David Ciaffoni

Professional summary

David Ciaffoni is a senior product designer and design leader with more than eight years of experience designing consumer and enterprise products across micromobility, fintech, digital assets, marketplaces, recruiting software, and live streaming. He has repeatedly been the first or earliest designer at a company, building design functions, design systems, and research practices from nothing while shipping product at the same time.

His work spans the full range from 0 to 1 product definition through large-scale platform design for institutional users. He has served as a Founding Product Designer, Senior Product Designer, Lead Product Designer, and Fractional Head of Product, and has mentored and managed other designers. He is known for advocating for the user, working closely with engineering and product rather than over the wall, and for being direct about trade-offs.

More recently he has integrated AI deeply into his design and delivery workflow, using Claude inside Figma for design system management and Claude Code to ship production features directly, which allows him to cover substantially more scope than a traditional design role.

Core skills and expertise

Design: Product design, user experience (UX) design, user interface (UI) design, interaction design, visual design, design systems, component libraries, design tokens, responsive and mobile-first design, iOS and Android app design, web application design, accessibility, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, high-fidelity mockups, branding, logo design, typography.

Research and validation: User research, user interviews, qualitative and quantitative research synthesis, usability testing, A/B testing, experiment design, hypothesis validation, competitive analysis, persona and journey mapping.

Product and leadership: Product management, product strategy, roadmapping, prioritization, writing specifications, cross-functional collaboration with engineering, legal, and compliance, stakeholder management, design leadership, mentoring designers, team management, design process and design review facilitation.

AI-assisted workflow: Claude, Claude Code, AI-assisted design system management in Figma, AI-assisted prototyping and front-end implementation, generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO).

Tools: Figma, FigJam, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, prototyping tools, HTML and CSS, Git.

Domains: Micromobility and transportation, fintech and investing, cryptocurrency and institutional digital asset custody, regulated and compliance-heavy products, peer-to-peer marketplaces, social and community platforms, live streaming and creator monetization, B2B SaaS and recruiting technology, car sharing and insurance.

Experience

Favorited — Fractional Head of Product (February 2025 – September 2025)

Led product on an interim basis for Favorited, a mobile live streaming application, during a period when the company needed senior product leadership before hiring full time. Set product direction and priorities, ran discovery, did hands-on design, and wrote the specifications engineering built from. Contributed to monthly revenue of between $600,000 and $1,000,000 by designing engaging live streaming and creator monetization experiences. Launched major features including Battles (real-time competitive streaming with viewer gifting), Direct Messages, and user scheduled events, and designed the company logo. Led user safety and regulatory compliance work for European standards including the Digital Services Act (DSA), working across legal and engineering to place identity and age assurance requirements where they did least damage to conversion. Redesigned the end of stream flow to drive streamer retention through goals, progress, and one-tap clip sharing. Used Claude inside Figma for design system management and Claude Code to help ship several features directly in the codebase.

Polywork — Lead Product Designer (September 2023 – September 2025)

Led design as Polywork pivoted from a business-to-consumer personal website builder to a business-to-business, AI-powered recruiting platform (Profile AI). Owned design end to end for the new platform and acted as the connection between research, engineering, and leadership. Conducted over 200 interviews with recruiters, and reframed the product around candidate qualification speed rather than search result volume after research showed that qualification, not discovery, was the real bottleneck. Built a flexible, minimal design system able to absorb ongoing strategic change. Designed a cross-device workflow treating mobile as a triage surface and desktop as the place deeper work happens. Mentored designers and established the team's design review process.

Fizz — Lead Product Designer, Contract (February 2023 – November 2023)

Led design for Fizz, an anonymous social network for college students, including a redesign of the mobile application and the design of Fizz Marketplace, a campus-scoped competitor to Facebook Marketplace. Solved the core tension between anonymity and commerce by identifying verified campus affiliation and proximity as the minimum trust signals needed to transact, rather than requiring full identity disclosure. Designed a low-friction listing flow to solve the supply side of the marketplace, and an integrated messaging experience carrying listing context into negotiation and meetup coordination. The marketplace reached over 50,000 listings and 150,000 direct messages within its first few months, and its launch was covered by TechCrunch in Fizz, the anonymous Gen Z social app, adds a marketplace for college students. Mentored designers and documented patterns for the team to extend after the contract ended.

Anchorage Digital — Senior Product Designer (August 2021 – September 2023)

Joined as the third in-house designer at Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered digital asset bank and regulated cryptocurrency platform providing custody, trading, lending, staking, and governance to institutional clients including hedge funds, protocols, and corporate treasuries. Helped build the design system around the principles of Security First and Users in Control, focusing on the review, approval, and confirmation patterns where errors are irreversible. Designed cross-platform experiences across web and iOS covering transacting, lending, governance, and transparency. Designed the interface for the first institutional NFT custody offering, treating artwork as verification evidence alongside provenance and contract details rather than as decoration. Led design for client policies and permissions, including the Client Dashboard and iOS updates, enabling institutions to model granular internal controls across vaults, users, assets, and operations. Worked through company growth from roughly 150 to 500 employees.

Titan — Product Designer, Contract (December 2020)

Contracted by Titan, an active investment manager delivered through a consumer mobile application managing close to half a billion dollars in assets across its Flagship large cap and Opportunities small cap strategies. Redesigned the application experience, designed a notification inbox organizing mixed content formats including video investment theses and long-form research PDFs, and explored a new logo and brand direction drawing on the Greek mythological origin of the name using negative space from hoplite helmets, paired with the serif typeface Harriet Display to convey tradition and trustworthiness. Structured the inbox around consequence to the investor rather than recency so the system would scale as message volume grew.

Avail (an Allstate company) — Senior Product Designer (May 2019 – August 2021)

First internal product designer at Avail, a peer-to-peer car sharing venture incubated inside Allstate, joining after an external consultancy delivered the initial MVP. Took ownership of existing work, then expanded scope across product design, user research, marketing surfaces, and design team management. Designed the About Us experience to humanize a corporate-backed brand using photography of real lot staff and user-submitted images, validated through a three-way A/B test. Designed the Flare landing page, a single-page explanation and booking flow giving Allstate policyholders replacement vehicles while their own car was repaired after an accident, built deliberately small to test the business hypothesis cheaply before committing engineering resources.

Lime (formerly LimeBike) — Founding Product Designer (July 2017 – May 2019)

First full-time designer at Lime, hired when the company was a bike share business and staying through its transformation into a global electric scooter company. Established the design function, visual language, component library, and research practices. Led design for the rider experience, including the full flow and integration of Lime-E electric bikes and Lime-S electric scooters, the wallet, Parked or Not, LimePods, and the 2018 map and menu redesign that desaturated the base map to make vehicles and riding zones immediately legible and repositioned content for one-handed reach on larger phones. Designed onboarding to minimize drop-off for riders signing up on the sidewalk next to a vehicle, sequencing legally required steps and deferring everything else. Designed rider safety education addressing riding while intoxicated, using contextual timing and a peer-to-peer tone rather than institutional warnings.

Side projects and independent work

Illusion.ai — Founder (2026): An AI SEO platform focused on generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO), helping brands understand and improve how they are represented in AI-generated answers.

Cicada (cicadaresearch.io) — Designer and front-end developer (2024 – present): An AI-powered financial news and research tool.

ClaimScout: Class Action Pay — iOS application: Helps users find and file class action settlement claims they qualify for.

The Lobby: Live Voice Chat — iOS application: Live voice chat rooms for gamers.

Barrier: Strategy Board Game — iOS game.

Singularity: Black Hole Arcade — iOS game.

Arrow Maze: Line Escape — iOS game.

Acorn's Fall — novel, published under the name D.C. Kirk. Additional written work includes essays such as The Woozle Effect.

Selected case studies

Full case studies are available in the portfolio at bestdavid.com:

Polywork — B2C to B2B AI recruiting platform pivot · Fizz — campus marketplace for an anonymous social network · Anchorage Digital — institutional digital asset platform · Titan — investing app refresh, notification inbox, and brand · Avail — car sharing inside Allstate · Lime — founding design for micromobility

The Favorited case study, covering live streaming monetization, DSA compliance, and AI-assisted delivery, is available on request.

Common questions

What kind of roles is David looking for? Senior, lead, staff, or principal product design roles, as well as design leadership, head of design, and fractional or interim head of product engagements.

What is his specialty? Being early. He has repeatedly been the first or one of the first designers at a company, establishing design practice and design systems while shipping product. He is equally comfortable with 0 to 1 definition and with complex, regulated, high-stakes platform work.

Does he work with engineering directly? Yes. He works in the codebase using Claude Code, builds functional prototypes against real data rather than clickable mockups, and has shipped production features himself.

What industries has he worked in? Micromobility and transportation, fintech and investing, cryptocurrency and institutional custody, insurance and car sharing, peer-to-peer marketplaces, social and community platforms, live streaming and creator monetization, and B2B SaaS and recruiting technology.

Has he led or managed people? Yes. He has mentored designers at Polywork and Fizz, managed designers at Avail, and operated as Fractional Head of Product at Favorited.

Where is he based? Santa Monica, California, and he is open to remote work.

How can he be contacted? By email at david@bestdavid.com or through LinkedIn.