Howdy, I'm Richard Tran
Creative process is designing with intention.
PRODUCT DESIGNER
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
MATCHA ENTHUSIAST
UX RESEARCHER
FOODIE
BRAND CREATOR
HUSKY OWNER
PROBLEM SOLVER
GAME CHANGER
PROFESSOR
About Me
I’ve been a creative kid for as long as I can remember. But as I grew up, I realized my real passion wasn't just making things look good—it was using my creative skills to actually help people. Because of that, my approach always keeps one thing at the center: the user.
That love for helping others is also what led me to become a professor. Mentorship has been an eye-opening experience for me; it’s given me a completely different avenue to guide people and share what I know, which feeds right back into how I collaborate with my design teams.
At my core, I think I just love facing complex problems and finding creative solutions. My career has been defined by a natural instinct to adapt to those challenges. I started in graphic design and creative direction, but I pivoted to Product Design because I wanted to push my design thinking further. I wanted to learn how to research, how to design with the user, and how to build solutions that evolve. In product, you realize that your work is only a temporary solution; as people change, the design needs to grow with them.
That same curiosity is what led me into the world of AI. I didn't want to fall behind, so I wanted to see how far I could push its capabilities. Today, I use AI to optimize my creative process—shifting away from static images to present near-live versions of my work with ease. Most importantly, it frees me up to do what matters most: taking a deeper dive into user research.
Currently, I’m bringing this adaptive, people-first mindset to my role as an Associate Product Designer at Red Ventures, where I’m always looking for the next complex puzzle to solve.
Career
Associate Product Designer
@ Red Ventures
June 2024 – Present
End-to-End Redesign: Orchestrated the Mortgage Rates overhaul within a 6-week timeline, delivering a “rate-first” interface that drove +8% CVR, +5% RPS, and 54% filter engagement while preserving SEO equity.
Research at Scale: Executed a 100+ session research cycle to synthesize qualitative and quantitative insights, directly validating design decisions against high-intent user behaviors.
Stakeholder Leadership: Facilitated hypothesis-led prototyping to align Product and Engineering leadership, articulating trade-offs to define a unified, scalable product vision.
AI Operations: Pioneered internal evaluation frameworks for emerging AI tools, establishing workflow standards that reduced creative overhead for team-wide presentations.
Creative Director (Volunteer)
@ TO:ME Cafe
March 2025 – Present
Brand Development: Built and led the visual identity, storytelling framework, and brand voice for a specialty café across digital and event experiences.
Audience Growth & Engagement: Produced posts, stories, and reels that generated over 3M+ views, converting reach into a 32.1% increase in followers and a near 9x lift in monthly engagement.
Marketing & Print Director (Volunteer)
@ Vietnamese Association of Charlotte
May 2025 – June 2026
Sole Creative Direction: Orchestrated the full visual lifecycle for events, aligning digital and print touchpoints to strengthen brand equity and community recognition.
Audience Growth: Quadrupled social engagement (4x) by elevating campaign fidelity, directly scaling interactions from ~50 to 200+ per post.
Design Operations: Engineered a sustainable Design System to replace redundant effort, reducing production overhead while ensuring cross-channel consistency.
Content Strategy: Produced culturally resonant on-site multimedia and video assets to maximize sponsor ROI and expand audience reach.
Adjunct Professor: Fall UX/UI 2024
@ University of North Carolina at Charlotte
September 2024 – December 2024
Curriculum Strategy: Developed and delivered "2024 Fall Semester UX/UI course," bridging the gap between academic theory and real-world product lifecycles by prioritizing iterative problem-solving over purely aesthetic execution.
Career Impact: Mentored undergraduates through end-to-end portfolio creation, directly guiding multiple students into successful UX/UI roles post-graduation.
Design Leadership: Cultivated a studio culture of rigorous critique and defense of design rationale, instilling the soft skills needed for cross-functional team collaboration.
Graphic Designer
@ Shoe Carnival
June 2023 – June 2024
Omnichannel Production: Delivered high-volume creative assets for seasonal retail campaigns, partnering with Merchandising to ensure brand cohesion across digital and print channels.
Creative Agility: Pitched and executed new visual directions that evolved customer engagement strategies while maintaining strict adherence to corporate brand guidelines.