Yessel Hinojosa

Product designer with 10+ years designing complex, high-stakes digital experiences across fintech, SaaS, and enterprise. Specializes in systems-level thinking, constraint-heavy problem spaces, and translating ambiguous, multi-stakeholder challenges into clear, user-centered products. Proven ability to set design strategy, build and scale design systems, influence at the executive level, and elevate design quality across organizations.

Actively integrates AI tools including Claude and Figma Make into daily design practice.

Expert Innovation Design Facilitator at Discover Financial Services/Capital One Financial (2021-11 – Present)

• Led end-to-end design strategy for PRCMS, a case management platform used by fraud and risk analysts to manage high-stakes financial decisions, disputes, and compliance escalations across Discover and Diners Club networks — designed for trust, transparency, and fairness at every step
• Designed for failure states, escalation paths, and recovery workflows where edge cases are the norm, turning fragmented and opaque processes into clear, actionable experiences for both operational teams and end customers
• Designed Project Surveyor and Pre-Flight, compliance and software risk platforms that surface complex data for technical and non-technical stakeholders, requiring rigorous information architecture and edge case handling across multi-step, constraint-heavy workflows
• Designed and launched the Ideation Hub (patent pending), winning the 2024 President's Award — owned end-to-end design strategy across a multi-surface platform serving distinct user types with different roles, workflows, and permission levels
• Built and evolved Discover's design system including primitive and semantic tokens, shared components, and usage standards, creating scalable patterns that connected fragmented experiences across product teams
• Influenced product and engineering direction at the VP and SVP level, driving alignment across risk, legal, compliance, operations, and product on decisions with significant business and regulatory impact
• Facilitated 25+ design sprints and workshops with cross-functional stakeholders, communicating complex design rationale with clarity and authority to senior leadership and non-design audiences
• Ran end-to-end user research including interviews, usability testing, and journey mapping across 10+ product teams, applying behavioral insights to shape product and design strategy
• Mentored designers and developers across the organization, setting standards for interaction design quality and elevating craft across the broader design community
• Contributed to the open source A11y Theme Builder, co-led the Linux Foundation Mentorship Program for the project, and spoke at the A11y Theme Builder Collaboration Summit and Grace Hopper Open Source Day

Lead UX Designer at Real Geeks (2021-05 – 2021-11)

• Directly managed and mentored a three-person design team including a UX designer and UX researcher, providing coaching and career development support while owning hands-on design work
• Designed and implemented a design system from scratch, establishing component libraries and standards that improved consistency and delivery speed across teams
• Collaborated closely with engineering to ensure design intent carried through to implementation and held up across edge cases

Lead UX Designer at Living Security (2020-04 – 2021-05)

• Joined as the first design hire, owning the full design function for a B2B SaaS cybersecurity platform serving enterprise clients
• Directly contributed to revenue growth from $1M annually to $1M single deals through user-centered product strategy and design
• Built the company design system from scratch including design, documentation, and ongoing maintenance
• Mapped end-to-end user journeys across the product lifecycle to surface gaps and inform product and business strategy

Senior UX Designer at CognitiveScale (2018-09 – 2020-04)

• Designed Certifai, an AI explainability and accountability product built so users could understand what AI systems were doing, why, and how to intervene — SXSW 2020 Innovation Awards Finalist in AI and Machine Learning
• Shipped MVPs that closed enterprise deals with HSBC and Anthem as part of cross-functional international teams in a fast-moving startup environment
• Contributed to a shared design system that improved cross-team consistency and delivery speed

UX Designer at Freelance (2016 – Present)

• Designed task flows, interaction patterns, and responsive interfaces for Volabit, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, covering dashboards, transaction flows, notifications, and a full layout redesign for mobile and web
• Designed consumer-facing experiences for fintech and e-commerce clients, collaborating directly with development teams on implementation

MFA in Web Design + New Media – Academy of Art University

BFA in Graphic Design – Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León