Alexander Kempf

Product Designer

+

MHCID

+

Army Veteran

I design software that anticipates friction + builds trust in complex, 0-to-1 products.

TL;DR

5+ years in product design & living in Orange County, CA

+ Master of Human-Computer Interaction & Design (MHCID)

+ U.S. Army Distinguished Honor Graduate.

Former graphic designer with 8+ years of total design experience. Previously at Pulse Labs AI where I led the design of research products used every day by teams at Google, Amazon, Rivian, Volvo, and more. I love being a product designer.

DESIGN APPROACH

Radical user empathy

+ Deep systems thinking

‍+ Ego-free collaboration.

I turn hard, complex product problems into intuitive experiences by proactively championing the user. I protect their goals and safety as if they’re my own and collaboratively design solutions with the entire system in mind, without pursuing personal credit. A great UX always follows.

MOTIVATIONS

Propelling humanity forward with good design

+ Growing as a designer & leader.

I believe design is best used to solve the world's most important problems. If that resonates, let's talk.

CURRENTLY

Freelancing

+ Teaching my son to count to 20 30.

I like 3D printing, horror stories, running, and cooking.

EXPERIENCE

Product Designer, Freelance

March 2025 – Present

  • Advised startup founders on UX strategy, turning ambiguous business requirements into user-first roadmaps, and led design of mobile and web MVPs with smoother onboarding to build early-adopter trust.

Product Designer, Pulse Labs AI

January 2022 – March 2025

  • Owned end-to-end design across an AI-enabled B2B SaaS research platform, from journey mapping, user flows, and prototyping to developer handoff, shipping responsive, multi-user workflows and dashboards used by Google, Amazon, Rivian, Volvo, and more.

  • Designed, prototyped, and shipped a 0-to-1 video player for research analysis with Google's Android Auto team, shaping it through client discovery and prototype feedback. Adopted at scale by research teams on Android Auto (250M+ cars), Gemini (1B+ monthly users), and Amazon Alexa (600M+ devices), it surfaced deeper insights and saved dozens of hours per study.

  • Introduced Pulse Labs' first AI feature, a self-serve participant recruiting tool built for transparency, flexibility, and trust, saving internal teams hundreds of hours on high-stakes studies for big tech and automaker clients.

  • Led the redesign of mobile study recording and its underlying systems, sharply cutting support tickets, dropouts, and rejected study data to save hundreds of support hours and boost client satisfaction.

  • Facilitated discovery and validation workshops, requirements sessions, and demos to align leadership, stakeholders, and cross-functional teams in an Agile environment.

  • Established a scalable design system and component library with design tokens and documentation that improved design consistency and sped up engineering implementation.

  • Championed accessibility (WCAG) and mentored peers in design workflows and systems thinking.

UX Design Intern, J.P. Morgan

March 2021 – August 2021

  • Evaluated InstaMed, J.P. Morgan's healthcare payments software, through heuristic review, stakeholder interviews, and user testing, delivering a user-validated redesign concept.

Healthcare Specialist, U.S. Army

April 2016 – May 2017

  • Managed readiness and movement coordination for 100+ soldiers in Advanced Individual Training. Earned the Distinguished Honor Graduate award for excellence in leadership, fitness, academics, and marksmanship. Medically and honorably retired.

EDUCATION

Master of Human-Computer Interaction & Design (MHCID), UC Irvine

August 2020 – August 2021

Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art, UC Irvine

August 2011 – August 2014

SKILLS

UX design

UI design

Wireframing

High-fidelity prototyping

AI-assisted prototyping

Design systems

Systems thinking

User empathy

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

User research

Usability testing

Figma

Claude Code

Adobe Creative Cloud

Webflow

HTML

CSS

Unity