Martin Figueroa-Ramirez

DESIGNING THROUGH AMBIGUITY AT SCALE

Product craft · Design systems · End-to-end delivery

Good design is still good business

I turn business problems into design direction and lead with an obsessive attention to craft.

As a former founder and front-end developer, my product judgment has been sharpened by years of operating at different levels of zoom.

  • 15 Years building products & experiences
  • 14M+ Monthly active users on products I designed at Capital One
  • 10+ Designers I coached through promotion (including 2 into management)
  • $600M+ Business impact across the products I've led
Capital One Business case study cover

01

Designing Capital One's first true business platform

Design Lead

A vision for how Capital One could serve small business owners, and how I proved that vision was worth building.

Pattern Directory case study cover

02

Building a system to speed up the DBX design team

Design Systems Lead

Designers were spending most of their time correcting inconsistencies instead of solving client problems. I led the work to fix that.

Dynamic Purchasing Power patent case study cover

03

Inventing a new way to see purchasing power

Design Lead, Inventor

Customers read a card with no preset spending limit as having no limit at all. I led the team that imagined a future where that data could be projected onto your card in AR.

Link to US Patent

Other projects

Nike

Visual design

Partnered with Nike's in-house team to develop illustrations that carried the brand's visual language into retail spaces and merchandise.

Balti-Virtual

AR app & Web app

UI design and front-end development for a Baltimore start-up building virtual and augmented reality products.

Current Tense

Brand & Product strategy

Brand and product strategy for a contemporary art and lifestyle collective launching their flagship digital publication.

Lost Bots

Brand & NFT Web app

Lead for an experimental NFT product using AI-native workflows to build an interactive graphic novel.

Planet 3

Web portal & Web game

Redesigned a game-based learning platform alongside the engineering and art production teams.

Steeze

iOS app

Product design lead for an image, GIF, and video editor app making text messaging with friends more animated.

Boomerang

Hardware & Web

Design partner across hardware and digital for a phone accessory startup, which raised $600K+ in seed funding.

Leadership highlights

I'm thankful to have earned the trust to build up so many people around me.

  • Founded a design studio and led a team of 5+ creatives for 7 years

  • Grew an initiative from 1 designer to a multi-team workstream at Capital One

  • Coached 10+ designers through promotion, 2 into lead roles

  • Mentored 30+ external designers, pro bono (on-going)

  • Ran weekly craft critique for 20+ designers

  • Interviewed 40+ candidates for product design roles at Capital One

  • Created the "Get Figgy With It" Figma skills workshop

  • Onboarded 50+ designers onto Figma at Capital One

  • Nominated into the Gravity Coalition, the team that shaped Capital One's design system

  • Led the team that patented a method for detecting malicious activity (USPTO 2026)
  • Earned a US Patent for a method of visualizing dynamic purchasing power (USPTO 2024)

  • Earned Capital One's Epic Hero award for transformational leadership in design (2025)

  • Earned Capital One's Rock It award for exceptional craft quality (2024)

  • Guest speaker, Design Community of Practice at Capital One (2024)

  • Guest speaker, UMBC Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship (2015, 2012)