João Conceição

João Conceição

Staff Product Designer in Lisbon, Portugal

About

I'm a design leader with over a decade of experience in building products. I specialize in design systems, where I lead the design, development, and adoption of these systems. My responsibilities include creating design foundations, design tokens, and component libraries, as well as forming teams to maintain, grow, and promote design systems.

Contact

Work Experience

2024 — Now

Building and evolving Thesis, PandaDoc’s design system, to empower teams with tools and guidelines that drive consistency, scalability, and innovation.

2023 — 2024
Lisbon, Portugal
  • Lead the vision, product management, and execution for the design system.

  • Manage the design system team.

  • Lead a core team within a group of approximately 70 designers.

  • Establish and track design system metrics.

  • Manage stakeholder relationships.

  • Cultivate a dynamic team culture with initiatives like “Sprint Demo” and “Design System Release Party.”

2022 — 2023
Lisbon, Portugal
  • Enhance internal adoption of the design system through targeted training.

  • Implement design tokens for multi-platform applications, reducing inconsistencies.

  • Document and standardize design system processes, improving team efficiency.

  • Optimize design ops, workflows, and documentation for smoother project execution.

  • Lead projects and mentor designers, enhancing team productivity.

  • Organize and facilitate design workshops, fostering innovation and collaboration.

  • Conduct user interviews and testing, market research, and competitor analysis to inform design decisions.

2019 — 2022
Lisbon, Portugal
  • Redesign product iconography and establish a new icon system.

  • Revamp product UI, typography, color scheme, and components to improve accessibility, developing the first dark theme on the product.

  • Create and maintain comprehensive Figma libraries, improving design efficiency.

  • Prioritize accessibility and documentation, ensuring industry compliance.

  • Provide resources including patterns, best practices, and templates to streamline processes and reduce times.

  • User research with internal and external users, driving data-informed decisions.

  • Utilize advanced prototyping tools to create high-fidelity prototypes.

  • Deliver high-quality products rapidly within cross-functional teams.

2013 — 2019
UX/UI Design Consultant at Freelance
Remote
  • Design responsive web apps, websites, and e-commerce experiences, enhancing clients' digital presence.

  • Establish comprehensive design documentation, improving client processes.

  • Create and develop UI Kits, streamlining client workflows and increasing efficiency.

  • Branding and design pitch decks, enhancing presentations and winning business.

  • Utilize HTML, CSS, Webflow, and WordPress, delivering high-quality web solutions.

Speaking

2024
Lisbon

This session guided participants through the basics of design tokens, using easy-to-understand explanations and step-by-step instructions. It showed how to create tokens for common design elements like colors, text styles, and spacing. The session also covered simple strategies for naming and organizing these tokens with a Figma Variables, ensuring that design decisions remained easy to manage, scale, and adapt.

2024
Lisbon

Hear from Luís de Sousa, myself, and Cátia Neves about all the technology and tools used for Design Ops, Design System, and Product Design disciplines, and you can better use them.

Friends of Figma, Portugal

2024
Remote

As part of World Usability Day and in partnership with Tangível and OutSystems, I developed and facilitated an exclusive workshop released during the conference.
"Design Systems: Plan, Maintain, Measure" guides you through the step-by-step development of a Design System's features, setting goals, and addressing product consistency and coherence

Certifications

2023

Education

2015 — 2018
Postgraduate Degree, Design and Communications at University of Lisbon
2012 — 2015
Bachelor's Degree, Design at University of Évora