Rod Acevedo
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Toptal member since April 27, 2020
Rod is a senior product designer with 15+ years of experience in healthcare, government, fintech, and enterprise SaaS. He leads teams, runs discovery, and builds design systems. He also builds autonomous agents, multi-agent pipelines, and AI-powered software. He helped scale a US telehealth startup from 2,000 to more than 40,000 patients and led New Zealand’s COVID Tracer app (3.6 million registrations). Based in Sydney, Rod has experience across Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
Portfolio
Work Experience
Founder, Product & Design
Klok AI Consultancy
- Built an autonomous research agent for a defense client that searches APIs, maps findings to product roadmaps, and surfaces expansion opportunities for product teams.
- Designed and shipped Super Brain, a multi-modal agent system with read, listen, and speak inputs that triages daily consumption into a journaling and retrieval layer.
- Created a meal planning agent connected to Woolworths APIs that generates weekly plans based on calorie goals and builds a ready-to-order shopping list.
- Built MCP integrations for Notion, Kindle highlights, and podcast summaries, designed around time optimization and reducing context-switching.
- Owned the end-to-end product lifecycle: problem identification, product strategy, agent architecture, prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, and UX design.
Design Director/Product Design Lead
RUSH Digital
- Led a chapter of seven designers across SaaS, fintech, healthcare, and banking workstreams, lifting design maturity and delivery pace across the organization.
- Developed AI governance frameworks and training programs that achieved 100% improved tool proficiency and 4.6 hours of projected weekly productivity gains.
- Owned product design for a loyalty ecosystem serving 3.6 million weekly users across three retail brands (web, native iOS and Android, and in-store kiosk).
- Designed interaction patterns for an AI-powered computer vision platform processing 10+ million daily detections for enterprise clients.
- Led dozens of discovery initiatives across healthcare, payments, and banking, directly informing million-dollar investment decisions.
- Established and governed design systems from scratch, building components and defining interaction patterns that scaled across teams and brands.
- Created data visualization frameworks that transformed raw AI detection data into actionable insights for enterprise stakeholders.
Product Designer
Bicycle Health Inc
- Contributed to growth from 2,000 patients in 18 states to 40,000+ across 27 states, making Bicycle Health America's largest telehealth provider for opioid use disorder.
- Ran hypothesis-driven A/B experiments across landing pages and acquisition funnels that supported 600% year-over-year revenue growth and helped secure $103 million in funding.
- Produced design work that contributed to 80% patient retention at 90 days versus the 44% industry average and recognition on the TIME100 Most Influential Companies list.
- Established a design system adopted across multiple departments, enabling consistency at scale and reducing delivery time.
- Mapped complex multi-platform patient journeys from acquisition to retention, defining success metrics at each stage.
Product Design Lead
Journey Digital
- Led accessibility-first design for Ryman Healthcare (WCAG 2.1 AA), increasing engagement by 208% across Australia and New Zealand, with 76% household adoption and 74% resident satisfaction.
- Designed global experiences for MedAire's first responder SaaS platform, reducing task completion times by 50% for in-flight medical and security response.
- Built a custom component system prioritizing touch targets, contrast ratios, and cognitive load for users with an average age of 80.
Education
Leadership Principles in Business Administration
Harvard Business School - Remote
Rare with Google in Product Design
Google Inc. - Remote
Bachelor of Business in Entrepreneurship & Small Business
Massey University - Auckland, New Zealand
Interaction Design Certificate in Psychology & Interaction Design
The Interaction Design Foundation - Remote
Digital Design in Digital Design
Universidad del Pacífico - Santiago, Chile
Certifications
Advanced Google Analytics
From Ideas to Action - Design Thinking
IDEO
Certification in Psychology: Interaction Design in Psychology
Interaction Design Foundation
Skills
Tools
Adobe Experience Design (XD), Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Sketch, Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Google Analytics, HubSpot COS, After Effects CC, Google Optimize, Miro, Apple Keynote, Jira, Claude, Zapier, Confluence, Figma Component Library
Languages
HTML5, HTML, PHP, JavaScript, CSS
Platforms
Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Figma, MacOS, iOS, Android, Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Webflow CMS, Mixpanel
Industry Expertise
Healthcare
Other
eCommerce, eCommerce UX, Design, Bootstrap, Mobile UI Design, Responsive, Visual Design, Mobile Design, User Interviews, Design Thinking, Mobile UX Design, Financial Design, User Validation, UX Testing, Responsive UI, Lottie, Discovery Workshops, Design Sprints, Google Design Sprints, Mockups, Workshops, Workshop Facilitation, Branding, Animation, Design Workshops, UX Design, UX Research, Research, Research Analysis, Google Data Studio, Google Tag Manager, Sass, Node.js, Liquid, App Design, iOS App Design, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), User Research, Validated User Research, Android App Design, Web App Design, WordPress Design, Web Design, Responsive Web Apps, Responsive Design, Responsive UX Design, Product Design, Web UX Design, EDM, Qualitative Research, Web Research, UX Workshops, User Psychology, Conversion Rate, Landing Page Design, Optimization, UX Branding, Responsive Web Design (RWD), SDKs, Mobile UI, Mobile UX, Landing Pages, Business, CX Strategy, UX Strategy, Strategy, Prototyping, Wireframing, Customer Journey, Facilitation, Ideation Workshops, User Workshops, UX Mentoring, Digital Strategy, Mood Boards, Design Leadership, Management, Strapi, Rapid Prototyping, Design Systems, Brand Guidelines, Design Language, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Large Language Models (LLMs), Interaction Design (IxD), App UX, User Flows, Mobile App Design, Healthcare Services, User Testing, Remote Work, User Journeys, Web App UI, Web UI Design, Web App UX, Notion, Cursor AI, OpenAI, Team Management, Stakeholder Mapping, Stakeholder Management, Decision Analysis, Executive Communication, Innovation, Inclusive Design, Design Strategy, Collaboration, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Product Strategy, Business Analysis, Market Research, Financial Modeling, Cognitive Psychology, Usability Testing, Information Architecture (IA), Human-centered AI, Graphic Design, Storytelling, Claude Code, AI Agents, Data Visualization, iOS Native Libraries, Agentic AI, Agile, Scrum, Accessibility, Leadership, A/B Testing, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Growth Hacking, Product Growth, AI Product Strategy, Telehealth, Design Ops, Component Libraries, Mentorship, SaaS, Healthcare IT, AI Design, Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS), Dashboards, Dashboard Design, Data Analytics, UI Design, AI Chatbots, AI-powered Product Design, Business Intelligence (BI), Software, Component Design, Tailwind CSS, Tailwind UI, Website Design, eCommerce Web Design, User Journey Maps, User Workflows, Business to Business (B2B), HIPAA Compliance, Marketplace Design, Marketplaces, Behavioral Design
Experience
- Webflow - 15 years
- Product Design - 15 years
- UX Design - 15 years
- Figma - 15 years
- App Design - 15 years
- Design Systems - 15 years
- User Research - 15 years
- Strategy - 15 years
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