Leonard Souza is a wicked interaction engineer, teacher and storyteller. Struggles to conceal the horn growing from the middle of his forehead.
Join the adventure
Every couple weeks I send out a newsletter sharing my adventures in coding, design, and writing, and how to combine them into remarkable experiences.
“Leonard is up to any challenge; he gets it done.”Garth Braithwaite, Senior Computer Science Lead at
Wait, who are you?
A creative who codes. A coder who creates. A writer. A lively problem-solver with logic bending analytical skills and clever design thinking. Leonard Souza is a life-long learner helplessly drawn to the sublime space where design, technology and narrative intersect. He’s written a fun tale, hosts a writing podcast, builds killer software, and teaches UX, design and coding. His words reach 30,000+ people a month.
Leonard has had the pleasure of working with a notable roster of Fortune 500 clients including Intel, Boeing, FedEx, Adobe, Bank of America and more.
When not bashing his head against some ridiculous design challenge, Leonard enjoys literature, hiking, body-hacking, and spending time with his wife and two children.
“Rare are those who code and design. Rarer still are those who excel at both. Leonard is that fabled unicorn. He brings tremendous value to any team, large or small.”Dan Abramov, Creator of Redux, React Engineer at
What I do
- I create apps used by millions of badass customers.
- I lead sustainable and high impact teams.
- I teach developers how to build remarkable software.
- I teach designers how to code.
- I help writers master the written word.
- I write killer fiction under the name J.S. Leonard.
- I’m bent on pushing the boundaries of interaction design.
Myers-Briggs Type
INTJ
Independent, original, analytical, and determined. Have an exceptional ability to turn theories into solid plans of action. Highly value knowledge, competence, and structure. Driven to derive meaning from their visions. Long-range thinkers. Have very high standards for their performance, and the performance of others. Natural leaders, but will follow if they trust existing leaders.
Top 5
Gallup Strengths
61.2
19
Miscellaneous Interests
Enterprise Coding Skills
Ad Agency Design Talent
I take projects from concepts to comps to code and anywhere between.
I designed and created this cubic bezier editor for fun and to demonstrate the power of react/redux. Mostly everything is rendered with SVG!
Created this audio player to demonstrate the power of react/redux. I created the comp in Sketch, built the layout in PostCSS/SVG/BEM, and used React/Redux for the architecture. I wrote a React wrapper around HTML5 audio which made for easy integration!
Comps for the future of egghead.io. Here is the technology list. Up top you'll notice the user's score.
Users create custom playlists for themselves and others with this wonderful component. I designed it, then built it with React, Alt (pre-redux), React Drag-and-Drop, React Router and fetch. It ties into an API I wrote in Ruby. #ux #design #code #A-Z
An information architecture challenge, the egghead header needed an upgrade to help surface content. #ux #ia #design
I designed the new search page and retooled the underlying search engine to run on ElasticSearch. Integrated with Rails. #ux #design #coding #A-Z
Egghead wanted an single-page course viewing experience that highlighted the series of videos, kept track of progress, while remaining beautiful and function. Interface built with React/Redux. #ux #coding #design #A-Z
The course theater also enabled users to take notes while progressing through a course. #ux #coding #design #A-Z
One of my presentations. I hacked the Kinect back when all the cool kids were doing it. Wrote a server in Java to translate Kinect bytecode from NI/Cinder into stream data that any app could consume. I was deep into Flash at the time and leveraged the new hardware vertex shaders in Molehill to replicated the old XBox interface. Check it out. #hightech #design #coding #creativetechnologist #A-Z
By far my favorite presenation. Here I dissect the fundamentals of experience design with cognitive science. Slides here. #design #interaction #creativetechnologist #A-Z
Designed and coded from scratch, I created Bleeding Ink as a podcast to help writers. It is a React/Alt application written on top of a Ruby API. Would have preferred Node.js, but I needed to sharpen my rails skills. Visit the site and stare at the logo, it has a custom WebGL shader I wrote that's neat. #ux #design #coding
I created Bleeding Ink's logo and thumbnail preview with Modo, RealFlow and Photoshop. #design #3D
My author website. It is a Keystone.js/Node.js app with React components. I created the low-poly render in Modo. #design #3D #dev #A-Z
Stellar is a desktop menubar application (crossplatform) that I created. It monitors author reviews on Amazon.com and Gooodreads. Built with NW.js/node/React. I now prefer Electron. #design #dev #A-Z
I spent over three years as an experience engineer at SpatialKey. It is an enterprise Flex application responsible for managing billion dollar plus portfolios. There I acted as designer, data-visualization creater, coder and UX specialist. This particular screenshot demonstrates the Flood App, which enabled underwriters to assess the risk of flood damage. #enterprise #dev #design #dataviz
I spent over three years as an experience engineer at SpatialKey. Among the many areas of the app that I worked on, this particular screenshot demonstrates the comparison portfolio, which allows underwriters to run different analyses on the same portfolio and assess risk from multiple angles. #enterprise #dev #design #dataviz
I created a storm "drawing tool" that enabled insurance providers to sketch potential storms and assess their risk. The tool was designed from the ground up to be dead simple to use. #enterprise #dev #design #dataviz
Boeing needed a way to manage its numerous (400+!) internal processes and systems. I built a beautiful prototype that helped them wrap their minds around the requirements. #prototype #design #code
Navy Federal wanted mobile deposit back when other banks didn't. They got what they wanted.
My SXSW presenation where Sean Coulter and I explore the intersection between architecture and interaction design. #design #phenomenology #interaction
Level 3 needed a portal to manage network outages. I was asked to create wireframes, user flows and the final design. The app turned out great! #ux #design
An app for Adobe that demonstrated Pixel Bender effects. I collaborated with the amazing Juan Sanchez and RJ Owen. #opengl #development
NOTE: All samples cannot be made public. If you are interested more in a particular client, please contact me.
“Leonard perseveres. The most daunting interaction design task is no match.”Dan Coming, Software Engineer at
Programming
I am a computer science polyglot with over twenty year's experience. I am well-versed in many object-oriented and functional languages (in order of most experience).
- Javascript
- Ruby/Rails
- iOS/Objective-C/Swift
- Java
- SQL/NoSQL/ElasticSearch/Redis
- OpenGL/Shaders
- C#
- C/C++
- Rust
- Elm
- Actionscript (Deprecated)
I am a design pattern junky, and while I love rolling my own code, I embrace brilliant framework creators and service providers. Here are a few libraries, patterns, and services I use most.
- React/React Native
- Redux/Thunk/Sagas
- Babel/ES6
- Node.js
- Express
- Socket.io
- Webpack
- AWS/Heroku
- Electron
- GraphQL/Relay
- Unity 3D
- Three.js
- Kinect
- Arduino/Raspberry Pi
- Qt/QML
- Cinder / Boost
- Processing / OpenFrameworks / OpenCV
- Object-Oriented Programming
- Clear Separation of Concerns (MVC)
- Functional Programing (lodash/RX)
- Reusability and Dont-Repeat-Yourself (DRY)
- TDD
- Agile/Kanban
- <insert web framework here, i.e. Angular, Backbone, Ember, etc.>
And tooling
- Sublime Text
- Atom.io
- Xcode
- VIM
- iTerm
- Git
Design/UX
I am a Fine Art graduate who studied painting and have relentlessly developed the ability to create visual experiences. I’ve worked hard to translate these skills to interaction design.
- HTML5/CSS3/SVG
- BEM/SASS/PostCSS
- Responsive, Mobile-First Design
- Wireframe/Prototypes
- User Testing
- QA
As a software engineer I tend to easily learn new tools and relish that process. Here are a few I use often:
- Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere)
- Sketch
- Luxology Modo
- Scrivener
- Ableton Live