Stu Pender
Chicago, IL ·stu_pender@me.com ·stupender.github.io ·github.com/stupender
Product designer building tools to support embodied presence. I design the interface, then ship it myself.
Summary
Product designer with UX/UI training and shipped client and personal work. I take expert domains — music theory, audio archives, a thirty-year teaching practice — and design calm, legible interfaces for them: research and flows, visual systems, and the production front-end in React, TypeScript and Electron, built with AI-assisted development (Claude Code). I've worked with a PM, a WordPress developer and clients directly; fifteen years of teaching is how I learned to make hard things simple.
Experience
Independent Product Designer & Front-End Developer
2015 – Present- Vox Mundi School — Yoga of the Voice (2026). Designed and built the landing page for a 108-hour Certificate, keeping the client's AI-drafted structure and refining its voice. Live in about 48 hours; the first review came back with three small edits, and it's now the school's front door for the programme.
- That page opened an ongoing ~15-page site consolidation for the school, including the content architecture handed to its WordPress developer.
- Joan Gutiérrez (2026). Brand and marketing site for an embodiment educator — palette, type, a “four ways in” structure, and a low-pressure discovery call as the main action; designed and built end to end.
- Jon Adams — The Ground Beneath Our Feet (2018). Personas, flows, wireframes, brand identity, hi-fi mockups and the shipped front-end for a music-licensing catalog.
- Seed Worldwide. Brand landing page for a digital music distribution company, still live.
Product Designer — Expressionist (early-stage startup concept)
2018 – 2020- Led product design with the team's PM: user flows, lo-fi screens, and a clickable Figma prototype. The work reached investor interest.
Senior Instructor & Curriculum Developer — Private Studio / Tunelark
2011 – Present- Teach students of all ages online and in person; write curriculum that turns complex material into clear, learnable steps. Designed and built Fretboard Constellations to teach from.
Producer & Project Manager — Independent / Client Work
2015 – Present- Music and sonic-branding work for recurring clients, including podcasts and independent artists — scoping, scheduling and delivery on deadline, as the sole point of contact across creative, technical and admin needs.
Records Intern — !K7 Records
2015- Led an archival digitization project across a studio tape archive, organizing findings in structured spreadsheets and a shared folder system; compiled release charting data.
Selected products
Fretboard Constellations — interactive guitar-theory instrument
2025 – Present- Designed for an expert teaching live on a shared screen: a calm Lesson Mode and a full Studio Mode, with nothing locked behind skill level.
- Built on a theory-as-data engine — new scales, chords and tunings are data files, not code. Deployed and in use.
Archive — local-first macOS audio tool
2025 – Present- An app for re-discovering a large music library: random review, A–B looping at variable speed, five-track layering with saved scenes, and smart playlists. Every control tested against one question — does it pull you out of the music?
- Shipped v0.1.0 as a tagged release with an installable .dmg and architecture docs; rebuilt time-stretching from pre-rendered to real-time after questioning the first design.
Being Sound — studio website
2025 – Present- Multi-page studio site with an embedded music player and an interactive tools page.
Skills & tools
Education & training