Muwuso Mkochi, Designer in Halifax, NS, Canada
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Muwuso Mkochi

Bio

Muwuso has spent over a decade translating complexity into clarity—from Fortune 500 brand campaigns to AI-native product experiences at high-growth startups. His work starts in ambiguity: products without design foundations, technical capabilities without clear interfaces, and teams stuck between "We need design" and "How do we define this?" Muwuso sits between those signals and turns them into products that ship.

Portfolio

Work Experience

Lead Product Designer

2015 - PRESENT
Independent Contractor
  • Contributed to product design: UX, UI, startup development, product development and planning, mentoring, cross-functional team leadership, mobile app design, integrated brand strategy, and creative direction.
  • Delivered end-to-end design for enterprise and startup clients across FMCG, fintech, healthcare, and emerging technology sectors.
  • Demonstrated ability to ramp quickly, establish design foundations, and ship production-ready work within compressed timelines.
Technologies: Figma, Adobe CC, Zeplin, GitHub, Claude Code, Slack, Jira, Productboard, FullStory, Marketplaces

Founding Designer

2024 - 2025
Atono
  • Built Atono's design foundation from the ground up: first design system, brand identity, website, and all customer-facing materials for their engineering productivity platform.
  • Helped refactor the product experience and supported the team from their $4 million seed round through to General Availability, establishing design infrastructure that scales.
  • Worked with the product and engineering team in refactoring their product platform and flows.
Technologies: Figma, Slack, Atono

Senior Product Designer

2022 - 2024
Zapier
  • Led the design in the EPD (Engineering, Product, Design) triad for greenfield LLM-grounded features on the Contributor Enablement team, designing the NLP-powered self-serve experience that let users create custom extensions and integrations.
  • Shipped Custom Actions evolution from raw request inputs to AI-generated outputs to a natural language chat-based code extension builder. This work unlocked significant new business partnerships and solved chronic support bottlenecks.
  • Designed and launched editor version comparison, publish approval requests, custom error handling, change history, and granular permissions systems.
  • Contributed to the Editor Reliance team using quantitative data to identify and resolve papercuts users faced, both externally and internally.
Technologies: Figma, Zoom, FigJam, Slack, FullStory, Datadog, Vercel, Design Systems, Web App Design, Product Design, UI Style Guides, Artificial Intelligence (AI), SaaS Design, Marketplaces

Design Lead

2021 - 2022
Garb
  • Designed an AI/VR social eCommerce platform with feed-driven discovery, visual storytelling, and motion-aware interaction patterns centred on virtual try-on technology.
  • Created the solution combining virtual wardrobes, AI-powered sizing algorithms, and AR try-on experiences to prevent returns before they happened.
  • Tackled a massive problem: sizing issues that cause 53% of all fashion returns globally.
Technologies: Product Design, iOS, UX Design, UI Design, eCommerce, Social Networks

Senior Design Mentor

2016 - 2021
CareerFoundry
  • Mentored and provided industry guidance to design students and career changers for the ever-evolving digital workplace across Europe and the United States.
  • Collaborated with the core team and advised on curriculum development and student growth.
  • Supported students' successful transition to new roles and careers around the world.
Technologies: Slack, Sketch, Zoom, Figma, Adobe CC, Product Design, SaaS Design

Founding Product Designer

2017 - 2018
Tastemakers Africa
  • Designed the complete user experience for a travel platform, including content feeds, editorial layouts, and article-style storytelling.
  • Contributed to search listings, experience detail pages, bookings, dashboards, end-to-end support, sign-up and login flows, payments, and transactional flows, as well as B2B and consumer-facing infrastructure.
  • Contributed to the platform, which achieved $1 million ARR in year one and won a Booking.com award for travel innovation.
Technologies: Adobe Creative Suite, Zeplin, Slack

Senior Interactive Art Director

2010 - 2014
VML
  • Led end-to-end design from strategy through development handover: brand systems, information architecture, interaction design, prototyping, and team mentorship.
  • Spearheaded ATL, BTL, and TTL marketing campaigns for Fortune 500 clients, delivering high-fidelity digital design and interactive art direction.
  • Contributed to the Nedbank KeYona Platform: 526,000 new bank accounts, 900 million media impressions, and $5.5 million in earned media.
  • Received 35+ local and international honors, including Agency of the Year.
Technologies: Adobe Creative Suite, Web Design, Product Design, B2C, Branding

Other Experience

Image of Vehicle UIs of the Future Are Going to Be Amazing publication
Publication

Vehicle UIs of the Future Are Going to Be Amazing

https://www.toptal.com/designers/interactive/amazing-vehicle-ui

Certifications

JULY 2023 - PRESENT

Designing a Business

IDEO U

JULY 2023 - PRESENT

Business Innovation

IDEO U

FEBRUARY 2023 - PRESENT

Designing Strategy

IDEO U

Skills

Tools

Adobe CC, Slack, Sketch, InVision, Adobe Creative Suite, Zeplin, Zoom, FigJam, Asana, Jira, FullStory, GitHub

Platforms

Figma, Axure, iOS, Vercel, Productboard

Languages

CSS, HTML

Other

Brand Guidelines, Strategy, UX Design, Interactive Design, eCommerce, Information Architecture (IA), Brand Development, Digital Strategy, Developer Relations, Responsive Frameworks, Prototyping, Brand Identity, User Experience (UX), Product Design, User Interface (UI), eCommerce Web Design, Mobile App Design, Branding, Interactive Prototypes, UI Design, Web Design, Art Direction, Visual Design, Creative Direction, Corporate Identity, Blog Design, Responsive Web Design (RWD), PowerPoint Design, Responsive Design, B2B, Mobile Design, Design Systems, Web App Design, Startups, Responsive UI, UI Style Guides, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Graphic Design, B2C, SaaS Design, Marketplaces, Datadog, Business Strategy, Creative Strategy, Brand Strategy, Concept Development, Product Strategy, Strategic Planning & Execution, Social Networks, Claude Code, Atono

Experience

  • Startups - 10 years
  • UI Design - 10 years
  • Web Design - 10 years
  • eCommerce - 10 years
  • User Experience (UX) - 10 years
  • Mobile App Design - 8 years
  • Product Design - 8 years
  • Figma - 5 years
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