Vanessa Alvarado

Multidisciplinary designer with 10+ years of experience creating for small to mid-sized businesses. Now freelancing with a focus on strategic, end-to-end creative solutions in branding, websites, photography, video, and print assets.

Led end-to-end product design initiatives for a transportation technology platform, integrating user insights and strategic planning to deliver impactful features and evolve core design systems.

• Directed comprehensive user and market research, leveraging data analysis to inform long-term product planning and shape quarterly roadmaps in collaboration with cross-functional leadership.
• Spearheaded the design and successful implementation of complex product features, including Passenger Count, Headsign Connector, and Route Groups, aligning closely with Product, Engineering, and Stakeholder teams.
• Championed the advancement of a dynamic design system, enhancing consistency and reusability across product lines by maintaining existing assets and contributing new components.

Drove significant e-commerce conversion improvements and established foundational design systems within a fast-paced, remote product development environment.

• Conducted in-depth competitive analysis and usability testing to identify critical user experience gaps, leading to the design of high-fidelity mockups for a fully remote, cross-functional team.
• Redesigned and launched 3 distinct customer-facing e-commerce pages, with a top-performing Product Detail Page increasing add-to-cart rates by an impressive 27%.
• Established a scalable Design System for a refreshed Brand Identity, enabling seamless collaboration and iteration for a team of 2 designers and 4 engineers.

Collaborated with diverse cross-functional teams to develop user-centric design solutions and led the design of a major data visualization SaaS tool.

• Partnered with cross-functional teams across Product Management, Engineering, Research, and Operations to iteratively develop design assets, balancing user needs with critical business objectives.
• Led the comprehensive research and end-to-end design for "Ripple," a SaaS tool utilizing advanced data visualization to provide customers with complete audience profiles.
• Contributed to the iterative improvement of design assets, ensuring alignment with evolving user requirements and strategic business goals.

Developed customizable digital marketing assets and collaborated directly with clients to enhance their web presence using front-end technologies.

• Created highly customizable email newsletter templates using HTML and CSS, empowering clients to easily manage and launch their own digital marketing campaigns.
• Collaborated directly with clients to implement design adjustments and content updates on existing websites via Wordpress' backend, ensuring client satisfaction and functional integrity.
• Applied foundational design principles to deliver user-friendly web and email solutions, enhancing overall digital communication effectiveness.

Contributed product design expertise to a non-profit, significantly improving user experience for a ride-share app and establishing a robust design system.

• Collaborated with engineers and a project manager to design and expand a ride-share application, resulting in a 46% reduction in user help tickets.
• Executed a comprehensive migration of existing designs from Sketch to Figma, streamlining workflows and improving design team efficiency.
• Developed and implemented a new Design System of reusable components, ensuring consistency and accelerating future product development for the ride-share app.