
Zeltonique Damon
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Toptal member since December 12, 2018
Zel is a lead product designer with over 12 years of experience in product design, now specializing in AI-powered products and solutions. She has led projects from concept to launch, creating intuitive, user-centered designs across industries like health, fintech, and insurance. Zel has worked with YC-backed startups like SafetyWing, Series A-funded companies like Habitual and Looka, and enterprise-level organizations like THIA, Vitality, Accenture, and Sasol.
Portfolio
Work Experience
Founding Product Designer
Edge Kase
- Supported new and existing clients on various project needs.
- Contributed to Edge Kase's marketing efforts and business growth initiatives.
- Assisted clients in successfully launching new products.
Design Lead | Owner
Nique Design Studio
- Collaborated with global brands, enterprises, and YC-backed startups to enhance digital experiences through seamless user interfaces.
- Facilitated workshops to transform founders' visions into actionable designs, promoting collaboration between teams and users.
- Contributed to Vitality's mobile app to provide a seamless user experience, supporting its mission of promoting global health and well-being, benefiting millions with proven health advantages and financial savings.
- Conducted an SEO audit on PSG's main customer site, ensuring optimal searchability and crawlability. This boosted the visibility of this top South African investment firm, which serves over 200,000 clients.
- Enhanced Sasol's internal continuous improvement system for international use, optimizing processes used by over 29,000 employees globally to streamline operations and boost efficiency.
Lead Designer
Braintrust
- Led the end-to-end design for the AI-powered tool, enabling companies to generate structured PRDs 60-90% faster, reducing engineering back-and-forth.
- Designed an AI-assisted talent import system, improving the process of adding large talent pools via smart file parsing and automated data validation—cutting manual input time from X hours to Y minutes.
- Prototyped and iterated with stakeholders, gathering live feedback from hiring managers, recruiters, and startup founders to refine user flows.
- Designed an AI-powered bulk talent import system, reducing manual input time from 4-6 hours to under 10 minutes by leveraging smart file parsing and automated data validation—boosting efficiency by 85%.
- Conducted in-depth market research and UX strategy, ensuring the platform met real-world hiring and workforce management needs.
Senior Product Designer (Contract)
Thia
- Assisted with the UX strategy for Thia's new project, building a copilot platform for a financial firm in the United States.
- Designed a dashboard that allowed users to interact with AI-powered insights, filter data based on specific criteria, and visualize key financial metrics instantly for their client.
- Utilized the Tailwind CSS design system to quickly build and iterate on user interface components, ensuring a rapid and efficient development process.
Senior Product Designer (Contract)
SafetyWing
- Led product design for Remote Health, an international medical insurance product, alongside our creative director.
- Developed and implemented a user-friendly in-house claims process, contributing to a consistently high net promoter score (NPS).
- Initiated a series of weekly user interviews for quick and direct feedback, supporting the continual enhancement of our product to meet user needs.
- Collaborated closely with stakeholders, developers, and users, delivering top-quality features in a fast-paced startup setting.
- Played a key role in launching the Remote Health dashboard, which enhanced user satisfaction through improved claim tracking and access to insurance details.
- Contributed to creating SafetyWing's 1st comprehensive design system with a team of designers, streamlining product development and brand consistency.
Senior Product Designer (Contract)
Habitual
- Partnered as a consulting product designer with Habitual's team, driving iterative updates to the iOS and Android apps to maintain above-4-star ratings on Google Play and the App Store.
- Assisted in the groundwork of Habitual's design system in Figma, ensuring consistency and efficiency in component organization.
- Led user research to align future priorities with Habitual's quarterly goals, balancing user needs with business objectives.
- Integrated habit formation science into the app, tailoring strategies to support diabetes management and promote a healthy lifestyle. Habitual boasts a 46-60% diabetes remission rate. Users achieved a minimum of 15% body weight loss in just 12 weeks.
Senior Product Designer
Knowledge to Practice
- Refined K2P's assessment and pathway designs, substantially improving user learning experiences.
- Utilized surveys and analytics for user research, informing strategic UX enhancements.
- Partnered with dev teams to ensure precision in design execution and error-free software releases.
- Led the company's design system project, laying the groundwork for a unified visual language. Leveraged Google's Material Design to enrich the Figma component library, ensuring a cohesive and updated design inventory.
- Helped launch the educational platform that empowers medical postgraduates with bite-sized learning modules and gamification to boost engagement and knowledge retention.
Product Designer
Icarus Lived
- Played a pivotal role in establishing the foundation for the user experience and UI at an early-stage social intelligence startup.
- Collaborated closely with the founder to translate ideas into a user-friendly system, crafting an intuitive interface for effective user engagement.
- Transformed the profile section into an interactive space, emphasizing Goodpoint as an online community for sharing reasoning.
Product Designer (Contract)
Sasol
- Contributed as a product design consultant, improving their internal continuous improvement systems for global operations, helping streamline processes for over 29,000 employees, and elevating efficiency.
- Conducted workshops to identify critical issues in Sasol's global system.
- Maintained and updated the design component library.
Product Designer
Accenture
- Developed digital solutions for major enterprises, including Discovery Limited, Sasol, Momentum, and Multiply, enhancing user engagement and client outcomes.
- Conducted UX research and user testing to inform design strategy and decision-making for fintech and insurance industry projects.
- Pitched innovative concepts and designs to clients, showcasing new directions and potential enhancements for their projects.
UI/UX Designer | Intern
Amazee Labs
- Played a key role in user research projects, including competitor analysis, critical analytics review, and user survey administration to inform strategic next steps.
- Produced low- and high-fidelity wireframes, expediting project advancement and enabling early solution testing via iterative designs.
- Contributed to the development and upkeep of UI components in Sketch.
- Contributed significantly to the Open Streets initiative website, a nonprofit client of Amazee in Cape Town.
UI/UX Designer | Intern
King James
- Facilitated collaborative workshops with business as well as technical stakeholders.
- Assisted with front-end development and developed UI kits.
- Created high-fidelity interactive wireframes and redesigned the UIs of existing websites.
Education
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Visual Communication (Interaction Design and Development)
Open Window Institute for Arts and Digital Sciences - Gauteng, South Africa
Skills
Tools
Adobe Experience Design (XD), Sketch, Slack, Figma, Maze, Google Workspace, Adobe Creative Suite, Asana, Jira, Adobe CC, Tableau, FullStory, Anima, FigJam, Google Analytics, Google Docs
Platforms
iOS, Adobe Suite, Webflow, Android, Vercel
Industry Expertise
Health & Wellness
Other
Responsive UI, Mobile UI, User Flows, Web UI, Gamification, Responsive UX Design, UX Flows, User Interviews, UX Research, UX Review, UX Prototyping, User Testing, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Persona Design, UX Strategy, Presentation Design, User Journey Maps, SEO Audits, Low-fidelity Prototypes, Wireframing, Sitemaps, Financial UX, Digital Product Design, SEO Tools, Website Redesign, User Interface (UI), Mobile App UI, Web Dashboards, Enterprise Design, eCommerce UX, Design Systems, User Research, Notion, Startups, B2B, B2C, Dashboards, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Web Design, Product Design, Journey Mapping, Mockups, Dashboard Design, Visual Design, Information Architecture (IA), Analysis, MVP Design, E-learning, Design Leadership, User Stories, Mobile Design, User Experience (UX), Wellness, Rapid Prototyping, Component Libraries, UI Design, Conceptual Design, UX Principles, High-fidelity Mockups, Design Guidelines, UX Wireframes, Healthtech, Health Insurance, Prototyping, User-centered Design (UCD), UX Analysis, Landing Page Design, UX Design, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Desktop App Design, Software, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Corporate Websites, Native Mobile Apps, Brand Design, ChatGPT, Crypto, Blockchain, Lead Generation, Brand Identity, Logo Design, Amplitude, Framer, Tailwind CSS, Tailwind UI, Responsive Web Apps, Project Management, Educational Videos, UX Workshops, Web App UI, Project Planning, WebApp, Adult Learning, Agile UX, Design Sprints, Concepting, Agile, UI Prototyping, Remote User Testing, AI Chatbots, Conversational AI, Conversational UI Design, Conversational UX
Experience
- iOS - 10 years
- Responsive UX Design - 10 years
- UX Research - 10 years
- UX Strategy - 10 years
- Startups - 7 years
- Design Systems - 7 years
- Enterprise Design - 6 years
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 5 years
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring