Two names live at the heart of this store: IEP Compass and Wired Differently. Founder Tristan Patin started building both after his non-verbal autistic son, Artnez, was born, and the family found itself learning an entirely new language overnight: IEP, FAPE, IDEA, present levels, related services, an alphabet soup no parent is ever really prepared for.
IEP Compass came first. Tristan is a self-taught developer, not a lawyer or an educator, just a dad who got tired of feeling outnumbered in meetings he didn't fully understand. He built a free bilingual app to help parents read their child's IEP in plain English and Spanish, track progress between meetings, and walk into the next one feeling like they belong at the table. That app is live today, built in evenings and weekends around a day job and a family that needed him too.
Wired Differently came next, led by Tristan's wife and co-founder Zuli. Where IEP Compass is the practical toolkit, Wired Differently is the celebration: SPARK, LUNA, and TRU, three mascots built to give neurodivergent kids characters who look like them, act like them, and are never the punchline. Every design starts from the idea that different wiring is not something to fix quietly in the corner. It is something worth putting on a shirt.
That is also why you will never see a puzzle piece on anything we make. The puzzle piece has a complicated history in the autism community tied to messaging this family does not stand behind. Instead we use a gold and rainbow infinity symbol: infinite ways to be a whole, complete person, exactly as wired.
Everything here is bilingual by design, not as an afterthought. Spanish-speaking families searching for IEP help late at night deserve the same clear answers English-speaking families get, and that commitment runs through the app, this store, and everything we build next.
This store exists to keep both projects alive and growing. Every order helps fund continued development of the free app, new designs, and outreach to more families who are just starting the same overwhelming first year Tristan and Zuli once faced. If you are here because you or someone you love is wired a little differently: welcome. You are exactly who we built this for.