About me
The closer you are to the system, the better you design for the user.
10+ years designing products where one wrong state means someone thinks they've lost their money. That's why I start with the system, not the screen.
Who am I
I'm Michał. For the past 4 years, I've been designing fintech and Web3 products at Ramp Network — a Polish fintech company building crypto infrastructure across 150+ countries, with over $130M in funding. I lead design for products that have served 8M+ users through 200+ partner integrations including MetaMask, Ledger, Trust Wallet, and Worldcoin.
My work sits at the intersection of design, engineering, and product strategy. I build design systems, prototype and contribute to production code in Cursor, review pull requests with engineers, and collaborate deeply with data and compliance teams. I believe the best designers in crypto are the ones who live in the ecosystem — who understand gas fees not from documentation but from paying them, who've used the bridges and DEXs they're designing for. That firsthand fluency is what lets you translate complexity into experiences that actually work, from blockchain confirmations to conversion funnels.
Before Ramp, I designed payment flows at Careem (Uber), helped grow Surfer from 700 to 3,200 users as employee #8, and shipped products across SaaS, fintech, and loyalty platforms.
How I design
I'm a product designer who operates like a product engineer — not because it's trendy, but because the products I work on demand it. A misunderstood blockchain state, a poorly handled payment timeout, a compliance edge case that wasn't designed for — in crypto, these aren't minor UI issues. They're moments where users think they've lost their money.
I don't work at a distance from development — I involve engineers from the earliest exploration, so by the time something is ready to build, the team has already shaped it together. But the technical fluency is a means, not an end. The real value is that I'm a power user of the products I design — I trade on centralized and decentralized exchanges, I've bridged assets across chains, I've experienced the friction firsthand. That lets me translate complex concepts into simple experiences, because I understand both what the system is doing and what the user is feeling.
Crypto UX shouldn't always hide complexity — it should make complexity readable.
What I believe in
Most designers default to abstraction: hide gas fees, auto-select chains, collapse everything into a single "Confirm" button. I think that's a mistake. Crypto involves real money, irreversible actions, and unfamiliar concepts. Users don't need less information — they need the right information, delivered at the right moment, in human language. When I designed Ramp's Transaction Status Page, showing users more detail about what was happening with their transaction — not less — reduced support tickets by 47% and improved conversion by 34%. Transparency builds trust. Abstraction can build anxiety.
You can't design a good crypto product without understanding the full system — not just the interface, but how compliance, payments, and blockchain infrastructure interact beneath it.
Before I designed a single status message for the Transaction Status Page, I mapped the entire transaction pipeline across three layers: what the user sees, what the backend is processing, and what compliance is evaluating. These layers are interdependent — a compliance check can pause a payment, a treasury shortage can delay delivery, a blockchain congestion can extend confirmation times. Most designers work from user stories and API docs. I think that's insufficient for crypto. You need to understand the machine to design the interface.
How I collaborate
Engineers
I co-created Ramp's Consumer Design System with a senior developer from day one. We chose the framework together (React + HeroUI, a Tailwind-based component library), defined the design token structure together, and established a handoff process that both sides actually follow. Every week, I met with 10+ developers to review component progress, resolve implementation questions, and prepare the next batch.
Stakeholders
With product managers/c-level/stakeholders, I operate as a strategic partner, not a service function. I've initiated and scoped projects that weren't on any roadmap — including the Transaction Status Page and the Consumer Design System that now powers every external-facing surface. A Rewards Hub I proposed is now in active development. I contribute to PRDs, challenge product assumptions with data and research, and use analytics (Amplitude, Hotjar, AI-assisted support ticket analysis) to ground design decisions in evidence.
Visioning
I believe in building the systems and processes that make quality repeatable — so the team delivers without me becoming a bottleneck. When I joined Ramp, there was no design system, no handoff process, no shared component language between designers and developers. I initiated and built the Consumer Design System — a component library of 45+ elements used across the widget, mobile app, and wallet. It accelerated the entire design team's output and changed how PMs create their own specs.
I fight for the details that matter to users — like advocating for contextual drawers that preserve spatial context instead of full-screen page replacements, because keeping users oriented in a complex flow directly affects completion rates. But I also know when to concede: that particular debate was about time, not quality, and shipping faster was the right call.
I've also learned to kill my own ideas. An early mobile app concept was too crypto-native — built for me, not for our actual users. It took honest feedback from teammates who didn't understand what I was showing them to realize I'd lost sight of who I was designing for. The hardest skill at this level isn't having good taste — it's recognizing when your perspective has narrowed.
Case studies
From a widget that served 8M+ users to a wallet built from scratch. Here's how I think, what I ship, and what I'd do differently.
Testomonial
"Michał is a rare designer who truly lives in the problem space he works on. His deep crypto expertise and genuine curiosity show in every decision he makes. He brings incredible energy, strong product intuition, and real ownership to the team. When he commits to a problem, he goes deep and pushes for solutions that truly click. I genuinely love working with him."
