I help teams figure out what to build, then help build it.
For early-stage teams with a hard product problem and no obvious answer. I find the direction, prove it in working software, and help ship it — before months of engineering go the wrong way.
Your tech isn't the problem. The product around it is.
Smart engineers. A real technical foundation. A product people believe in. But somewhere between the technology and the user, it gets complicated. Onboarding asks too much. The workflow needs explaining. And every wrong call gets more expensive once engineering starts building.
I don't specialize in industries. I specialize in complexity.
Autonomous vehicles, financial products, developer tools, AI. Underneath, they're the same problem — complex systems where people make consequential decisions and have to trust what they're looking at. Learning the domain is the easy part. Building the model that makes it usable is the work, and it transfers everywhere.
Start with the problem, not the screen.
Map the complexity
Before Figma, I map the workflows, decisions, and constraints that make the product hard.
Get specific
Not everything at once. We find the few things that matter most and focus the work there.
Design with the team
It has to work for users, and inside the technical reality of the company.
Leave the team stronger
The goal isn't a dependency on a consultant. It's clarity and systems you keep building from.
Every one started unclear.
| # | Year | Domain | Project | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 2020–now | Consulting | R. Gelb Creative. Lead product strategy and UX architecture for B2B clients across AI, fintech, and data platforms. 0-to-1 MVPs, discovery through engineering handoff. | Founder |
| 02 | 2025–26 | Fintech · compliance | Tax Guardian. Obligation made legible in a rules-heavy domain. Built through R. Gelb Creative. | Principal product designer |
| 03 | 2025 | AI / LLM | MailSynth. A Gemini-based email assistant. Onboarding, summarisation, and automation for non-technical users with high-volume inboxes. | Principal product designer |
| 04 | 2026 | Consumer · fishing | ReelCaster: fishing forecast. Built with the founder — I designed it, implemented the front-end, and built the design system. A dozen tabs of conditions and regulations reduced to one score. | Design & front-end |
| 05 | 2023–25 | Enterprise SaaS | Imply: Polaris platform. Product architecture for Custom Projects. Ingestion monitoring, access control, billing, authentication, and admin tooling. | Principal product designer |
| 06 | 2020–22 | Autonomous vehicles | Zoox: fleet scheduling. Ten steps across three tools became one. | Lead product designer |
| 07 | 2019–21 | Ads platform | Google: AdMob. Delivery and reporting for publishers monetising mobile inventory. | Lead product designer |
| 08 | 2018 | Consumer fintech | Citi: Simple Savings, iOS. Projection-first vs goal-first, tested head to head with real customers. | Senior product designer |
Want the thinking behind any of these?
Ask me about itAI didn't change what I think about.
It changed how fast I can be right.
The biggest change isn't faster design work — it's faster learning. I can test a product direction in working software and find the weak assumptions before engineering commits months to the wrong one.
Most recently, a tool for my own work: an agent that reads a client's repo and flags where the shipped UI has drifted from the design tokens — the quiet rot that turns a design system into a suggestion. Most teams hand off a system and hope; this one checks.
R. Gelb Creative works with a few teams
at a time.
Founding teams and small product orgs, roughly pre-seed through Series B, usually where the domain is hard and the stakes of getting it wrong are high. I take a small number of engagements on purpose — I'd rather be genuinely inside a product than adjacent to five of them.
Product strategy & definition
When the opportunity is clear but the product isn't.
You leave with a written product thesis and a prioritized build order.
Embedded product partner
When you need the direction and someone to execute it.
Definition, design, and prototypes moving into production alongside your team.
AI-native product development
When you need to know the direction holds before engineering commits.
Working prototypes and experiments, built in code, not slides.
Most engagements start with the first two weeks.
Start thereNot every product problem is mine.
- You have an idea, but don't know what the first version should be.
- The product is technically complex and the experience isn't landing.
- You have engineers, but no senior product design leadership.
- You need extra UI production capacity.
- You need a large design team to manage.
- You have a settled strategy and just need screens.
- You're looking for a branding agency.
I like difficult products.
I've spent the last eleven years working on products where complexity is unavoidable. Autonomous vehicle operations at Zoox. Advertising systems at Google. Financial products at Citi. Enterprise infrastructure at Imply.
I care less about deliverables and more about helping teams make better product decisions.
US patent — autonomous-vehicle dispatch queuing, from the Zoox work.
Rochester Institute of Technology, BS Media Arts & Technology. General Assembly UX immersive.
Tell me what's unclear.
A product idea. A workflow nobody understands. A roadmap decision. A feature that's stalled. A domain that's too complex.
You probably don't need more design capacity. You need someone who can figure out what the product should be.
Now
Running R. Gelb Creative: partnering with founding teams and product orgs, from first direction to shipped product.
Open to a few new engagements.
Elsewhere
- New York City
- EU and US business hours