Mari Kimi Kurata

Staff UX Product Designer with a dual background in design and engineering, specializing in UX for AI-driven cybersecurity systems. I recently led a design consolidation across six security products that nearly tripled unique user adoption (2.7x) and drove a 6x increase in total report views. I own projects end-to-end, from foundational research and AI-assisted prototyping to coded handoffs engineering carries into production.

Staff UX Product Designer at Barracuda Networks (2026-06 – Present)

Email Protection · Cybersecurity

• Introduced AI-driven explanations to an email security system by translating complex threat flags into user-friendly insights, empowering IT admins to make rapid, informed incident response decisions against bad actors.
• Translated dense configuration and onboarding requirements into a comprehensive enterprise workflow, empowering CISOs to meticulously deploy features that harden their security posture.
• Delivered production-quality coded prototypes built strictly on our design system, giving engineering mergeable code and contributing to the design system when new components are needed.
• Shaped long-term product vision, driving discussions with PMs and engineering to align user priorities, technical constraints, and business goals into a well-balanced, competitive solution.
• Live-prototyped emerging consensus during team meetings to rapidly validate and visualize strategic directions.
• Built internal UX tools connecting tracking and business data sources to surface user-centric and revenue-oriented metrics.

Sr. UI/UX Designer at Barracuda Networks (2022-01 – 2026-05)

Email, Backup and Network · Cybersecurity

• Drove ~6× increase in report views and ~2.7× growth in unique users post-launch; 675+ custom reports created by customers.
• Led UX for Unified Reporting, consolidating fragmented security data into a single reporting experience for enterprise customers.
• Generated and maintained UX design specs that scaled the reporting framework to 6+ products, contributing to experience consistency and reducing learning curves across complex products.
• Ran generative research interviews with enterprise security admins and MSPs and translated pain points and findings into actionable product requirements, user personas, and a prioritized feature roadmap.
• Owned the end-to-end process: research, information architecture, prototyping, and stakeholder alignment with engineering and product leadership.
• Moved from using dev tools for simple live prototypes to using Claude Code for full-experience prototyping, keeping pace with the team's rapid decision-making and fast iteration.

UI/UX Designer at Dextra Technologies / Texas Instruments (2017-09 – 2019-01)

Education Technology, Graphing Calculators

• Kept the product competitive in the European market by transforming a pre-existing note-taking feature into the TI-83 Python editor, contributing to ~40% market share in the targeted countries.
• Created a web calculator screen simulator with raw HTML/CSS to test the new typography.
• Presented design decisions with high-fidelity mockups to stakeholders for project approval before moving to development work with engineering.
• Built and maintained the design system used across the product line, advising designers and developers on UI/UX best practices to standardize patterns and raise consistency among products.
• Prototyped and tested design concepts through user research, delivering actionable stakeholder reports that built a clear business case for prioritizing a visual app indicator on the TI-Nspire graphing calculator.
• Shipped accessibility improvements across the TI-Nspire CX II physical screen and web app.

UI/UX Designer at Embagroup (2015-09 – 2017-09)

Energy Management System for Smart Buildings

• Designed 2D and 3D UI assets representing building floor layouts and HVAC equipment to help users to identify the source of a system malfunction at a glance.
• Designed strategic data visualizations that optimized hierarchy and emphasis, enabling building managers to instantly isolate critical metrics from dense Energy Management System data streams.
• Standardized the internal company process for project kickoff and design handoff, which improved alignment between design and development reducing missing assets and requirements by almost 85%.

UI/UX Designer at LOSH (2014-09 – 2015-09)

Administrative systems

• Built high-fidelity mockups and prototypes for new client proposals.
• Collaborated with front-end developers to build reusable components and styled simple HTML components with CSS and drove design system decisions.
• Tested the product to evaluate the interface usability.

M.A. in Interaction & UX Design – Academy of Art University (2020-07)

M.A. in Engineering – Panamerican University (2019-01 – 2020-07)

B.A. in Innovation & Design Engineering – Panamerican University (2010-08 – 2015-07)