About

Hi, I'm Aaron Engel.

Senior Product Designer focused on AI-driven health and behavioral products. I've architected UX for global enterprise platforms at Abbott Nutrition, led reporting strategy inside a Fortune 100 insurer, practiced as a licensed clinical mental health counselor, and shipped a live AI wellness app to iOS and Android as its only designer.

Aaron Engel

What I Do

I'm often brought into projects that feel fragmented, overly complex, or difficult to move forward. My role is to create clarity, both in the product and across the team.

  • Breaking down complex workflows into intuitive experiences
  • Identifying what matters most to users and the business
  • Establishing structure through reusable patterns and systems
  • Designing solutions that can evolve as products grow

My background in counseling shaped how I approach UX. I listen carefully, look for underlying patterns, and focus on understanding problems before jumping to solutions. That perspective carries through everything I design.

How I Work

I approach design as both a systems problem and a human problem.

  • I think in systems, not just screens
  • I prioritize clarity over novelty
  • I use data, research, and real constraints to guide decisions
  • I design with implementation in mind, not just ideal states

Design Systems & Scalability

Across my work, I consistently establish reusable components, tokenized styles, and shared patterns that improve consistency and reduce friction between design and development. Rather than treating design systems as standalone deliverables, I build them alongside real products, ensuring they're practical, adaptable, and grounded in actual use.

Experience

  • Cardinal Point Marketing

    Senior Product Designer

    Product and UX strategy across engagements: zero-to-one launches, growth optimization, and data-informed decisions in ambiguous environments. Founded and shipped Fittra Wellness to iOS and Android.

  • Cardinal Point Counseling

    Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor

    Clinical practice in motivation, trust, and decision-making. The foundation for how I design behavior-change products.

  • Nationwide Financial

    Business Lead (Product Consultant)

    Led cross-functional product delivery across engineering, QA, UX, and business stakeholders. Influenced UX strategy across enterprise initiatives totaling $23M+.

  • Abbott Nutrition

    UX/UI Architect

    Designed the Retail Shelf platform for global inventory visibility. Directed an offshore engineering team of eight developers and led a legacy platform migration to Salesforce.

  • BMW Financial

    Domain Application Architect

    Owned a major business domain, setting the roadmap and the key architecture and design decisions within it.

  • Ohio Department of Health

    UX Architect

    Worked with cross-functional teams to rapidly prototype website functionality and ship a public-facing product.

Full résumé, with dates

Capabilities

Research & Strategy

  • User Research
  • Usability Testing
  • Information Architecture
  • Jobs-to-be-Done
  • Competitive Analysis

Interaction Design

  • Wireframing
  • Prototyping
  • Interaction Modeling
  • Accessibility (WCAG)
  • Responsive Design

Visual & Systems Design

  • Design Systems
  • Design Tokens
  • Component Libraries
  • High-Fidelity UI
  • Motion Design

Tools

  • Figma
  • FigJam
  • Storybook
  • Miro
  • Jira
  • GitHub

Working with AI

I actively use AI to accelerate workflows, explore ideas, and reduce repetitive work. But I treat it as a tool, not a decision-maker. Strong UX still comes from understanding users, defining the right problems, and making thoughtful tradeoffs. AI helps move faster, but it doesn't replace that responsibility.

What I'm Looking For

I do my best work where the designer is expected to own the outcome, not just the handoff. That usually means early, ambiguous problems and a small team that needs someone to define the thing and then ship it.

  • Zero-to-one products, where the designer defines the thing and then ships it
  • Health, behavior change, and AI products, where understanding the domain changes the design
  • Complex, ambiguous problems that need structure before they need screens
  • UX strategy engagements where the hard part is alignment, not the interface

I've shipped a live product to both app stores as the only designer, and I've aligned six teams inside a Fortune 100 insurer with no authority over any of them. Those are the two things I'm looking to keep doing. Full-time, contract, or advisory.

Let's talk