Grant Custer
Designer & Engineer
Slowly going out on a limb
About
I'm a designer and engineer focused on new and alternative interfaces. I specialize in prototyping and I love to work iteratively through a design in code.
Finding the right primitives for exploring a system is one of my favorite challenges.
I've built interfaces focused on spatial thinking, AI capabilities, and data visualization. I like to work on small, collaborative teams.
Portrait made with image paint
Work
Prototyping interfaces for interacting with large language models. Going beyond chat. Focused on increasing our understanding and control.
Creative technologist
2023-Present
Experimental web-based creative tools. Featuring image distorters, freeform text editors, and weird website builders. Targeted experiments in alternative interfaces.
Creator, designer & engineer
Side project: 2019-Present
Featured
Flow
An experimental image editor that lets you set and direct pixel-flows.
A directed typing experiment. You choose the direction the letters should flow.
Adjust the grid size and text direction to create weird and expressive layouts.
Prototyping a new flutter-based tablet operating system focused on deep work. Trying to rethink things from the ground up.
Software engineer
2023
Virtual spaces where you can meet, collaborate and play. I led engineering on features like drawing and screenshare, and built prototypes for experimental features like card stacking.
Engineer
2022
A better system for image organization. I led front-end engineering for the first versions of an experimental interface that lets you browse and make connections between thousands of images. We used WebGL to build a reactive, intuitive way to explore images clustered through machine learning.
Front-end engineer
2021
A research lab. We built quarterly prototoypes exploring machine learning capabilities. I designed and built the front-end for experiments exploring capabilities like summarization, sentiment analysis, and prediction. I also led design for the branding and print reports.
Designer & engineer
2014-2021
Featured
Active Learner
An interactive visualization of active learning data labeling and how it affects a model.
Turbofan Tycoon
A federated learning demonstration in the form of turbofan factory simulation game.
Textflix
Sentiment analysis of movie review visualized and compared across different models.
Worked on many early-stage prototypes and experiments, including Instapaper, Poncho, and Findings.
Designer & engineer
2012-2014
More
Work and inspiration in progress
Thoughts, quickly written
Grant Custer
Designer & Engineer
Index
2025