Rin Chu’s personal knowledge base: a growing collection of product reviews, design experiments, essays, books, and digital resources.
I’m Rin Chu, a UX and product designer. I document the decisions, constraints, and revisions behind the things I build.
Four ways to explore
Guest checkNo. 002
I make things.
My own products, experiments, systems, and works in progress—with the development logs behind them.
Products, experiments, and how they evolve.
Guest checkNo. 003
I write things.
Essays, notes, criticism, research, and books. Space to work through a thought and follow where it leads.
Ideas, questions, and longer thoughts.
Guest checkNo. 004
I publish things.
Digital resources, templates, Gumroad products, and future publications. Work you can take into your own practice.
Tools and templates for your own work.
Why I chose the name
Why “Provenance of Design”?
I chose this name because I kept questioning why “design”—in a job title or a practice—so often gets interpreted as aesthetics, visuals, or making something “pretty.” I’ve encountered that assumption among designers and non-designers alike.
It became especially clear on DM a GM. A founder I’m good friends with, and had worked for before, hired me as a UX/UI designer. When I asked what I needed to do, he told me that he and his developer had the backend ready and that my job was to “make it look pretty.” Those were his exact words.
I liked the idea: Tinder-style swiping and a quick, reels-like feed for finding and hosting tabletop role-playing campaigns. But as I started designing the interface, many of the user flows didn’t make sense. I kept getting stuck. Working out the screens meant working out questions about the product itself.
With no budget for interviews or surveys, I took on the UX research myself, digging into TTRPG communities and culture to understand how people actually found, joined, and hosted games. Credible research relevant to those questions was difficult to find. Community observations helped me investigate, but they didn’t replace the direct research I wanted to do.
That experience is part of why I chose “provenance”: the origins and history behind something. I want my design practice to make visible where a design came from—the assumptions, research, constraints, decisions, revisions, and unanswered questions that shaped it. The finished interface is one part of that story. Keeping the reasoning attached to the work is what connects this practice.