Rafael Serrano
Verified Expert in Design
UX Designer
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Toptal member since March 18, 2016
Rafael is a product designer with 12+ years of experience in complex B2B/B2C SaaS. He strengthens design maturity by embedding research, systems thinking, and AI-augmented workflows into how teams work, making decisions faster, prototypes sharper, and foundations more scalable. Rafael partners closely with Product, Engineering, and Data to ship meaningful improvements in ambiguous environments. Accessibility and quality are built in, not bolted on.
Portfolio
Enabling Dynamic Pricing
Appetite+ | Mobile App
Hope Makers
Work Experience
Lead Product Designer
Skydreams
- Led redesign of core allocation and pricing flows, reducing manual handling effort by around 30% and improving internal team efficiency while increasing conversion by 14.7%.
- Drove experimentation strategy (A/B, A/B/C testing) across onboarding, consent, and pricing to validate hypotheses and de-risk product decisions, raising verified request rates from 70.3% to 94.9%.
- Introduced foundational design system patterns, reducing UI inconsistencies and cutting design-to-development handoff time by around 25%.
- Partnered closely with Product, Engineering, Data, and Growth to align design decisions with technical constraints and revenue impact across distributed teams.
- Embedded lightweight research (interviews, usability testing) into delivery cycles, uncovering workflow bottlenecks that informed roadmap prioritization.
Lead Product Designer
Settly
- Designed and shipped a new onboarding and case-management flow, reducing processing time for specialists by around 60% and increasing engagement across user groups by around 23%.
- Built and maintained a scalable design system from scratch, reducing duplicate design and development work across product and engineering teams.
- Drove 80% increase in adoption of new digital tools through research-led iteration and data-driven design decisions.
- Led discovery workshops, prototyping, and usability testing to inform roadmap decisions and reduce delivery risk in ambiguous problem spaces.
- Supported cross-functional teams through product transitions, fostering alignment and creative confidence during organizational change.
Senior UX/UI Designer
Intive
- Led the accessibility efforts for the Macmillan Education labs platform, achieving a user experience that allowed users with visual disabilities to execute tasks successfully.
- Collaborated with Tech for All's (TFA) accessibility compliance and universal design services to turn UX concepts into feasible digital solutions.
- Ensured UX best practices across the organization aligned with business values.
- Developed and implemented a robust design system for the client.
Senior UX/UI Designer
WOM Chile
- Planned and conducted user research methodologies to obtain key insights used to improve existing products, create new design strategies, or build new features.
- Optimized payment methods to increase end users' conversion and engagement, achieving an adoption rate of 78%.
- Ideated, designed, prototyped, and tested every user flow before launching the mobile application to a market of 2 million users.
- Worked with Lean and Agile methodologies, ensuring the effectiveness of the deliverables.
- Ensured a user-centric approach based on data-driven decisions and business interests.
UX Designer
Acid Labs
- Conducted user research to provide actionable insights to stakeholders by effectively communicating the results.
- Optimized the user's workflow in the platform, improving performance by over 45%.
- Matched and managed team and business expectations about the project's functions and impact.
- Implemented and promoted design best practices to stakeholders and the user experience team to ensure successful deliverables.
- Drove user engagement by selecting the new platform's main critical features and designing the entire experience around them.
UX/UI Designer
Appetite+, Inc.
- Worked as the primary user experience and interface designer on rebranding, improving, and creating new features for version 2.0 of the mobile app.
- Structured my design approach based on qualitative and quantitative information obtained during the research process with stakeholders and the development team provided.
- Obtained a new investment from Start-Up Chile and gained recognition from Intel Challenge Latin America and The Media Accelerator Program Latin America in 2013 in Miami, USA.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design
University José Maria Vargas - Caracas, Venezuela
Certifications
Design and Activation Strategy
IDEO
Applied Generative AI for Digital Transformation
MIT Professional Education
How to Design for Augmented and Virtual Reality
The Interaction Design Foundation
UX Management: Strategy & Tactics
The Interaction Design Foundation
UX Research — Methods and Best Practices
The Interaction Design Foundation
Production and Management of Digital Projects
University of Chile
Information Architecture
University of Chile
Design Sprint Foundations
Udacity
Skills
Tools
Adobe Creative Suite, InVision, Miro, Trello, Adobe InDesign, Slack, Maze, Confluence, Jira, Hotjar
Platforms
MacOS, Figma, iOS, Android, Mixpanel
Languages
HTML
Other
Visual Design, Data Visualization, Web App Design, Web App UX, Web App UI, High-fidelity Prototypes, Web Design, UI Design, UX Design, Graphic Design, Project Management, Information Architecture (IA), Product Design, Usability, UX Research, Mobile UX Design, Dashboard Design, B2B, Branding, SaaS, MVP Design, Rapid Prototyping, Design Strategy, Visual Identity, Visual Brand Guidelines, Logo Design, Infographics, B2B SaaS Design, Ideation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Large Language Models (LLMs), UX Strategy, Usability Testing, Qualitative Research, User Interviews, Contextual Inquiry, Interviews, Visual Storytelling, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), iOS UX Design, iOS UI Design, Android UI Design, UX Scenarios, Wireframing, User Flows, Empathy Mapping, Card Sorting, Lean UX, Agile UX, System Design, Sketching, User Journey Maps, Optimal Workshop, Abstracts, User Experience (UX), App Design, Mobile Design, Interactive Prototypes, Web Development, Responsive Web Design (RWD), UI Animation, Web UX, Content Management Systems (CMS), Responsive UX Design, Typography, Data Validation, User Personas, Wireframe to Product, UX Analysis, Benchmarking, Benchmark Analysis, Intranets, User Management, Management, Strategy, Android Design Guidelines, Design Sprints, User Journeys, Value Proposition, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Social Networks, B2C, Mobile UI, Accessibility, Design Systems, Web Marketing, Google Design Sprints, Design Thinking, UX Mentoring, Software as a Service (SaaS), Dashboards, Digital Transformation, Claude Code, OpenClaw, OpenAI, Typeform, UX Management, Best Practices in Design, Product Strategy, B2B2C, Growth, Brand Logos, Brand Voice, Brand Identity, Identity Design, Dynamic Identity
Experience
- UX Research - 12 years
- Product Design - 10 years
- Rapid Prototyping - 10 years
- B2B - 8 years
- Design Strategy - 5 years
- SaaS - 4 years
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 3 years
- Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) - 2 years
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