About me

I'm a Senior Product Designer with nine years of experience across fintech, crypto banking, and digital asset products. I've worked at companies including Absa Bank, JP Morgan, and a regulated Swiss digital asset bank. Before moving into product design, I spent five years at digital agencies working on brands like Nike, Mini Cooper, and Pringles.

I've spent most of the last nine years on the hard problems: compliance-driven onboarding, KYC flows, trust-critical moments, the parts of financial products that most designers avoid because they're not glamorous.

I don't think about UX and UI as separate disciplines. Visual design is part of the experience. Brand is part of the experience. The logic, the flow, the copy, the colour — it all lands on the same user at the same moment. I care about the whole thing, not just my slice of it.

I care about DeFi and regulated financial design because I believe that when people genuinely understand their finances and have access to good tools, they make better decisions. Financial empowerment isn't abstract to me — it's the reason the work matters.

I'm not obsessed with design trends or the latest tools. I'm obsessed with whether something actually works for the person using it. I'd rather talk about where a product is going than what typeface it uses.

I'm Afrikaans, a husband, a dad of two, and I'm moving back to South Africa in August after several years in the UK. I work remotely and always have. I'll greet you in your own language if I know it, because there's nothing better than being spoken to in yours.

If you want to talk about the work, the vision for a product, or what financial design looks like in a decentralised future, I'm in.

CV available on request — hello@ricosmith.design