UX / UI Designer · Portland · Remote chapters since 2019
Alfonso
Barreiro
Most design problems aren't visual problems. They're decisions someone hasn't made yet: surfaced through research, made explicit, shipped to a live product. Fifteen years in design, four-plus remote across two chapters since 2019. The case studies below were built that way.
Selected Work · 2026
Three case studies.
Consumer apps, e-commerce, and travel. Built solo, remote, end to end. Different industries, same operating model: research first, decisions made explicit, shipped to a live product.
About
Different problems, same question:
Why doesn't this work better?
I learned BASIC from a magazine, typing it line by line. I built my first website as a Rush fan site that probably broke every design rule that existed. I'm still doing the same thing: staring at something on a screen and asking why it doesn't work better.
I design from the gaps I actually live in. Spotify is my most-used app, and the Recently Played shelf had blind spots that bothered me for years. I dealt with plantar fasciitis, toenail fungus, and the quiet shame men carry about neglecting their own bodies, so I built a resource for it. Each project starts with a real problem I can feel, not a brief I was handed.
Coffee in Portland? Book a time
Research & Discovery
Sharpens the problem before the team commits. Cuts the false-start weeks where a beautiful answer gets built for the wrong brief.
Design & Systems
Tokenized systems halve handoff time and let multiple products share one vocabulary. Accessibility shipped from day one, not patched in QA.
Delivery & Craft
Prototypes that earn their keep. Usability findings that move the next sprint, not the next slide. Dev handoff that engineers actually use.
How I work
Figma comes last. By the time I open it, the research, the brief, and the structure have already done most of the work. The interface is the last step, not the first place I look for answers.