Raf
📻️

Raf

Product Designer, Lead in Toronto, he / him

Be kind, work hard, spread joy.

11 days ago

About

Where I started: Italian roots. Engineering to Design. Apple Internship to consultancies. Startups and big companies.

Where I am: Toronto-based. Leading AI and product designs. Actively coding. Hosting product meetups.

Where I'm going: Shaping future of AI, AI Agents and interfaces. Making tech more human. Progress over movement.

Contact

Twitter

Work Experience

2024 — Now
Toronto

Work: Shaping how people interact with AI. Designing interfaces for advanced AI tools.

Role: Founding Designer, UX/UI Lead.

Impact: Making complex AI technology accessible, useful and democratic for everyone.

2023 — Now
Remote

Solved: Making accessibility reports easier to create.

Created: Software for joyful and easy reporting.

Impact: Helped CurbCutOS become a leader in accessibility tools.

2024 — 2024
Design Lead at DeFi Tuna, Leveller, etc.

Led the design of DeFi interfaces for several crypto products.

2023 — 2023
Lisbon

Role: Co-founded the company. Led design and product development.

Focus: Created AI solutions that put people first.

Clients: US.gov, Metafy, Lyfe, Web3Ops.

Next: Joined ai.pt to continue AI innovation.

2022 — 2023

Work: Created safe, user-friendly NFT marketplace for pro traders.

Role: Player-Lead. Designed actively alongside two team members.

Impact: Successful launch, high adoption. Backed by Eric Schmidt.

2021 — 2022

Work: Built a unified design system for Zalando B2B platforms.

Role: Led design efforts across multiple company areas.

Impact: 40% faster product development, 30% reduction in engineering time. Established comprehensive end to end documentation.

2021 — 2021

Work: Created the company's first design guidelines and app demo.

Role: Hands-on Product Designer, worked directly with the leadership team.

Impact: Set the look and feel for all TravelNest products. Built the foundation for future design work. Established design organization within the company..

2020 — 2021

Work: Redesigned brand identity and messaging.

Role: Led board team in brand and product design.

Impact: Delivered MVP in 3 months. Improved brand presence across channels. Helped raise £300K in funding in 3 months.

Side Projects

2022

How you work > What you worked on.

Inspired by Lily's original work, I refactored and made a template in Craft (available to the community).

2022
HIT THE NEW YEAR RUNNING at Nike

Creative Direction / Model: Raffaele Vitale
Photography: giannidegennaro.it

2021

Projects

2024
AI, Product at ai.pt

Collaborated with Kunal Gupta, CEO, directly in a hybrid role pivoting across product, design, and development roles, delivering AI-centric no-code solutions for publishwithspark.com and getjetson.ai. fun to work in person.

2023

Tela offers a prompt crafting experience, a testing suite for creating brand-specific test cases to evaluate prompts, a system for setting up evaluators to assess output.

2023
US Courts | Design System Toolbox at US Courts, Agileana

Supported Agileana on the redesign and redevelopment of the US Courts official organisation toolbox.

2023
Ethos Design Pass at Ethos

Helped ex-Voyager founders to release the design of their new app, Ethos

2023
Web 3.0 Development Agency | Branding and Website at web3ops.co
2022

Created a collection of updated collections for aspiring UX / UI designers for the Italian community, constantly updated, with a simple self-evolving community.

Education

2019 — 2020
2019 — 2020
San Giovanni, Naples
2017 — 2019
Naples

Graduated cum laude

2015 — 2017
Software Engineer (withdrew) at University of Salerno
Salerno

Certifications

2021
Design System for Designers from Accredible

Credential ID: 31778649

2019
UX Certifications from The Interaction Design Foundation

Credential ID: 56668

  • Mobile User Experience (UX) Design
  • The Practical Guide to Usability
  • UX Management: Strategy and Classes (Top 10%)
  • User Research: Best Practices (Top 10%)