Portfolio · 2026

Applying for an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction, 2027

Final-year Digital Game Design student moving into Human-Computer Interaction. I build desktop tools, voice interfaces, enterprise software and games, starting from the person using them: attention, cognitive load, feedback and pacing. Now I am learning the other half: showing with evidence that a design decision worked, not only arguing that it should.

Name
Samet Gürtuna
Role
Interaction Designer & Developer
Based in
Istanbul, Türkiye
Selected workDownload CVgurtunadev@gmail.com
  • BA Digital Game Design · GPA 3.10 / 4.00
  • Interaction design & prototyping
  • Moving into HCI research

Selected work

Four projects in depth, one question: what is this asking of the person using it?

An enterprise product in production, two desktop tools and a voice interface. Each one lists the design decisions, not only the technology, and says plainly how much evidence sits behind them: most of it is design rationale and my own testing, and one controlled study is planned.

  1. 01MDT Integration MonitorEnterprise product · UX & UI, soloInformal user feedback
  2. 02MandarinInteraction design · Desktop utilityUser study planned
  3. 03DockHubDesktop environment · System UISelf-tested (n = 1)
  4. 04SAM (Smart Assistant Module)Voice interface · Personal researchSelf-tested (n = 1)
01Enterprise product · UX & UI, solo

MDT Integration Monitor

Role
Backend developer, then sole UX and UI designer
Team
Two developers on the backend, interface designed alone
Context
MDT Yazılım · 2023 to 2024
Status
In production
Evidence
Informal user feedback

Feedback from LOGO ERP customers I had supported; no controlled test

Full case study
Concept B, the status-first direction the shipped interface grew out of

A platform that automates and monitors data transfer between enterprise systems and microservices. I built the backend with a colleague. Once it was finished I took the whole interface on myself: I designed the user experience from a blank page and implemented the UI end to end, with no designer on the project and no template to start from.

Design decisions

  1. Turned an operator's real question, did last night's transfer succeed, into the first thing the screen answers, instead of burying it in logs
  2. Designed a status language (running, degraded, failed, recovered) meant to stay readable at a glance across hundreds of jobs
  3. Structured error views around what the operator can do next rather than around the shape of the stack trace
  4. Iterated against feedback from real LOGO ERP customers whose SQL Server problems I had solved in support
  • .NET
  • ASP.NET Core
  • EF Core
  • SQL Server
  • Tailwind CSS
02Interaction design · Desktop utility

Mandarin

Radial menu inside an OS-wide drag

Role
Solo designer & developer
Team
Solo
Context
Independent · 2026
Status
Released & open source
Evidence
User study planned

Built on published menu research; my own timing study with 8 to 12 people is planned for autumn 2026

Full case studyLive siteGitHub

A Windows file converter with no window. Hold Shift while dragging any file and a radial menu of target formats opens under the cursor; release over a format and the file is converted in place, offline. It is built on a well-studied idea: in a pie menu, every option is the same distance from the pointer.

Design decisions

  1. Used a radial menu so every format sits at the same distance from the cursor; pie menus have been measured faster than linear ones for exactly this reason (Callahan et al., 1988)
  2. Opened the menu where the file already is, on Shift during a drag, instead of asking people to carry the file to a window or a drop target
  3. Kept advanced tools (crop, compress, metadata) on a second modifier, Shift + Alt, so the everyday wheel stays short and its directions stay learnable
  4. Made progress visible and cancellable in a small HUD with a direct link to the converted file
  5. Kept everything offline with no telemetry, so converting a private document never means uploading it
  • C#
  • .NET 8
  • WPF
  • Win32 API
03Desktop environment · System UI

DockHub

Windows 11 system dock & ambient widgets

Role
Lead designer & developer
Team
Solo
Context
Independent · 2026
Status
Released & open source
Evidence
Self-tested (n = 1)

Daily use by me on my own setups; not yet tested with other people

Full case studyLive demo siteGitHub

A dock for Windows 10 and 11 that puts app launching, running windows, system state and small widgets on one surface you can read at a glance. I built it because checking the time, a timer, the battery or what was playing meant opening a different flyout each time, and the dock replacements I tried needed administrator rights or broke when Explorer updated.

Design decisions

  1. Put live state (timers, clock, weather, system load) directly in the dock instead of behind flyouts, so the common check is a glance rather than a click
  2. Stayed in user space: DockHub never replaces explorer.exe, and the native taskbar comes back on exit or crash, so the worst case is an ordinary desktop
  3. Supported all four screen edges, with a compact vertical mode for wide monitors, where height is scarcer than width
  4. Followed Windows' own Fluent conventions (acrylic material, drag to reorder) so the dock reads as part of the system rather than a skin on top of it
  5. Shipped defaults that work without configuration, and updated every widget on one shared timer so they never flicker out of step
  • C#
  • .NET 8
  • WPF
  • Win32 API
04Voice interface · Personal research

SAM (Smart Assistant Module)

On-device, multilingual voice interface

Role
Designer & developer
Team
Solo
Context
Independent · Ongoing
Status
R&D grant approved · deferred for MSc
Evidence
Self-tested (n = 1)

Tuned and tested against my own speech in three languages

Full case studyGitHub

A voice assistant that runs entirely on my own machine: a wake word model trained on 'Hey Sam', speech recognition fine-tuned on how I actually talk, and a local language model. The design problem I care about most is language. I switch between Turkish, English and Italian, and SAM follows the switch instead of making me pick a language in settings. In September 2026 it was approved for a 12-month R&D grant and incubation at Haliç AI TEKMER; I deferred it to study full time.

Design decisions

  1. Trained a custom OpenWakeWord model on 'Hey Sam' itself rather than a generic wake phrase, since it is the first interaction anyone has with the system
  2. Fine-tuned the speech recognition against my own real usage, because out of the box it missed too much of what I actually said
  3. Replaced a manual language toggle with automatic language detection, so a reply arrives in whichever language, Turkish, English or Italian, was just spoken
  4. Kept the entire pipeline on device, so talking to it carries no privacy cost
  • Python
  • OpenWakeWord
  • Local LLM
  • Speech recognition

Live demo

Voice or text · real code, in your browser

idle

sam Hey there! Ready when you are. Try one of the suggestions below, or type your own.

Voice input needs Chrome or Edge — this browser only supports typing.

The instant-response dictionary, the command router and the normalize() function above are ported line for line from the real SAM repository. The mic uses your browser's own speech recognition, not SAM's local faster-whisper — and on purpose, no reply in here ever touches your actual desktop: real SAM opens apps on Samet's machine because it runs natively there, not because a webpage asked it to.

Also shipped

Games and a team project where the design questions were real but the evidence is thinner. Each has a short write-up.

  1. Desktop companion · Released · 2025

    Muse Corner

    A calm study companion that lives in the corner of the desktop, designed around one rule: reward a glance, never demand one.

    Solo developer and designer · Solo

    Write-upSteam page

  2. Co-op roguelike · Demo out, in development · 2023 to now

    Together Against Mork

    A co-op roguelike about holding a line together. I built movement, weapons, respawn, character unlocks and quests for a five-person team.

    Gameplay developer and systems designer · Five person team

    Write-upSteam page

  3. Multiplayer action · Internship · July to August 2026

    Project Pulse

    A peer-to-peer multiplayer action game in Unity 6. I led a six-person intern team and grew into the design conversation, because the interaction questions were the ones holding the build back.

    Lead developer, then informal game designer · Six person intern team

More on GitHub Back to project index

Research directions

Three questions my projects raised and could not answer

Each of these started as a decision I made by instinct in my own work. Graduate study in HCI is where I want to learn to test them properly: experimental design, qualitative and quantitative methods, and the cognitive science underneath attention and perception.

  1. Can a voice interface follow a bilingual speaker mid-sentence?

    People who speak two languages switch between them constantly. Most voice assistants make them choose one in settings. What does it cost a bilingual user, in errors, repairs and trust, when the system cannot follow the switch?

    Raised by SAM (Smart Assistant Module)

  2. How much can a peripheral display say before it interrupts?

    Ambient widgets and desktop companions promise awareness without interruption. Where is the point at which a glanceable surface starts pulling attention away from the task it is meant to support?

    Raised by DockHub, Muse Corner

  3. Do gesture menus stay fast for occasional users?

    Radial and marking menus are well established as fast for experts. Mandarin puts one inside an operating-system-wide drag that people use a few times a week. Does the advantage hold at that frequency, and how quickly does a direction become habit?

    Raised by Mandarin

What I bring

Three years of shipping interactive software, an enterprise product in production, and the habit of building a working prototype instead of describing one.

What I am looking for

Training in experimental design, statistics and qualitative methods, and the cognitive science behind attention, perception and learning.

Where it goes

I plan to return to Türkiye and keep building interactive products, with academic research as an open path if the opportunity is there.

How I work

Four things I believe about designing interactive systems

I came to design through building. These are the principles that decide what I do when something works technically but still feels wrong.

  1. The person's head is the real interface

    Game Psychology and Game Design courses changed what I optimise for. Before a feature exists in code, I ask what the person is attending to, what they expect next, and what the system is quietly teaching them. The screen is only where that conversation happens.

  2. Cognitive load is a budget

    Every element on screen spends part of someone's attention. I design interfaces that hide complexity until it is needed, so people spend their effort on the decision that matters instead of on decoding the layout.

  3. Feedback is the smallest unit of design

    Response latency, animation timing and the exact moment a value updates decide whether an interaction feels alive or broken. Feel is measurable, which means it can be tested instead of argued about.

  4. Build it, then find out

    I write production code in C#, .NET and Unity, so my prototypes are the real thing rather than a picture of it. That lets me put a working system in front of people and measure what they do, instead of asking them to imagine it.

About

A developer who kept choosing the human side of the screen

Focus
Interaction design & HCI
Method
Prototype in real code, then evaluate
Strength
Reading a system from the user's side
Next
MSc in Human-Computer Interaction

I am a final-year Digital Game Design student in Istanbul and I have been shipping software since I was eighteen: released games on Steam, an enterprise platform in production, desktop tools, and a voice assistant that runs entirely on my own machine.

I do write code, and I write it well. But the Game Psychology and Game Design courses in my programme showed me which half of the work I actually care about: what happens in the mind of the person using the system. How they read a screen, where their attention goes, when a system feels fair, and why a two hundred millisecond delay can quietly ruin something that is technically correct.

The clearest example is MDT Integration Monitor. I finished my part of the backend, and instead of stopping there I designed the product's entire user experience and built the interface from zero, alone, for people whose working day depended on reading it correctly at seven in the morning. Nobody assigned that to me. It was the part I wanted.

What I do not have yet is the method to show whether a design decision actually worked, rather than argue that it should. Every case study on this page says honestly how much evidence sits behind it, and most of the answers are 'not enough'. Closing that gap is what I want graduate study in HCI for.

Experience & education

Where the work happened

  1. Education

    2023 to 2027 (expected)

    BA in Digital Game Design

    Haliç University · Istanbul, Türkiye

    Faculty of Fine Arts. Coursework in game psychology and game design, the MDA framework, level design and pacing, cognitive load and HCI, alongside gameplay programming in Unity (C#) and Unreal Engine (C++). GPA 3.10 / 4.00, graduating May 2027.

    • Game psychology
    • Game design
    • HCI & UX
    • Unity
    • Unreal

  2. Grant

    September 2026

    R&D grant and incubation approval for SAM

    Haliç AI TEKMER & KOSGEB · Istanbul, Türkiye

    SAM, my on-device voice assistant, was approved for a 12-month R&D grant and incubation at Haliç AI TEKMER under Türkiye's R&D support law (No. 5746), after review by an evaluation board of KOSGEB representatives and faculty. I deferred incorporation to study full time.

    • R&D grant
    • Voice interfaces

  3. Experience

    July to August 2026

    Game Developer Intern, Team Lead

    Hi-Five Games · Istanbul, Türkiye

    Led a six person intern team on Project Pulse. Owned networking and lobby systems, and took on informal game design and project coordination for the team.

    • Unity 6
    • Mirror
    • Leadership
    • Game design

  4. Experience

    2023 to now

    Indie Game Developer & Designer

    Aquila Games · Independent studio

    Three years in a small independent group. Shipped Muse Corner as a solo developer, built the core systems of Together Against Mork, and currently work as the only developer on Project Bussin.

    • Unity
    • C#
    • Systems design
    • Player experience

  5. Experience

    May 2023 to June 2024

    Software Developer

    MDT Yazılım · Istanbul, Türkiye

    Started in software support, resolving SQL Server issues for LOGO ERP customers, then moved into building MDT Integration Monitor. After the backend was complete I designed and implemented the product's entire user experience and interface on my own.

    • .NET
    • SQL Server
    • UX design
    • UI implementation

Capabilities

Design first, then the tools to build and test it

Interaction & experience

  • Interaction design
  • UX design
  • UI design
  • Cognitive load & attention
  • Player psychology
  • Game feel and pacing

Research & evaluation

  • Design rationale from HCI literature
  • Concept comparison
  • Informal usability feedback
  • Iterative prototyping

Prototyping & engines

  • Unity
  • Unreal Engine
  • C#
  • C++
  • Rapid prototyping
  • Game jams

Build & teamwork

  • .NET / ASP.NET Core
  • WPF & Win32
  • SQL Server
  • Python
  • React
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Git & GitHub
  • Team leadership

Currently learning

  • Controlled experiments
  • Statistics in R
  • SUS & NASA-TLX
  • Think-aloud protocols

Listed separately on purpose: these are methods I am studying and about to use for the first time, not ones I can already claim.

Languages

  • Turkish Native
  • English Professional working proficiency
  • Italian A2, learning

Contact

Happy to talk about HCI, a project, or anything on this page

gurtunadev@gmail.com
Download CV (PDF)