I'm a Frontend Engineer currently working at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on resource management tools. My professional background includes experience in fintech, e-commerce, and cloud services. I focus on building digital products that consider both technical implementation and user experience.

Outside of my primary role, I develop side projects. These serve as a way to explore specific technical ideas, test assumptions about user behavior, and deepen my understanding of how people interact with digital tools. Some of these projects have reached a modest scale.

My portfolio site provides further detail on my work: https://kknaga.com

These writings reflect on observations from my work and projects.

• The Perfect Machine Nobody Needs - A look into why talented teams sometimes build complex systems that don't solve real problems, and the importance of staying focused on the "why."
• The Effect of Perspective on Product Assessment - An examination of assessing products from an external perspective compared to an internal one.
• Applying Cognitive Models to Interface Design - Explores how understanding user behavior and decision-making processes informed interface improvements for a tool.
• Observations on Monetizing Small Web Applications - Discusses experiences with different monetization approaches and balancing them with user experience needs.

(More articles are available on my portfolio site: https://kknaga.com)

These are independently developed projects, some of which remain actively maintained.

• LOLSkin.info - A web directory listing League of Legends skins, containing over 32,000 pages across 18 languages. It evolved from a simple browser based on observed user behavior and currently receives approximately 89,000 monthly visitors.
• KKMet - A personal development site that hosts a collection of tools, including champion randomizers and a ping visualizer. It receives around 58,000 monthly visitors.
• Hexfuser - A multilingual League of Legends tool built to compare different interface designs. It was developed to understand user preferences regarding UI complexity and currently has about 13,000 monthly users.

These projects were typically built to investigate a specific concept, technology, or user niche.

• Split Keyboard Database (SKBDb) - A database project focused on exploring different methods for organizing information about niche hardware.
• The Car Picker - A random selection tool for cars, developed to understand a different user audience and the automotive advertising market.
• The City Picker - A tool for random city selection, used to experiment with data categorization and geographical filtering interfaces.
• WhatTheCost - A calculator demonstrating product value based on usage frequency and duration. Its reception provided insights into communicating utility effectively.
• Probability Simulator - A visualization tool designed to illustrate probability concepts over varying numbers of trials.

Selected past projects that provided specific learning experiences.

• League of Legends City Rankings - A player registry experiment that highlighted challenges related to API limitations and scaling during a peak of 140k daily visitors.
• Ping Visualizer - A tool visualizing network latency in real-time. Its reception demonstrated the value of simple, effective visualizations for technical concepts within gaming communities.
• Skin Randomizer - An early League of Legends tool that provided foundational lessons in understanding search traffic, user intent, and project evolution.

My work primarily involves the following technologies and concepts:

• Frontend: React, Next.js, TypeScript, SCSS/CSS Modules, JavaScript
• Backend/Cloud: Node.js, AWS (various services), Firebase
• Concepts: UI/UX Design Principles, Human-Computer Interaction, Data Visualization, Web Performance, Scalability Considerations

• Portfolio: https://kknaga.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kkmet
• Email: [email protected]