Emiliano Herrera
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Montevideo, Montevideo Department, Uruguay
Toptal member since January 21, 2016
Emiliano is a senior product designer specializing in AI-powered products and complex software platforms. Over the last 10 years, he has helped startups and enterprise teams transform ambitious ideas into intuitive, scalable products. His work combines product strategy, systems thinking, UX design, and deep technical fluency, enabling him to bridge design and engineering and deliver experiences that balance user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility.
Portfolio
BCI Web Portal
TeamGo
Work Experience
Product Designer
LaunchDarkly
- Contributed to the evolution of LaunchDarkly’s design system by designing reusable components, refining interaction patterns, and collaborating closely with designers and engineers to improve consistency across multiple product teams.
- Designed UX solutions for enterprise feature management workflows, translating complex technical requirements into intuitive interfaces that balanced user needs, business goals, and engineering constraints.
- Partnered with product managers, engineers, and researchers throughout discovery and delivery, validating concepts, iterating on designs, and ensuring high-quality implementation across multiple initiatives.
- Leveraged AI-assisted design and development tools—including Claude, Cursor, Lovable, and v0—to accelerate research, prototyping, documentation, and design exploration while maintaining high product quality.
- Participated in cross-functional design critiques and collaborative design reviews, helping shape product decisions, improve usability, and maintain consistency across a mature, large-scale design organization.
UX/UI Designer
XcelLabs LLC
- Led the discovery and evaluation of an AI-powered coaching platform, analyzing user journeys, workflows, and product positioning to uncover opportunities for growth and differentiation.
- Produced a detailed competitive analysis of coaching, learning, and performance management products, translating industry best practices into actionable product and UX recommendations.
- Defined strategic UX initiatives to improve onboarding, engagement, coaching effectiveness, and performance visibility, establishing a foundation for future product development and user adoption.
- Created product concepts and wireframes exploring alternative approaches to performance visualization, AI-generated feedback, progress tracking, and coaching workflows.
- Developed visual design and branding recommendations to strengthen product identity, improve consistency, and better communicate Navi’s value proposition.
AI Design Engineer
ClipTraining
- Led the design and implementation of an AI-powered semantic video search platform, transforming large video libraries into searchable knowledge bases through natural language queries.
- Designed the end-to-end user experience for semantic search, enabling users to retrieve precise video moments with timestamp-level accuracy instead of manually navigating long recordings.
- Defined the information architecture and search workflows for an AI pipeline combining video transcription, vector embeddings, and semantic retrieval to improve discoverability and usability.
- Collaborated on the product architecture and AI workflow, helping translate complex machine learning capabilities into intuitive user interactions and actionable search results.
- Built interactive prototypes and production-ready interfaces, working closely with engineering to validate technical feasibility and iterate rapidly on new AI-powered features.
Product Designer
Teragonia Inc.
- Led the end-to-end UX and UI design of a data operations platform, delivering over 10 user-facing modules including pipelines, data ingestion, experiments, and performance dashboards.
- Designed and prototyped dynamic, AI-powered interfaces—such as a smart assistant for data querying and an automated pipeline monitoring dashboard—enhancing user autonomy and decision-making.
- Developed wireframes and high-fidelity UI components for 8+ core pages, including Connections, Ingestion Tabs (Airflow, Doc2Data, Fivetran), and chatbot integrations, ensuring visual consistency and usability across the platform.
- Translated stakeholder feedback into actionable UX improvements, leading to the restructuring of navigation and clearer separation between platform-wide resources (e.g., Connections) and tool-specific workflows (e.g., Airflow Pipelines).
Co-founder & Principal Designer/Developer
Spectra
- Led product design and front-end development for an AI-powered news aggregator that reimagines how users consume, explore, and interact with current events.
- Shaped the end-to-end experience—from early prototypes to polished interfaces—integrating generative AI and real-time data into a clean, personalized reading experience.
- Contributed to Spectra, which was awarded a grant for business validation and served as a testing ground for developing intelligent systems that balance UX clarity with technical complexity.
Co-founder & Principal Designer
Overlap
- Led product design and front-end development for AI-powered applications, helping startups and enterprise clients bring complex ideas to life with clear, human-centered interfaces.
- Worked closely with founders, engineers, and stakeholders to rapidly prototype, validate, and launch web-based products—often in the AI, learning, and productivity spaces.
- Contributed deep expertise in product strategy, UX, and modern front-end technologies to each engagement, from early discovery to polished UI.
Founding Product Designer
Apty
- Designed the main product for Apty to enable users with on-screen guidance and enforce business process compliance, reaching over 3 million monthly users.
- Built a brand identity guide, including colors and typography, as well as the main design system to be used across all platforms.
- Implemented most of the front end and established the guidelines for what would become the official design system for user interface development.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design
EUCD Industrial Design School - Montevideo, Uruguay
Undergraduate Degree in Industrial Design
EUCD Industrial Design School - Montevideo, Uruguay
Skills
Tools
Sketch, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, InVision, Figma Prototyping, Adobe CC, Canva, GitHub, CAD, Figma Component Library, Adobe InDesign, Adobe After Effects, Hotjar, Google Analytics
Languages
JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, CSS, HTML, JavaScript 6, Python
Platforms
Adobe Suite, WordPress, iOS, Figma, Mobile, Web, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Android, Webflow, SharePoint, OS X
Industry Expertise
Consumer Products
Other
Industrial Design, Product Design, Bootstrap UI, Bootstrap Themes, Branding, Brand Identity, Web Design, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), Icon Design, Iconography, UI Design, React, UX Design, User Experience Design, Human Interface Design, User Interviews, A/B Testing, Web Accessibility, Prototyping, Wireframing, Software, UX Research, Design Thinking, User Experience Strategy, Design Systems, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Mobile App Design, Strategy, User Research, Brand Guidelines, Brand Design, Logo Design, Visual Design, App Design, Consulting, MVP Design, Mockups, Web App Design, Web UI, Web UX, Dashboards, UX Wireframes, Software as a Service (SaaS), User Journeys, Rapid Prototyping, Journey Mapping, User Flows, B2B, UI Prototyping, Mobile Prototypes, Mobile Design, Mobile UI, Mobile UI Design, High-fidelity Prototypes, High-fidelity Mockups, Mobile App UI, Interaction Design (IxD), UI Animation, Dashboard Design, System Design, Information Architecture (IA), SaaS, Tailwind CSS, Buyer Personas, Customer Journey, Mobile UX, UX Analysis, User Journey Maps, Complex Application User Interfaces (UI), Usability, Software Design, Data Visualization, SaaS Design, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Web Application Design, Marketplace Design, Web App UX, Collateral Design, Graphic Design, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Persona Design, UX Testing, Mobile Applications, Web App UI, Redesign, Web Applications, Shadcn, Color Theory, Interactive Prototypes, Low-fidelity Prototypes, User Validation, Responsive Web Apps, AI Design, Mobile Apps, Social Networks, Cursor AI, UI Development, Brand Logos, Rebranding, Web UI Design, AI-enabled Applications, AI-powered Product Design, Lovable, Design, Service Design, Systems Thinking, Systems, UX Prototyping, Physical Design, Product Prototyping, UI Audits, UX Audits, Competitive Analysis, Design Leadership, Enterprise SaaS, Market Research, Market Research & Analysis, Research, Business to Business (B2B), Usability Testing, Product Strategy, Accessibility, Agentic AI, Agile, Conversational AI, Conversational Design, WCAG 2, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Front-end Design, Responsive UI, Reusable Components, UI Components, iOS UI Design, User Feedback, Packaging, Label Design, Presentation Design, Pitch Decks, User Testing, Landing Pages, Motion Design, eCommerce, Artificial Intelligence (AI), CRM Design, Enterprise Design, Calendar Design, B2C, Blog Design, Editorial Design, Digital Editorials, Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS), Claude Code, Storybook, AI Agents, AI Chatbots, Chatbot Conversation Design, Embedded Systems, Fintech, Android UI Design, Android Design Guidelines, Visual Identity, Illustration, Next.js, Tailwind UI
Experience
- Product Design - 8 years
- Design Thinking - 6 years
- Systems Thinking - 6 years
- Figma - 6 years
- User Interface (UI) - 5 years
- User Experience (UX) - 5 years
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 4 years
- AI-powered Product Design - 4 years
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