Lena Quintero — Director of Design
Portland, OR
Design leader with twelve years in product design, the last five running teams. Grew a four-person team to sixteen across three product groups and stood up the research and design-system practice behind an onboarding redesign that took seven-day activation from 38% to 64%. Still reviews every portfolio that comes through the hiring loop.
Experience
Director of Design, Ardenfield Software · February 2023 – present
Sixteen designers, researchers and content designers across three product groups; reports to the Chief Product Officer.
- Grew the team from four to sixteen on a hiring loop built around a scored portfolio review; 15 of the 16 are still in post after two years.
- Led the onboarding redesign across three products, taking activation within seven days from 38% to 64% and adding $4.1M in annual recurring revenue.
- Replaced three divergent UI kits with one design system; a screen now goes from brief to build in four days rather than eleven, and accessibility defects fell 78%.
- Stood up the research practice the company had never had; 62 studies in two years now sit behind every item on the quarterly plan.
- Wrote a six-level career framework with expectations in plain language; eight designers have been promoted against it and attrition sits at 6%.
Design Manager, Ardenfield Software · May 2021 – January 2023
- Managed seven designers on billing and admin while still designing the permissions model, which cut support escalations about account access by 54%.
- Introduced a weekly critique with written decisions; rework after engineering handoff fell from 3.2 rounds to 1.1.
- Ran the first accessibility program, taking the flagship product to WCAG 2.1 AA across 180 screens in nine months.
Lead Product Designer, Silverbrook Labs · March 2018 – April 2021
- Designed the analytics workspace that became the company’s best-selling module, reaching $9M in annual revenue in its second year.
- Cut the time an analyst needed to build a report from 22 minutes to six by replacing a six-step wizard with a direct-manipulation canvas.
- Led a five-designer team before the title existed and wrote the interview rubric the company still hires against.
Product Designer, Tallow and Pike · August 2014 – February 2018
- Designed 11 client products across fintech, logistics and retail; four are still shipping the interface as drawn.
- Built the agency’s first shared component library, taking the setup of a new client project from two weeks to three days.
Education
- B.A. Graphic Design · University of Oregon · September 2010 – June 2014
Skills
- Leadership: Hiring and onboarding, Career frameworks, Coaching and performance, Roadmap partnership, Design operations
- Craft: Product strategy, Interaction design, Design systems, Content design, Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA)
- Research: Discovery planning, Usability testing, Experiment design, Analytics review
- Tools: Figma, Storybook, Dovetail, Amplitude, Linear
