ABOUT ME · LISBON, PORTUGAL
Designing with people.
Building with teams.
I’m Helder, a Senior Product Designer at Prophix, based in Lisbon, with a background in frontend development.
I bring designers and engineers together around shared decisions, so design systems become useful tools in everyday product work.
My approach
Embrace complexity.
Keep the experience simple.
I stay hands-on from understanding a problem and exploring ideas through realistic prototypes and production. Usability, accessibility, and feedback from the people using the product guide my decisions.
Design around real work
I focus on what people are trying to achieve, especially when their workflows and data are complex. I use research, prototypes, and feedback to make interactions clearer and more useful.
Build shared understanding
I work closely with product managers and engineering to define features, explain design decisions, and support adoption. When teams raised concerns about implementing a whole design system at once, I encouraged small, incremental changes that respected delivery constraints and reduced disruption for users.
Make AI useful and implementable
My AI work connects the product experience with how teams build it. For Copilot, that means helping people explore financial data. For Phixer, it means clear tokens, component properties, and patterns that developers can consume through Claude Code using Figma Desktop Bridge.
Capabilities
From shared foundations
to detailed interactions.
My work combines design systems, AI product design, prototyping, and close collaboration with engineering. I connect the individual screen with the wider product suite.
Design systems
I created Phixer from scratch and own its foundations, components, patterns, and evolution across Prophix’s application suite. My work includes defining tokens, documenting behaviour, and making components easier to configure and maintain.
Using properties for options such as icons reduced the need for duplicated variants, reduced file size and publishing time, and improved the experience for designers.
AI product design
As the main designer for Prophix Copilot, I work with two product managers to define features and interactions, from the first production version through a live interface redesign shaped by user feedback.
The experience supports financial questions, data visualisations, exports, and a larger chat area to make results easier to work with.
Interactive prototyping
I build prototypes that demonstrate interaction and behaviour, going beyond static wireframes. This helps teams review realistic flows and discuss how the experience should work before implementation.
Design and engineering collaboration
My frontend development background helps me discuss implementation details and define clear component guidance. I connect design tokens, component properties, and documented patterns so teams can work from a shared foundation.
I introduced Phixer into a Claude Code workflow through Figma Desktop Bridge, making the system’s definitions available to developers.
Adoption and cross-team alignment
I run sessions with product managers and engineering teams to explain the advantages of shared components and patterns. I support gradual adoption so teams can make progress within their existing delivery plans.
I aim to make the system practical to use and maintain, with clear decisions that help designers and engineers work consistently.
Continue the conversation
Let’s make complex products easier to use.
Have a product design opportunity, a design system challenge, or an AI experience to shape? I’d like to hear about it.