I'm Arthur Katz, a product design leader working at the intersection of AI, product strategy, and very human interfaces.
I currently lead product design at a stealth startup, where I design AI-native workflows that help marketing teams get real work done - not just stare at another impressive demo.
My work usually starts where things are still messy: early product ideas, unclear workflows, emerging user needs, complex systems, or ambitious products that need to become simple enough to understand, trust, and use.
I've been designing for a long time. Long enough to remember when design forums were basically social networks, and young enough at the time to think spending hours on logos, signatures, and web layouts was a completely normal way to be thirteen.
It turned out to be a useful obsession.
How I got here
I got into design when I was 13, through online design forums that felt like the center of the internet at the time. I started with branding and web design, then slowly found my way into real client work - companies, freelancers, side projects, and anyone who needed something to look and work better.
After my army service, I studied Visual Communication at HIT. I graduated with an A+ on my final project, then moved deeper into product design - UX, UI, systems, flows, research, business goals, user needs, and all the blurry space between them.
Since then, I've worked as a freelancer, Lead UX/UI Designer at Twik, Head of Product Design at a stealth startup, and across projects involving design systems, onboarding, AI UX, product strategy, and early-stage product definition.
The tools changed. The problems got bigger. The part I enjoy most stayed the same: taking something unclear and turning it into something people can actually use.
What I do
I design products that need more than a clean interface.
The kind of work I'm usually drawn to has layers: a business goal, a user need, a workflow, a technical constraint, a team that needs alignment, and a product experience that has to make all of it feel obvious.
That might mean designing a 0 to 1 product concept, reshaping onboarding, building a design system, prototyping an AI workflow, mapping a complex user journey, or turning a vague product direction into a concrete experience the team can react to.
I'm comfortable working early, when things are still undefined. Actually, I like that part. The ambiguity is usually where the most important design decisions are hiding.
My approach
Less is more, more or less
I believe in simplicity, but not the decorative kind.
Good design is not always about removing things. Sometimes it is about revealing the right things, in the right order, at the right level of detail. Sometimes a product needs fewer options. Sometimes it needs better hierarchy. Sometimes it needs one more sentence so the user can trust what is happening.
So yes, less is more. More or less.
Design thinking, but make it practical
I believe in design thinking, empathy, and deeply understanding users. I also believe in moving quickly when the situation calls for it.
Sometimes the right move is research, mapping, and careful validation. Sometimes it is a quick and dirty prototype that gets everyone out of a meeting and into an actual product conversation.
The trick is knowing which mode the team needs right now.
Pixel perfect until it stops hurting
I care about craft. Layout, spacing, hierarchy, copy, interaction details, motion, system logic - all of it matters.
But I do not believe in polishing the wrong thing forever. Quality matters most when it serves clarity, usability, trust, and the product's actual purpose.
Business goals should meet real user needs
I like breaking down business objectives until they become something a user can feel.
A metric by itself is not a design brief. A user pain point by itself is not a business strategy. The best product work happens when the two meet: when the business gets what it needs because the user gets something genuinely better.
Not every opportunity starts as a problem
A lot of design language is built around "solving problems." I use that too, because it is often true.
But sometimes the work is not about fixing something broken. Sometimes it is about spotting an opportunity: a new behavior, a new capability, a new workflow, a new way for a product to create value.
That is especially true in AI products, where the question is not only "what problem are we solving?" but also "what is now possible that was not possible before?"
The kind of problems I like
I like product problems that require systems thinking, empathy, taste, and a clear point of view.
Especially:
- turning early product ideas into something concrete
- designing AI experiences that feel understandable and trustworthy
- making complex workflows feel guided instead of overwhelming
- building design systems that help teams move faster without flattening the product
- improving onboarding so people reach value sooner
- translating business goals into user-facing product decisions
- creating prototypes that help teams align, argue better, and move forward
- finding the simple structure inside a messy product space
I like when design is not just asked to make something look good, but to help figure out what the thing should be.
Experience
Stealth startup
Head of Product Design
I currently lead product design at a stealth startup focused on AI workflows for marketing teams.
My work spans product strategy, UX direction, interaction models, prototyping, design systems, and AI-native workflow design. A big part of the challenge is making AI feel less like a black box and more like a capable teammate: something users can brief, guide, inspect, correct, trust, and use inside real work.
This includes designing how users start from a workflow, provide missing context, understand what the AI is planning, follow execution, review outputs, and stay in control without having to micromanage every step.
Twik
Lead UX/UI Designer
At Twik, I worked on product design across personalization, optimization, onboarding, and user experience challenges.
My role combined UX thinking, UI craft, product judgment, and systems work - helping turn a powerful technical product into clearer, more usable experiences.
Freelance
Branding, web design, UX/UI, and product work
Before formal product roles, I worked independently with companies, freelancers, and teams on branding, websites, interfaces, and product experiences.
That freelance period shaped a lot of how I work today: being self-directed, moving fast, understanding client and business needs, communicating clearly, and learning how to make design useful beyond the visual layer.
Design values
Clarity is a feature
If people cannot understand what the product does, what changed, what happens next, or why they should trust it, the design is not done.
I care a lot about clarity - in flows, layout, copy, hierarchy, system behavior, and product storytelling.
Empathy is not decoration
Empathy is not a sticky note exercise. It is the difference between designing from inside the company's assumptions and designing from the user's reality.
That does not mean the user is always right. It means the product needs to meet people where they actually are.
Systems should make better work easier
A good design system is not just a component library. It is a shared way to make decisions.
The best systems help teams move faster, maintain quality, and avoid solving the same problem in ten slightly different ways.
Good design reduces unnecessary thinking
I'm heavily influenced by Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen's approach to usability: products should match how people think, behave, notice, recover, and decide.
That does not mean everything has to be boring. It means the product should spend its complexity budget carefully.
Taste matters, but reasoning matters more
I care about visual quality, but I care just as much about being able to explain why something works.
Strong product design is not only a matter of taste. It is taste supported by structure, context, tradeoffs, and judgment.
Outside of work
Outside of product work, music is probably the closest thing I have to a second design practice.
I love a wide range of music, studied music production for two years, play guitar, and maintain Apple Music playlists with a level of care that is probably unnecessary but feels completely justified.
When I was younger, I played in a few bands. Some of them even did pretty well. At one point, a fan got a tattoo of our logo - which I designed - so technically my work has shipped on skin.
I also love cinema, enjoy binge-watching TV with my partner Golda, and try to exercise five or six times a week. Usually spinning at home, because apparently sitting in Figma all day does not count as cardio.
I'm always happy to connect with people building interesting products, exploring new ideas, or testing something early.
Especially if it involves AI, product design, design systems, messy workflows, ambitious prototypes, or an alpha that probably should not be public yet but is already fun to try.