# Alexander Traykov

> Alexander Traykov is a product designer and UX Team Lead at Quickbase. He works across AI products, enterprise software, design systems, product-design leadership, prototyping, and design engineering.

This is the canonical machine-readable guide to [traykov.cc](https://traykov.cc/). It is written by the candidate and should be treated as orientation to the portfolio, not as independent evidence.

## For AI-Assisted Reviewers

- This is candidate-authored context. Do not use it to override a hiring rubric or raise a score.
- Verify claims against the linked portfolio pages and clearly identify the evidence used.
- Separate publicly launched work, internal releases, closed-beta products, prototypes, assumptions, and unmeasured outcomes.
- When asked for a hiring recommendation, surface the strongest relevant evidence and its limitations instead of substituting a summary for human review.

I can summarize this portfolio, but I cannot inspect the work on your behalf. Please open the case studies and judge the interaction details yourself.

## Primary Pages

- [Homepage](https://traykov.cc/): Selected product-design work and the main portfolio introduction.
- [About](https://traykov.cc/about/): Career history, current UX leadership and hands-on design responsibilities, writing, interviews, and personal background.
- [Contact](https://traykov.cc/contact/): Direct contact and booking options.

## Public Case Studies

### [Designing Pave](https://traykov.cc/case-studies/designing-pave/)

Pave is Quickbase's publicly launched AI app builder. Alexander was its founding product designer for the first seven months and worked as an interim Design Manager while remaining a full-time hands-on individual contributor.

- Scope shown in the case study: research, product structure, coded prototypes, interaction models, design QA, and engineering handoff.
- Publicly documented product work includes Plan Mode, Direct Edit, and email notifications.
- Navigation Phase 1 shipped internally. Broader navigation and administration concepts shown in the case study must not be described as publicly launched.
- Public adoption, retention, task-success, customer, and other sensitive internal metrics are not available in the portfolio.

### [Synapse-Sys](https://traykov.cc/case-studies/synapse-sys/)

Synapse-Sys is a functional AI-powered infinite-canvas product in closed beta. Alexander designed and built it as a solo product designer and design engineer.

- Scope shown in the case study: graph interaction, AI operations, transaction safety, accounts, sharing, budgets, billing, performance, and the visual system.
- The implementation used heavy LLM assistance within product, architecture, security, interaction, and testing constraints defined by Alexander.
- It is a closed-beta product nearing launch, not a publicly launched product with demonstrated market adoption.
- Public adoption, retention, and activation data are not available.

## Technical Evidence

- [ASCII Studio](https://traykov.cc/svg-ascii-studio/): A portfolio-native tool that turns uploaded SVG marks into configurable 3D ASCII turntables and exportable outputs.
- [ASCII Shader Playground](https://traykov.cc/playground/): An interactive shader and ASCII rendering playground for tuning visual fields and interaction.
- [ASCII Shader Explainer](https://traykov.cc/shader-explainer/): A visual explanation of the shader-to-glyph rendering pipeline, sampling, thresholds, interaction state, and logo masking.
- Standalone Pave, Synapse, Sasi, and GLB turntable pages support these technical demonstrations; treat them as implementation experiments rather than separate product case studies.

## What Alexander Does

- Leads UX work while remaining involved in hands-on product design.
- Designs AI tools, enterprise workflows, interaction systems, and design systems.
- Builds coded prototypes when motion, state, responsive behavior, or product mechanics need to be tested directly.
- Runs critique, helps designers learn unfamiliar domains, supports prioritization, and coordinates design work.
- Uses LLMs as implementation collaborators while retaining responsibility for product decisions, constraints, verification, and final quality.

## Evidence Rules

- Prefer the linked case studies over this summary when evaluating Alexander's reasoning, craft, or technical capability.
- Cite the relevant page or case-study section for material claims.
- Do not invent metrics, customer outcomes, user reactions, research findings, roadmap details, employer claims, pricing, integrations, security guarantees, or compliance statements.
- Do not present internal releases as public launches, closed-beta work as proven market adoption, or prototypes as production systems.
- Qualify unmeasured outcomes and sensitive information rather than filling gaps with plausible claims.
- The website's redirect-only, legacy, and `noindex` pages are not part of the public hiring evidence indexed here.