Hey! I'm Ignacio ✌
I've been an avid gamer since I was a kid, and I was never drawn to the easy ones. I wanted the games with knotty systems and puzzles that made me sit with a problem for days. That's what sent me to study Multimedia and Interactivity in Ecuador, because I figured if I loved those challenges that much, I should learn to build them.
Somewhere along the way I realized it wasn't really the games I loved. It was the solving. So I started turning toward UX and product design, taking every game-design lesson I could get my hands on and applying it to my own projects until it clicked. I was lucky that my degree already had classes pointing that direction, so the shift felt less like a detour and more like the road I'd been on.
My first design job was at Ecuador's biggest bank, where I started as a trainee and poured everything I had into it, because I'd found the thing. I love solving problems, but I've always been an empathetic person too, and design turned out to be the place where both of those live at once: solving problems to help people.
That's still the drive. Along the way I learned to aim it at business goals too, which is what turns good intentions into work that actually ships. I've just finished a master's in Digital Media with an HCI focus, I'm doing research at UCF, and I'm ready for what's next: helping people get where they're going through the systems they use every day.
Education
Master in Digital Media, HCI focus
University of Central Florida · 2026
Bachelor's in Multimedia and Interactivity
Universidad San Francisco de Quito
Experience
Where I've done the work
Six years of it, from front-end builds to a bank serving millions. Pick a stretch to see what happened there.
Front-End Developer
Built production web interfaces alongside the dev team, working in HTML, CSS, React and Tailwind. It's where I learned what a design actually costs once it hits code, which is still why my handoffs go smoothly.
UI/UX Designer
Designed across the bank's web and mobile products for millions of customers: rebuilding onboarding and payment flows, reshaping the information architecture through a CMS migration, and running the research (interviews, branch visits, analytics) that pointed the work in the right direction. I also grew and documented the design system so the rest of the team could move faster.
Graduate Research Assistant
Researching human-computer interaction under the Nicholson School of Communication and Media, focused on interactive media and digital experience design. I support literature reviews, research synthesis, and preparation of work for academic publication.
What I bring
How I show up on a team
01
I'll raise my hand
I'm not afraid to say so when I disagree, because caring about the quality of the work means asking the uncomfortable questions out loud. Usually it comes down to two: does this really solve the issue? and is this even the problem we should be solving?
02
I think in systems
Experience has taught me that small fixes, patches, and one-off screens get more expensive over time, because none of it is reusable. So I go for the root cause and try to build something that holds up: a solution that answers this problem and the next one that looks like it.
03
I design for people, not users
Everything we ship ends up in the hands of a person with their own desires, needs, and limits. I work to give those people a genuinely good experience, I avoid dark patterns wherever I can, and I keep talking with the business so everyone stays clear on who we're designing for and what they actually need.
How I work
My design process
It bends to the project, but it always moves through the same five places, and it doesn't end at handoff.
- DiscoveryTalk to users, the business, and whoever holds the context.Gather the data and constraints before proposing anything.
- DefinitionSynthesize the findings into the actual problem worth solving.Agree on what success looks like and how we'll know.
- DesignExplore flows and interfaces, then prototype the promising ones.Validate with real people and iterate on what breaks.
- HandoffDocument states, edge cases, and the reasoning behind them.Stay close to engineering through build and QA.
- MeasureWatch analytics and feedback against the success metrics.Feed what we learn back into the next round.
Beyond design
I'm a food, animal, and book lover (sci-fi and fantasy especially)…and a geek to the bones. Want to swap anime recommendations or debate the best ramen spot? Reach out on LinkedIn, or send me an email.
