Mara Chen
Independent Developer
Based in Berlin, building software for people who care about how things work and moving between product, code, and company-building to turn early ideas into calm, useful tools
Right now I am building beUI, an open-source collection of animated React components, alongside beUI Pro, where the focus is finished composition, thoughtful motion, and production-ready source
The last six years have moved between founding small products, design engineering, and open source, usually joining when the problem is still loose enough for design and code to shape it together
Highlights
Projects
Writing
- Ask Sift to move
your work forward.Software with a point of viewWhy the strongest small products make a few deliberate choices and let those choices shape everything else - Premium motion
for modern React.The useful middleWorking between product, design, and engineering without turning the overlap into another job title - Motion that explainsA practical way to decide when interface animation is carrying meaning and when it is merely asking for attention
Work
- IndependentDeveloper and product partner2024—Now
- NorthstarFounding product engineer2022—2024
- Field OfficeDesign engineer2020—2022