Monteon logo

Joel Monteón

Product Designer

I'm a Product Designer with 10+ years of experience currently leading Design @MiSalud

Some of the companies I've worked with
Nike logo
Rappi logo
Tec de Monterrey logo
Wallstreet Journal logo
Vividas logo
Banco Base logo
Oovvuu logo

What am I doing now?

Staff Product designer

FULL-TIME

Strategic design leadership
2021- Present

MiSalud is the only telehealth platform that provides immediate and private access to Spanish-speaking doctors through easy-to-use mobile and web applications that are purpose-built to meet the cultural needs of the Hispanic population in the US.

design
As Lead Designer, I have the following responsibilities:

  • Deliver and iterate on hi-fi mocks for our engineering team
  • Lead and participate in design critique sessions
  • Lead Design QA sessions
  • Design the design process
  • Define and manage design tools
  • Encourage the creative use of Design Principles and existing visual frameworks to produce new and consistent designs
  • Encourage the creative use of Design Principles and existing visual frameworks to produce new and consistent designs
  • Provide design direction and mentor other designers in the team

Product
I'm also playing a hybrid design-product role, overseeing design work but also:

  • Shaping and adapting a truly agile design-development framework: removing the overhead typical scrum ceremonies and tools added to our process to allow our team to collaborate more, work autonomously, and deliver value incrementally and often
  • Being the connective tissue between product development and operations teams, ensuring the UX that we provide through our service is consistent with the quality of our product
  • Gathering and providing visibility on data through product metrics and research studies to make product decisions aligned with market trends and user needs
  • Surfacing project and bug-fix priorities, assignations, dependencies, blockers, and progress.

‍My job is to identify and design for our customer's needs and ensure we deliver on time.

MiSalud Mockup
MiSalud Mockup
MiSalud Mockup

Product Designer

Side Project

Hands on designer
2017- Present

Buholá is the tool that allows freelancers to streamline their financial paperwork so they can focus on their craft.

Freelancers in Mexico struggle with

  • Formally closing new projects
  • Taking too much time creating proposals and invoices
  • Getting paid

Buholá allows them to create proposals, follow-up on changes from clients, accept down payments, generate government-certified invoices, and send final deliverables locked against final payments.

UX Research
Generative research to understand market opportunities and user needs – user interviews, contextual inquiries, and personas. Evaluative research to validate product hypotheses and usability – UX metrics analysis, concept testing, and usability testing.

Product Strategy
Definition of features and product increments, competitive analysis, assumption-based experiments, and validation through social media campaigns and user engagement metrics.

Design and development
Interaction design, user interface design, brand and marketing design – user flows, prototypes, hi-fi mockups, brand components, and social media assets.

Front-end development
Responsive web development for the marketing website and application – HTML, CSS, and JS.

3D illustration with a guy working on his computer and a few messages behind, a credit card, and a paid invoice.
Mockup describing a screen for Buholá with an invoice and some files locked upon payment.
Mockup with a proposal from Buholá and the option to pay the downpayment.

Previously

Director of Design

FULL-TIME

Strategic design leadership
2016- 2021

I led a team of 50+ Researchers and Designers at Wizeline, a technology consulting company with offices in SF, Guadalajara, Madrid, and Vietnam.

Pre-sales, staffing, and Delivery
I partnered with our clients to understand their needs, define project plans, assign the best teams, and follow through to the end of the projects making sure our designers have the support to do their best work.

People Development
I created career ladders and growth frameworks for individual contributors and people managers based on a model that was later adopted company-wide, across every other discipline, and for 1200+ Wizeliners.

Team leadership
Along with my team of Design Managers, I defined and tracked team OKRs that were aligned to the company goals and addressed our team needs.

Team growth and Resources
I managed the team's headcount, promotions and bench; ran salary analyses, reported on team's performance, and negotiated better conditions for our designers – salary band updates and budget, tools, and training.

Team Direction
Provided a vision and purpose for the team, communicated new processes, addressed concerns, and made every team or company decisions transparent.

Career

20

20 clients have designed and launched their products into the market.

Product Design Consultant
5

5 different industries, including retail, education, entertainment, health, and news.

UX Strategist Consultant
30

30 design and product strategy workshops with both in-person and remote participants in the US, Australia, and Mexico.

UX Strategist Consultant
20

20+ designers have grown across different levels and roles.

Design Manager
15

15 new designers hired in one year, scaling the team along with our practices and operations.

Design Director

Teaching

Wizeline Academy logo
Lecturer and Mentor

2016 - Present. Active lecturer and mentor for Wizeline Academy,

UX Design for Chatbots
2016. CDMX, Mexico
Lecturer on Interaction Design for conversational interfaces (voice and text).

Lean UX Crash Course
2017. Jalisco, Mexico.
Program Manager and Lecturer on topics such as proto-personas, prototyping, lean user research and experiement-driven design.

intro to ux & UCd
2018. Sonora, Mexico
Lecturer on Research, Interaction Design, and Rapid Prototyping for engineers at Novutek.

From zero to hero
2019. CDMX, Mexico
Lecturer on topics such as Design Leadership, Design Operations, and People Management

UX Certification
2021. Jalisco, Mexico
8-month certification for entry-level students. Lecturer on Design Strategy and Design Management

Tec de Monterrey Logo
Guest Lecturer

Professor of Cognitive Science: User Experience elective course at Tec de Monterrey campus Guadalajara.

JUL 2021 – Present
Misalud
Product Designer

Product Strategy, UX Research, Product Design, and Front-end development for Buholá, the freelancing tool that allows professionals to streamline their paperwork so they can focus on their craft.

APR 2017 – Present
Buholá
Product Designer

Product Strategy, UX Research, Product Design, and Front-end development for Buholá, the freelancing tool that allows professionals to streamline their paperwork so they can focus on their craft.

Dec 2019 – Jun 2021
Wizeline
Director of Design

Coordinate and keep track of team OKR's, provide a vision for the team and work towards it through the projects we bring in, the teams we design for those projects, and the growth opportunities we provide for our people to grow and make our clients successful.

Jul 2018 – Nov 2019
Senior Design Manager

Definition and implementation of frameworks for our team and individuals to grow and get the support needed on their projects – collaborate during pre-sales, coach teams during execution, and hire and onboard new designers in the team.

Jul 2017 – JUN 2018
Design Manager

Coordinate, mentor, and provide growth opportunities for Designers, so they can develop their potential and follow a career ladder that best suits their goals.

Scope, staff and kick off projects while ensuring a User-Centered Design process is presented, approved, and followed. Run strategy and discovery workshops for our clients while following design-thinking and lean methodologies.

Sep 2016 – Jun 2017
UX Designer

UX lead for all chatbot solutions that allowed our clients to automate, reduce costs, and provide an instant and better experience for their end-users. Qualitative Research, UX Strategy, and Product Design for our Chatbots Platform. Design mentor on both technical and non-technical skills, supporting designers' growth through promotion cycles.

may 2015 – Aug 2016
gbox
Product designer

Own and execute on the whole spectrum of research-design activities: user interviews, persona definition, product strategy workshops, interaction, user interface design, and usability studies for Gbox, a B2B platform that allowed content creators to publish and monetize their video content online.

Mar 2013 – Apr 2015
sanmina
User interface designer

User interface design, evaluative research, UI development, and design systems for internal web and mobile applications at Sanmina, a global manufacturing company based in San Jose, CA.