Product Design Leader

Gabriel Novais.

I build design organizations that ship

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Design is strategy
made visible.

I'm a Head of Design with 20+ years across design, advertising, and product strategy. Currently at TownSq (Associa ecosystem), building a design-driven culture on a platform serving 9.5M+ residents across North America. Previously in design leadership at TradersClub and Binance.

I've worked across Brazil, the US, and Australia, in Fintech, PropTech, EdTech, and B2B/B2C — leading teams through critical redesigns, AI integration, and NPS transformations.

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Years in design & product strategy

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Designers led across teams

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People reached across the ecosystem

Systems over screens

Great design scales through consistent systems, not one-off solutions.

Discovery is ongoing

Continuous Discovery keeps teams close to users and away from expensive assumptions.

Impact over craft

Beautiful work that doesn't move the needle is decoration. I ship for outcomes.

AI amplifies humans

I integrate AI into design workflows to multiply team capacity, not replace judgment.

Cases that moved the needle.

Featured Case AI Integration Design Leadership Process Design

AI in the UX Process
From mechanical work to judgment work.

Architected and rolled out Claude — Skills, MCPs and Agents — across every phase of TownSq's UX process, from discovery to handoff. Presented to leadership at the TSQ-X event; now the framework the whole design team operates against.

10–14× faster interview synthesis
10+ skills in active rotation
1 agent fully automated, live in production
Read the full case →
NPS Monthly Agent dashboard, generated automatically by Claude
Featured Case Product Discovery AI Integration UX Strategy

AI Suggested Reply
It's not just AI. It's AI with purpose.

Data-driven discovery pointed to TownSq's most painful high-volume feature — Requests — and AI became the answer: context-aware draft responses that help managers reply faster and better, for 9.5M+ residents.

89% faster manager response times
+50% NPS in communities using enhanced Requests
−30% support tickets for lost or missed requests
Read the full case →
The gate light has been broken for two weeks. Who is handling this?
AI Suggested Reply Hi! Your request #4821 was assigned to maintenance yesterday — the repair is scheduled for Thursday. I'll keep you posted here.
UX Strategy Research Cross-functional

NPS Program
From noise to signal

Built TownSq's NPS program from the ground up — 9 active surveys across US, Brazil, and Canada, cross-referenced with Voice-of-Customer data to turn scattered feedback into executive-level product intelligence.

Outcome Usability complaints down 126 → 27 mentions; flagship survey up 11 NPS points year over year
Read the full case →
NPS ↑
Product Discovery Process Design Leadership
Interview
Insight
Opportunity
Solution

Continuous Discovery
Weekly cadence, constant clarity

Introduced and scaled Continuous Discovery across TownSq product teams — from occasional research sprints to a weekly rhythm of user contact that feeds every design decision, including interviews that convert detractors into promoters.

Outcome Teams shipping with higher confidence and fewer costly pivots
Read the full case →
Process Quality Team Development
✓ Visual consistency
✓ Interaction states
⚠ Accessibility contrast
✓ Edge cases covered

Design Review System
Quality at every gate

A structured Design Review process that raises the quality bar across all product areas without slowing teams down — critique as a team sport for designers, PMs, and developers.

Outcome Higher design quality scores and accelerated designer growth
Read the full case →

How I build
design teams.

"The best design leaders don't just make great products — they create environments where great designers can do the best work of their lives."
01

Coaching over doing

I invest in growing designers through 1:1s, feedback, and stretch assignments — not by taking over their problems.

02

Process as leverage

Good rituals — review, critique, discovery — are the infrastructure that lets teams operate at high quality without heroics.

03

Radical candor

Direct feedback, delivered with care. I have the hard conversations early so teams don't waste time on misaligned assumptions.

04

Cross-functional trust

Design earns influence through partnership. I align closely with Product, Engineering, and Operations to make design strategically relevant.

Let's build something
worth noticing.

Open to conversations about design leadership roles, advisory, and collaborations that matter.