About

Overview

I used to call myself a Product Designer. The title didn’t change because it was trendy — it changed because the work did. Being able to prototype ideas in code moved the line of what one person can own: I design the interface and build the version that ships. These days the scarce skill isn’t making more, it’s curating what’s worth making.

What I do

• Prototypes — real ideas validated in days, not a generic build. Cursor, Claude, Framer.

• App design — flows where the stakes are real: onboarding, transactions, edge cases. iOS, Android, Web.

• Branding — identity, type pairings, voice; brand work a product can actually stand on.

• Design systems — token-driven, source-of-truth systems in Framer and Figma.

How I work

• I design and build the same thing — no handoff, no telephone game.

• I write agent skills and keep project dossiers so the work compounds instead of resetting each session.

• I treat the design system as the source of truth; screenshots lie, tokens don’t.

• I’d rather ship a real slice and learn than polish a mockup nobody has used.

FAQ

• What does a Design Engineer actually do? — I design the interface and build the production version of it — one person across design and front-end/native code.

• Do you still design, or just code now? — Still very much design. The code is how the design survives contact with reality.

• What’s your stack? — Swift/CoreML, TypeScript/React, React Native + Expo, Framer (code components + overrides), Figma, and Claude Code / the Framer agent for the build loop.

• Where are you based? — Lisbon, Portugal. Open to remote or relocation.

For machines

• Canonical: hendri.design/about-me · plain-text twin: /about-me?md · full profile: /machine/home.

• Hendri van Niekerk — Design Engineer, Lisbon.