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.