James Kim

About me

Design Engineer ยท Product Designer

Waterloo, ON, Canada

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Profile

Design Engineer and Product Designer with 6+ years of experience turning complex product ideas into clear, production-ready experiences across AI-powered platforms, B2B SaaS products, and enterprise tools. I work across systems, interaction, prototyping, and front-end implementation, partnering closely with engineering, product, and executive stakeholders to carry a high level of craft from concept through launch.

My Design Principles

Deliberate

Design with uncommon care. The willingness to slow down, ask questions, and understand before reaching for answers. To explore, iterate, and invite feedback without ego. Deliberate design is collaboration with conviction. Not about having all the answers, but moving together from chaos to clarity. Staying curious enough to look past the surface. It's how we elevate, by choosing intention over impulse.

Dynamic

Design that carries momentum, not just for the people using it, but for the people building it. Flexible, adaptable, and always in motion. It's the energy of transforming ourselves and those around us for the better. It's how we empower, by creating work that moves people forward.

Dimensional

Depth over surface. Every product, every experience, carries dimensions we haven't explored yet. Dimensional design resists the shallow read, stays curious, considers context, and designs for the whole picture. It means building systems that enrich rather than exploit. It's how we evolve, by scaling with complexity rather than collapsing under it.

How I build with AI

Speed gets me close. Judgment gets it right.

I use AI to close the distance between an idea and a working design. OpenSpec turns intent into clear requirements and decisions before I build. Superpowers gives the work a disciplined rhythm: explore, plan, test, and review. Depending on the problem, that gets me 70–90% toward the vision. The closer I get, the more deliberate I become—refining interaction, language, visual rhythm, edge cases, and production details until the work feels coherent, intentional, and finished.

Experience

Senior Product Designer

May 2026 – Present

Mappedin is an enterprise indoor mapping platform that uses AI to turn building floor plans into interactive, searchable maps, building the digital infrastructure layer for wayfinding, operations, and safety across the world’s most complex venues.

  • Lead designer for a new indoor mapping solution platform, shaping the end-to-end product experience from vision to launch
  • Building a design system that accelerates design-to-development, delivering high craft without compromise
  • First and only designer writing production code, opening PRs and shipping to weekly releases to close the gap between design and engineering and own how the product looks and feels in production

Product Designer

Nov 2022 – May 2026

integrate.ai provides a federated data science platform that lets insurance carriers evaluate external data and models without moving or exposing raw data.

  • Solo designer owning end-to-end product design across all core experiences for an AI/ML platform, directly increasing customer traction through thoughtful UX solutions
  • Designed and shipped AI-driven features by translating product vision into interactive prototypes and demos that communicated value to investors and enterprise customers
  • Established and maintained a scalable design system in Figma, ensuring visual consistency and accelerating development velocity across the product
  • Built go-to-market assets that clearly articulated product positioning, driving prospect conversations and supporting sales enablement
  • Partnered directly with executives, PMs, and engineers to prioritize features, negotiate trade-offs, and ship core product experiences from concept to launch

Designer (Freelance)

Apr 2026 – Present

Mash builds AI knowledge agents for B2B revenue teams, turning fragmented context across tools and conversations into real-time trusted answers.

  • Designing high-impact go-to-market assets including landing pages, pitch materials, and marketing collateral that communicate product value and drive conversion
  • Applying strong visual design craft to elevate brand presence across GTM surfaces, ensuring polished and cohesive visual storytelling
  • Collaborating closely with the product team to align design direction with positioning strategy and business objectives

Product Designer

Aug 2021 – Nov 2022

Red Thread Innovations is a digital innovation studio that helps organizations design, build, and optimize digital products that delight customers and drive business growth.

  • Owned product design for an innovation-focused platform, delivering UI/UX solutions across web and mobile experiences
  • Conducted user research and discovery to inform design decisions, iterating on concepts through prototyping and usability testing
  • Collaborated cross-functionally with engineering and product teams to define requirements, ensure feasibility, and deliver polished features

Jr. Product Designer

Feb 2021 – Aug 2021

Lyncwork offers an employee experience and engagement platform focused on onboarding, real-time engagement insights, and simplified digital workflows.

  • Solo designer responsible for end-to-end product design, establishing the foundational design system that scaled across the entire product suite
  • Partnered with executives, PMs, and engineers to ship core features from concept to launch, contributing to product roadmap and prioritization

Technician / Specialist

Aug 2017 – Feb 2021

Apple Retail delivers in-store shopping, Genius support, and Today at Apple sessions to help customers learn, set up, and get support for Apple products.

  • Diagnosed and resolved complex hardware and software issues, developing strong problem-solving skills and deep empathy for end-user pain points
  • Delivered exceptional customer experiences through clear communication, building trust and understanding of user needs that informed later transition into product design

Skills

Design

Figma, Design Systems, UI/UX, Prototyping, Wireframing, Visual Design, Interaction Design

Product

Product Strategy, Roadmap Prioritization, Customer Discovery, User Research, Usability Testing, GTM Design

Collaboration

Cross-functional Leadership, Stakeholder Communication, Engineering Handoff, Agile/Scrum

AI & Tools

AI-accelerated Workflows, Rapid Prototyping with AI, Data-informed Design

Side Projects

Seed of Encouragement

sowsoe.com

  • Designed and built an AI-powered responsive web app that helps people quickly reframe their mindset when facing challenges or negative thinking patterns
  • Took it from concept to launch in a single weekend, defining a clear use case and a simple, intuitive flow
  • Continuously refined the system prompt to reliably turn a user’s input into simple, clear, and empowering perspectives
  • Designed for real-world edge cases, guiding both the product and the AI to respond with care to unpredictable input, from random words and inappropriate content to moments of genuine distress

Utter

WIP

  • A voice dictation macOS app I am building to create my own customizable workflow instead of being limited by someone else’s product roadmap
  • Designed as a personal AI sandbox where I can prototype and ship custom features quickly as my needs evolve

Education

Graduate Certificate, User Experience Design

2019 – 2020

Humber College · Toronto, ON

Honours Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Psychology

2011 – 2016

University of Waterloo · Waterloo, ON