Mehdi Sadath Assad

Product Designer at BlackRock (2025-03 – Present)

Led end-to-end UI Design and UX for FinTech products, conducting user research, Competitive Analysis, user journey mapping, and persona development to identify friction points in secure onboarding workflow.
Restructured a data-dense investment dashboard's information architecture and visual hierarchy based on internal stakeholder interviews, helping users locate critical information faster.
Eliminated technical handoff friction by using Cursor AI to deliver functional React/Tailwind prototypes, and reduced iteration cycles by 60% by providing developers with technically feasible component specs.
Accelerated the design of Data-dense UI and complex architectures by 50% using Figma Make to generate component frameworks, allowing for increased usability testing and Prototyping within agile cycles.
Mentored junior designers and led cross-functional storyboarding sessions to align design decisions with business objectives and user pain points.
Built a scalable Figma design system with auto-layout, tokens, and component libraries, achieving 85% UI reusability and faster cross-team delivery.
Validated the data-dense dashboard redesign through usability testing with 7 users, achieving a 30% improvement in task completion speed.

UX/UI Designer at DePaul Innovation & Development Lab (2024-01 – 2025-02)

Led UX Research and designed the Ryerson Service Ticketing Executive Summary Dashboard, conducting user interviews and data clustering to define filtering priorities, reducing ticket lookup time from a cluttered Excel process to under 2 minutes.
Designed a Power BI style dashboard UI featuring heatmaps, workload views, drill-through pages, KPI cards, and filtering systems, collaborating with Power BI engineers and data analysts to ensure technical feasibility.
Consolidated 5+ fragmented open-source threat feeds into a unified ransomware intelligence Dashboard for Digital Mint by owning Information Architecture, Wireframing, and developer-ready Data Visualization in Figma, reducing analyst triage time by 75%.
Prioritized user flows for a RAG-based AI healthcare tool at Blue Cross Blue Shield by leading Usability Testing with clinical stakeholders and synthesizing insights across users with mixed AI literacy, enabling the product team to sequence features by user readiness and reduce onboarding friction.
Designed a website for a consulting firm (Insight Digital Lab) by leading Competitive Analysis, UI audits, and information architecture definition, then partnering with the product owner and engineers to ship high-fidelity Figma designs, resulting in an on time launch in 24 weeks.

UI/UX Designer at Orion Technolab (2020-06 – 2023-02)

Conducted field research and designed core user flows, including a tournament registration flow, for a sports-tech startup's web landing pages, covering the homepage, tournament entry, and group-join experience.
Validated the registration flow through usability testing with 18 users, with 16 successfully completing registration without issues.
Led 7+ feature redesigns using research, empathy mapping, and inclusive design, reducing bounce rate by roughly 25%.
Improved task completion through user-centric redesigns informed by Hotjar heatmaps, scroll tracking, and Google Analytics behavioral data.
Designed mobile-first, high-fidelity wireframes and payment prototypes, starting from initial sketches to documenting regulatory and risk requirements alongside the UI.
Collaborated with a 12-member cross-functional team through Scrum/Agile cycles and built responsive front ends using HTML and CSS.

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