Doug Vargas
Head of Product · Design Engineer
I'm a product designer who builds. Today I'm Head of Product at Naowee, where I set direction across the eight business modules of the platform built for Colombia's sports system, and build the prototypes that define them. Before that I was technical lead on Andes, the design system behind Mercadolibre across 18 countries, used by 400+ designers and 2,000+ engineers. Earlier I spent six years at Aval Digital Labs as the gatekeeper of Banco de Occidente's design system, and built the bank's digital banking flows for desktop, tablet and mobile. I work in code as well as in Figma, with AI in the loop, and the thing I hand over is a running product.
A letter
Hello —
I'm a product designer who learned to build, and it changed what I'm able to be responsible for. I don't hand over a specification and wait to see what comes back — I hand over something that runs, and then I keep answering for it.
At Naowee that looks like this: rather than write a document describing how inspection and control should work across ~1,200 sports organizations and their 30 regulatory procedures, I build it, and walk it story by story with the analysts who have to sign it off. A prototype that runs settles the arguments a specification can only postpone.
The habit came from design systems. When one decision about a token reaches 400+ designers and 2,000+ engineers, you stop designing screens and start designing constraints — and the constraints that hold are the ones you can execute, not the ones you can only describe.
I work with AI the same way I'd work with anyone fast and new: give it room, then verify. On olbo I let it write quickly and let 634 tests decide what survived. Nothing ships here because it sounded right.
If you're building something where design and engineering can't afford to be two separate handoffs, I'd like to talk.
Thanks for reading,
Doug Vargas
Updated September 2026
This is the general letter. Tell me what you're building and I'll write you a specific one.
Experience
Naowee
Head of Product
Product direction for SUID, the platform built for Colombia's sports system. I set direction across eight business modules and build the prototypes that define them.
- Product direction across 8 business modules — inspection and control over ~1,200 sports organizations and their 30 regulatory procedures, plus events, venues, incentives, convocatorias and scoring.
- One design system, and I build in it — 38+ components, a canonical shell and a single wizard recipe holding 130+ screens to one language.
- Modeled the sector's real hierarchy — committees, federations, leagues, clubs and athletes with cascading approval, across 45+ states and 15 roles.
- Working prototypes instead of specs — built in code, then walked story by story with analysts who sign off against the running product.
Mercadolibre · Andes Design System
Tech Lead · Design Systems
Technical lead on Andes, the design system behind Mercadolibre's commerce, fintech and shipping products across 18 countries.
- Design library maintained across iOS, Android and Web — used by 400+ designers and 2,000+ engineers.
- Foundational definitions — tokens, spacing, type and motion governing the product suite across 18 countries.
- Cross-platform work with engineering — component APIs agreed once and shipped the same on every platform.
- AI inside the systems practice — prompt-driven audits that catch system drift in Figma before it ships.
Aval Digital Labs · Banco de Occidente
Senior Product Designer · Design System Gatekeeper
Senior product designer for Banco de Occidente's digital banking, and the official gatekeeper of the design system shared across the bank's product squads.
- Design System Gatekeeper — governed additions, deprecations and patterns across 12+ product squads.
- Built Velocity, the bank's design system — documentation, foundations, atoms, molecules and organisms, on atomic-design principles.
- Redesigned core banking flows — login and registration, accounts and cards, transfers and payments, for desktop, tablet and mobile.
- System literacy — workshops, classes and crits, plus mentorship for junior and mid-level designers.
Globant · Royal Caribbean
Senior Product Designer
Mobile and web design for Royal Caribbean cruises, from Globant's Medellín studio, with product and engineering based in the US.
- Booking and onboard guest experience — mobile flows across destinations, stateroom types and life aboard.
- Designed for intermittent connectivity — schedules, dining, excursions and balances that hold up at sea.
- Cross-functional collaboration with US-based product and engineering teams.
Qrvey · Survey & NPS Platform
Lead UI Designer
Lead UI designer on Qrvey, an Ideaware engagement — a survey and NPS platform, its dashboard, and AutomatiQ, the builder that turned a response into an action.
- Owned the visual language of the product, mobile and web.
- Designed AutomatiQ end to end — the process list, the trigger cards, the condition editor and the actions they fire.
- Prototyped UX/UI improvements that shipped to production.
Ideaware
Senior UX/UI Designer
UX/UI design for international clients at a remote-first agency — wireframes, UI kits and prototypes for web and mobile, and then the Qrvey account, which I was promoted onto and led.
- Wireframes, UI kits and prototypes delivered developer-ready across web and mobile.
- A new domain on every engagement — the multi-domain fluency that later made systems work feel natural.
- Pool Botball — an iOS app for pool chemistry monitoring, designed screen by screen.
Earlier
Smartbiz SolutionsJunior UI Designer
First UI role. Interface design for web and mobile client projects, and the first time I worked inside a shared component library instead of one-off screens.
FreelanceGraphic & Interface Designer
Independent graphic and interface design for local clients — brand systems, print and early web work.
Skills
Product
Product direction, Design thinking, User research & surveys, User journeys, User flows, A/B testing, Wireframing, Prototyping
Design systems
Tokens & foundations, Component libraries, Governance, Documentation, UI kits, Atomic design, Cross-platform parity
Engineering
TypeScript & JavaScript, React & Next.js, Node.js, Automated testing, PWA & service workers, IndexedDB, Content Security Policy, Git
AI in the build
Prototyping in code with AI, Generative UI, LLM-driven flows, Prompt-driven design audits, Structured tool calls, On-device and privacy constraints
Platforms
iOS, Android, Web, Responsive, Web & app interactions, No-code tools
Tools
- Figma
- Claude
- Gemini
Design
Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Illustrator, Photoshop, Balsamiq, InVision, Marvel, Spline, Webflow
Code
Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub, Storybook
AI
Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Midjourney
Collaboration
Jira, Notion