Leslie Liu

Product designer working on complex, information-dense systems. Based in SF Bay Area.

Previously at Mercury, NASA JPL/Caltech, and Google Labs.

Read moreRead less

I work closely with domain experts to understand specialized workflows and design clear interfaces. Biased towards prototyping with users early, I design and build—be it rough sketches or working prototypes in code—matching the level of detail to what we need to learn or deliver.

Trained across visual design and interactive media, I hold an MS in Computational Design from Carnegie Mellon, where I researched CAPTCHAs as a security measure, crowdsourcing platform, wellspring of informal economies, and aesthetic form. Before that, I spent a year researching TV dinners.

Hindsight

@ NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2025)

A dark slate-blue interface of a visualization tool titled ‘M2020 Hindsight’ with various panels displaying segments of a drive on Martian terrain. In the main area to the right are an enlarged image of a map, charts, and camera imagery.

A visualization and retrieval tool for Perseverance rover operators to find and compare past drives across mission data.

  • expert workflows, interaction design
Improving Disputes Tooling

@ Mercury Technologies (2026)

Mercury company logo in grey, on a light grey background.

Embedded with Operations to understand specialist workflows, scope improvements, and ship two frontend changes using AI-assisted coding.

  • product judgment, design engineering
Digital Sky Surveys

@ California Institute of Technology (2025)

A dark gray interface of a visualization tool that shows two rows of grayscale sky imagery. In the bottom: a list of potential objects from the imagery, a list of parameters, and a black and white chart.

A research prototype developed with Caltech astronomers, exploring how to navigate image and tabular data in a shared workspace.

  • exploratory UX, information architecture