How to simplify the workflow to build an app?
From unclear requirements to a shippable product loop: define the main job, remove dead steps, prototype the highest-risk flow, and turn every decision into a reusable product pattern.
Head of Product Design
I'm Lucas.
I turn complex products into clear, shipped experiences — AI is how I move faster.
10+ years
Product design experience
50M+ users
Reached across product work
$1.5T+ assets
Administered on FNZ wealth platforms I designed for
27 → 6 mo
Acquisition onboarding after design-system rollout at FNZ
Design that reads the shift — without dropping what already works.
We are in a transition phase. AI is reshaping product strategy, prototyping speed, and how teams move from concept to code. I treat that as a leadership problem: where it creates leverage, where it breaks trust, and what still needs human judgment.
Research, UX, and design systems do not get replaced — they get more important. AI can generate interfaces faster. It cannot tell you what users need, how a flow should feel on iOS, or how to keep a product coherent at scale.
How I design now
Four pillars. One transition.
AI changes how fast we can explore and ship — not what makes a product worth trusting.
Attention balance in a transition phase — not performance scores.
Selected work
Evidence, not decoration.
A few products where design shaped the market fit, the delivery model, and the quality bar.
Diby
2026 - Current
Head of Design & CPO — building a coaching OS with Founding Coaches.
As CPO I shape product direction in the field with Founding Coaches — features tested with coaches, iterated on feedback, and AI turning high-volume training data into plans they actually use.
Synthex
2024 - 2026
AI banking workflows — designed, systemized, and coded from day one.
Head of Product Design for a 0→1 AI platform: deep client contact shaped workflows, agent architecture, and UX — React prototypes built with AI tooling helped secure the first round.
FNZ
2021 - 2023
The design system that cut acquisition onboarding from 27 months to 6.
Post-acquisition rollout for enterprise wealth platforms — token-first libraries, gradual delivery across micro-frontends, and adoption won team by team rather than by mandate.
Desygner
2018 - 2021
Redesign and design system that scaled to 30M users.
Lead Product Designer for a global creative tool — full redesign, design system across web and native mobile, and white-label for enterprise clients.
My Mixtapez
2012 - 2017
72K to 25M users — intern to Head of Design.
Five years in a crowded market: community-led product, exclusive launches with Meek Mill and Lil Wayne, labels sold on locality data — #1 Music on App Store and Play Store.
Coming soon
Thinking library
The kind of problems I like to unpack.
Short editorial pieces for recruiters and product teams — in progress. A preview of the topics I am writing.
Fast design systems for designers who do not code and developers who do not design.
The goal is not a perfect library. It is shared language: tokens, components, states, examples, and rules that make quality easier for both sides.
Where good work happens in Lisbon.
A personal map of work-friendly places: Idea for focus, Starbucks for reliable fallback time, and Honest Greens for quick resets between deep sessions.
What makes a product solution last?
Long-term product quality comes from constraints, behavior, and systems working together, not from isolated screens looking good in a presentation.
Solo shipped apps
Apps I built and shipped myself.
A separate track from client and company work: small products, tools, and experiments that went live because I can move from idea to design to delivery.
How I work
A strong product needs a strong base.
The output is polished interface work, but the value starts earlier — product direction, user understanding, reusable systems — and ends later, in production code.
01
Put users inside the discussion
Research, testing, and behavioral signals shape the product direction before UI decisions harden into expensive mistakes.
02
Find the long-term product shape
I connect market fit, business constraints, and daily user tasks so the product can keep evolving without losing coherence.
03
Build systems that help teams ship
Components, patterns, tokens, and interaction rules make quality repeatable across web, mobile, and future product surfaces.
Mobile and systems
One product language across iOS, Android, and web.
Tokens, platform rules, component variations, and native hybrids — how I keep mobile products coherent without forcing every OS to look the same.
Explore mobile systems