# Josef Richter — Product Designer & Engineer

I design and build web & mobile apps, turning complex business problems into simple, easy-to-use flows. 15+ years of experience working with fuzzy goals and fluid environments. I'll learn everything about your business, coz without that it's impossible to do great design.

- Website: https://josefrichter.design
- Email: josef.richter@me.com
- Phone: +420 608 631 657
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josefrichter/

## Skills

- **Design:** UX design, flow simplification, prototyping, UI design, agentic design systems
- **Development:** Elixir/BEAM LiveView, React/Next.js, TypeScript, Swift/SwiftUI, React Native, Rust, Python (data analytics & visualization), Tailwind
- **Tools:** Figma, Paper, Claude Design, Open Design, Storybook, Lovable
- **Domains:** CRM, SaaS, HealthTech, FinTech, Telco, Transportation, B2B, B2C

## Experience

### Design Engineer — Enaia CRM, New York City (2024–now)

Enaia is a massive commercial real-estate CRM platform. It attracted leading clients in the sector like CBRE (world #1) and JLL (world #2).

I am the lead designer, working solely with the CEO and CTO, redesigning a complex CRM from an MVP into a data-dense, serious product — implementing a design system, unifying the experience across the product, and designing the new user experience around complex features.

I introduced an agentic design system pipeline, connecting Figma, Paper, Claude Code / Claude Design, Storybook and UXPilot, ready for other tools as needed.

We develop plenty of prototypes, ranging from simple click-through mockups to product forks with experimental features.

I work directly in the codebase throughout the full stack, from design, through frontend, up to some backend features — **780 PRs authored & merged**, shipping design changes directly rather than just handing off specs. Zero handoff nonsense. My technical background allows this deep integration in the team, which removes the usual bottleneck between design and development.

Key topics:
- Redesign from MVP to a data-dense, serious product
- Agentic design system pipeline across Figma, Paper, Claude Code / Claude Design, Storybook, UXPilot
- Design system & unified UX
- Clean up and streamline experience around complex features
- Strong team integration across full stack
- Advanced prototyping in Figma, html/css/js, Elixir, Swift

(Contacts available for reference.)

### Mobile Design Lead — Medable, Palo Alto (2022–2023)

I redesigned the clinical trial participants' app across mobile platforms — rebuilding the patient experience, especially the core part of collecting data for clinical trial studies. The app is used in 110 countries worldwide.

I introduced a proper design system and the team setup around it, bringing consistent & coherent style and experience across the products and across platforms. This included finding the intersection of UX best practices and often completely opposite, extremely complex, scientific and regulatory requirements — navigating an extremely regulated industry in close cooperation with scientists and physicians.

The bar for accessibility was very high, given the highly specific target group.

I also developed trial participant personas, which are significantly different from usual personas in other industries. This became a foundation for better understanding of our users across the company.

In the long term, we were completely rethinking what a patient experience might look like if we were to build a modern, mobile-age solution. Decentralisation of clinical trials is a massive topic, as studies take 10–12 years, cost $2.6B on average, and completion rates are very low at around 10%. We were turning a basic data collection utility tool into a full experience and smart guide throughout the whole journey of diagnosis, treatment, and clinical trial participation.

Key topics:
- Redesign of the clinical trial participants' app across mobile platforms
- Design system and the team setup around it
- Analysing and defining patient personas
- Short term — new generation of eCOA/ePRO (clinician/patient reporting) on mobile platforms
- Long term — vision of patient journey before, throughout and after a clinical trial
- Strong focus on accessibility requirements, given specific target group
- Advanced prototyping in Figma, Framer, SwiftUI

### Design Lead — T-Mobile Smart Home, Frankfurt (2018–2022)

I implemented and advocated an atomic design system across design and development departments, and turned a concept in Sketch into a full product **rolled out in 8 countries**.

I reframed the product strategy: the existing product was a geeky playground that allowed anyone to build scenes and automations. I proposed a new concept of "stories" — common everyday situations, pre-programmed and usable out of the box, zero-config, for mass-market non-technical users. Apple Smart Home adopted the same concept a year later.

We started as a "skunk works" side project of 4 people in their free time, where I was the only designer. After a few months, the company decided to make our project the primary one, reallocated more than 100 people to it, and decided to phase out the old one. This was a massive accomplishment in a company that is relatively conservative and where big decisions require significant buy-in from several layers of management.

The product won the **Red Dot Award** and the **iF Design Award**.

Key topics:
- Creation and implementation of an atomic design system across design and development
- Supervising visual redesign and consistency of the whole Smart Home project (~10 people design team)
- Product strategy shift from configurable playground to zero-config "stories" for mass-market users
- Solving technical aspects of DS creation, collaboration, maintenance, expansion, versioning and distribution across teams
- Driving and coordinating implementation on the development side, across platform specifics and gradual refactoring of the existing code base
- Shift towards standardised platform-specific components familiar to users, and building the product (and design system) on top of them
- Stricter study and adherence to Apple Human Interface Guidelines and Google Material Design Guidelines
- Evangelism of data-driven design and stronger focus on mass-market non-tech customers
- Introducing advanced prototyping tools and techniques for massive savings in development
- Summary at https://www.smarthome.de/

### Mobile Design Lead — Vodafone, London (2021–2022)

I designed a mobile-first Vodafone TV experience for phones and tablets, distinct from the TV app. Our wider team was designing the TV app as well as the hardware.

I established a design system spanning the smart-TV interface and mobile devices, aligned to the latest Apple Human Interface Guidelines and Material guidelines.

I built advanced interaction prototypes, mainly in Framer.

Key topics:
- Mobile & tablet UX/UI of Vodafone TV
- Design system spanning the smart-TV interface and mobile devices
- Redefining the user experience of the mobile and tablet apps
- Advanced prototyping in Framer

### Freelance Designer & Builder — Worldwide (2009–now)

Building my own products — mobile & web apps — alongside freelance work for startups worldwide. Fascinated by high-concurrency problems (too many people → server crash).

- **Sorted** — Event registrations that don't crash under heavy load, with fully agentic event management. https://sorted.fast
- **Stock Sorted** — Shopify app for shared inventory across stores, a textbook concurrency problem Shopify can't handle natively. https://apps.shopify.com/stock-sorted
- **Cherry** — Meal Check app, AI calorie tracker that scans food and recommends nutrition changes. https://mealcheck.app
- **HabitPass** — iPhone app that builds a language-learning habit by locking out social media. https://gethabitpass.com
- **Tideman** — a tool that helps students test their implementation of the "final boss" algorithm from Harvard's CS50. https://tideman.netlify.app
- **Francis** ("Sinatra for Elixir") — open-source **francis_template** (file-based HTML templating, my personal website runs on it) and **francis_sqlite** (SQLite integration) for this minimalist web framework. https://hex.pm/packages/francis_template · https://github.com/josefrichter/francis_sqlite

### Senior Consultant, M&A — Ernst & Young, Prague (2005–2009)

- International tax structuring of multinational corporations
- Financial audits, due diligence, M&A structuring
  - accounts: Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, Macquarie, GE Money, Raiffeisen, HVB Bank, Unicredit, SAB Miller, Pilsner Urquell, TRW…
- Gave me very solid ground in finance & business — international tax structures, accounting rules, etc.
- Came handy doing my international taxes too :-)

## Education

- **Czech Technical University in Prague** · Air Traffic Management
- **Harvard University** · Computer Science (CS50, online)
- **The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania** · FinTech (online)
- **Blockchain Council** · Certified Blockchain Expert
- **Y Combinator** · first Czech in YC

## Testimonials

> I wish we'd had you when we started this.
>
> — David Young, CEO, Enaia

> Josef spent nearly three years at Enaia and was part of shipping a product I'm proud of. He reported to me on the front-end engineering side and to Enaia's CEO as a designer, which speaks to his range: he works across visual design, UX, and front-end, and he's comfortable enough in the codebase to take his own work from idea to shipped rather than handing off mockups. That combination is genuinely rare, and ideal for startups. He's got a great eye and he's easy to work with, and I'd strongly recommend him.
>
> — Neil Berkman, CTO, Enaia

> Josef has been one of the most thoughtful product design leaders I've had the pleasure of working with throughout my career. His level of professionalism and organization within the craft of product design was incredibly impressive. He consistently demonstrated the value of doing things "the right way" in order to sustain and scale design solutions. An aspect that I was particularly impressed with, Josef embodies the "strong opinions, loosely held" mindset that I value in a senior-level designer. He would spend the appropriate time on research and collaboration and then not only execute thoughtful solutions, but passionately defend them. But many times, when faced with new information or conflicting evidence, he was willing to re-work through problems and discover new solutions. Any product team would be fortunate to work with Josef and have his approach represented within their environment.
>
> — Joshua Bryant, Director of UX & Product Design, Medable

> It's rare that you come across exceptional talent like Josef. I had the pleasure of working with Josef for two years on a mobile app relaunch where he showed outstanding product design skills and a deep understanding of product strategy. I was particularly impressed by Josef's ability to remove nonessential complexity from the product, which not only made a huge difference in the productivity of our team, but also led to extraordinary results in user testing.
>
> — Timon Reinhard, Lead Product Owner — Magenta Smart Home, T-Mobile / Deutsche Telekom

> Josef is a bright holistic design thinker. He is able to break down the brief or problem into smaller clear parts, and provides clear paths to take. His ability to work with a team remotely is impressive; always sending inspirational resources and bringing out the best in his collaborators. I recommend working with him!
>
> — Sina Mossayeb, Chief Design Officer, Medable

See all testimonials at https://josefrichter.design/testimonials or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/josefrichter/