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The notes I take while researching how AI is changing design. Method, not news.

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I am preparing this book with Casa do Código to help designers and product teams adopt AI without outsourcing judgment. The draft focuses on practical workflow changes, source validation, ethics, and the parts of design that still need human review.

A Casa do Código book in preparation about design, artificial intelligence, and safer team workflows.

Design in the AI Era (in preparation) - Thiago Xikota

Deciding what AI should help with, and what stays human.

Creative direction

Understanding teams, constraints, and workflow risks before choosing tools.

Context mapping

Using AI to organize evidence without inventing confidence.

Research synthesis

Turning intent into testable UI, content, and process drafts.

Prompting and prototyping

Checking provenance, errors, and hallucinations before work ships.

Source validation

Defining guardrails for data, authorship, accessibility, and impact.

Ethics and safety

The outline can still change. These are the questions guiding the work.

Draft themes

A book in preparation about judgment, ethics, and AI workflows for design teams.

Design in the AI Era

I am preparing a Casa do Código book about how designers and product teams can use artificial intelligence with judgment, ethics, and safer workflows.

Design progress

This longform case study is currently maintained in Portuguese.

Impact beyond the screen

I design product experiences in real-scale contexts. A designer since 2019, in product design since 2021, across startups, scale-ups, and public products. I care about accessible, well-resolved interfaces with real business impact.

Interested in working together?

What the research revealed

All my certificates and courses, with filters and search.

Certificates & Courses

For recruiters and interviewers: I can walk through process, decisions, and learnings in a private conversation. Reach out on LinkedIn.

Work in progress, under confidentiality

Working on a product that needs design direction or AI in the workflow? Tell me what you're building.

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Let's talk

One note a month on how designers stay relevant when AI already does the easy work. Method, not news.

Notas de Produto

Mentorship conversation

Speaking invitation

Research collaboration

Product project

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Quick chat

Recent coursework across UX research, accessibility, design systems, AI, and front-end implementation.

EF SET English Certificate (C2 Proficient)

Excel Course

Italian Language Course (Level B2)

Intensive Oratory Course

Design Track

Pixel Init - Introduction to Junior Enterprise

Power BI Course

Selective Process Course

Character Design Workshop

Selected certifications that reinforce research, product thinking, interface systems, and technical fluency.

Courses & Certificates

Completed the Italian Language Course (Level B2) at the Pontifical Lateran University in 2025, strengthening communication skills and cultural fluency during my academic period in Rome.

Pontifical Lateran University: Italian Language Course (Level B2)

Exchange in Applied Computer Science and AI at Sapienza University of Rome, focused on AI systems, research, and the technical foundations behind modern workflows.

Sapienza University of Rome: Exchange in Applied Computer Science and AI

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from UFSC, completed in 2026.

Federal University of Santa Catarina: Computer Science

Completed a year of high school in Vancouver, improving English fluency and experiencing cultural exchange through daily academic life in a Canadian environment.

High School in Vancouver, Canada

Formal training, international study, and continuous learning shaped around product, systems, and implementation.

Education

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Page not found - Thiago Xikota

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If design is the passion, fixing links is the plot twist.

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Chapter Lead of The AI Collective Florianópolis, the first chapter in southern Brazil. I organize local conversations, events, and practical learning about AI for people building with artificial intelligence.

Chapter Lead: The AI Collective Florianópolis

Product Designer for Ministry of Education (MEC) solutions. Redesigned critical journeys for a national education app, utilizing the public design system (DSGov) and scaling libraries.

Product Designer: Laboratório Bridge

Led the UI track, mentoring designers and running workshops and video lessons.

Drove rebranding, partnerships, and events that aligned strategy, execution, and design governance.

UX/UI Designer: Pixel - Soluções Digitais

Sole product designer and Lead Product Designer. Worked on the activation redesign that reduced onboarding abandonment from 50% to 25% and supported growth from 0 to 100 paying clients.

Lead Product Designer: Multidrop

Prior product design work at Wellhub (formerly Gympass), a global corporate wellness platform with around 50 million users across 18 countries. I use that experience to explain how large organizations create messy core problems and how AI helps teams tackle them with more leverage.

Wellhub (formerly Gympass): product design at global scale

A digital product design and build studio: websites, apps, and design systems, from problem to shipped product, with AI agents under human review.

Founder: Xikota Design

Where I've made impact

Curious minds ask

App, web, and admin system for Student Journey and Pé-de-Meia, designed at Laboratório Bridge (UFSC) for Brazil's Ministry of Education.

Public education at national scale

End-to-end journeys in the Wellhub app, formerly Gympass, a corporate wellness platform.

Check-in and booking at global scale

Product design, brand identity, and motion for Yankee, a social network for people tired of the predictable.

A social app designed from the ground up

Xikota Design

and Chapter Lead of

I work from problem to production.

AI Product Engineer and Product Designer with over 7 years of experience. I specify, design, and build digital products with AI agents, always with human direction and review. Computer Science degree from UFSC, with an exchange in Applied Computer Science and AI at Sapienza University of Rome. Founder of

The AI Collective Florianópolis,

Frameworks, methods, vocabulary, references, and prompts I use with teams when AI needs to survive real review.

The AI design library I use in real work

I work from problem to product in production: research, specification, design, and building with AI agents under human review. Founder of Xikota Design, a digital product design and build studio, and Chapter Lead of The AI Collective Florianópolis.

AI Product Engineer, Product Designer, and researcher

Wellhub: Global Wellness Platform

A running log of decisions that improved my product thinking after they first went wrong.

Improving Accessibility Without Changing the Visual Contract

What failed, what changed, and what stuck.

Lessons Learned

Message me on WhatsApp about where you are. Fill in the three fields below and the message arrives ready, or clear everything and write it your way. The brackets are yours: replace them with your context.

I help designers turn ideas and Figma files into real products using AI. Individual sessions, around your problem, at your pace.

1:1 mentorship for designers in the AI era

Sessions are one to one and shaped around your goal. There is no fixed package: the format follows the problem you bring.

Start through the contact form. I am also a mentor on ADPList.

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Thiago Xikota is an AI Product Engineer and Senior Product Designer: he works from problem to product in production, combining research, specification, design and building with AI agents under human review. A researcher at Lemme (UFSC), he published the AIMEDIA 2026 study on Specification Literacy and structural convergence. He is the author of Design na Era da IA, in production with Casa do Código, Chapter Lead of The AI Collective Florianópolis and founder of Xikota Design, a digital product design and building studio.

I talk about what I research and practice: how AI is changing the design profession and what to do so it works in favor of the people who design. Talk, workshop, panel, podcast or class. In person in Florianópolis or remote.

What I bring to the stage

Write me with as much context as you have: event or organization, date, venue or remote format, type of participation, topic, audience and conditions. I reply personally.

Hi, Thiago. I would like to invite you for [type of participation] at [event or organization]. Date: [date]. Venue or format: [venue/remote]. Topic: [topic]. Audience: [who and how many]. Conditions: [conditions].

My published research (AIMEDIA 2026) measured how interfaces generated without specification converge to the same pattern, and what specification changes about that.

Structural convergence: why AI makes everything look the same

Designers building product with AI agents, with judgment and human review. Current tools as the vehicle, principles as the subject.

From design to shipped product

What I learned auditing public design systems (277 non-conformities in my thesis, top grade) and ensuring WCAG 2.1 AA conformance in a global-scale product.

Accessibility as an acceptance criterion

The argument I am developing in the book Design na Era da IA, in production with Casa do Código.

The designer career in the AI era

Public education product for the Ministry of Education's national student network.

Bridge - MEC

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Confidential case study

DSGov forced me to redesign navigation for WCAG AA. The result wasn't just accessible: it completed 25% more. Accessibility isn't compliance, it's a design tool.

Constraints force clarity

At Bridge, each Bolsa Familia state has different rules for the MEC national student network. At Multidrop, two completely different user types shared one product with a hidden toggle that 4 of 6 testers couldn't find. I design for the scenarios most ignore.

Edge cases at scale are millions of people

At Multidrop, I built the DS from scratch to unify the experience for two very different user types in a single product. A design system isn't a library; it's a shared language that changes how the whole team makes UI decisions.

Systems outlast screens

How I think about design

I'm Thiago, a product designer born and raised on the island of Florianópolis, in southern Brazil, in a Japanese-Brazilian family (yonsei, fourth generation). I like understanding how things work and questioning what seems obvious. I spend my days turning messy problems into products people can actually use.

I started in design in 2019, before AI became a mandatory topic. Since then I've worked at Wellhub, Multidrop and Laboratório Bridge, where I helped design a platform for Brazil's Ministry of Education used by millions of students. I earned my degree in Computer Science at UFSC, with an exchange in applied computer science and AI at Sapienza, in Rome.

These days my work mixes design, product, code and AI. Not because I think every designer needs to become a developer, but because I like closing the gap between an idea and something working in the world.

I'm also the founder of Xikota Design, my design studio, and I lead The AI Collective Florianópolis, the first chapter in southern Brazil. I do research at UFSC, I'm writing a book (on its way with Casa do Código) and, in my free time, I teach Japanese music to young people at the local Japanese association.

About me

Explore some of my highlight projects that showcase my design approach and problem-solving skills.

Featured Projects

Landing page for a non-profit organization that brings international students to the Vatican City to study Canon Law. The project focused on product design, UX, and UI to create an inviting, accessible, and informative digital presence.

Academia Canônica

Ministry of Education digital ecosystem designed at Bridge Lab: Student Journey, the Pé-de-Meia experience, web access, and the administrative system for the Ministry of Education's national student base.

Bridge × MEC: Student Journey and Pé-de-Meia

Volunteer project creating graphic materials for the Kadampa Meditation Center in Florianópolis. The work focused on visual communication for events, classes, and community outreach.

Kadampa Meditation Center (CMK) Florianópolis

A collaborative project between three junior enterprises to design and develop a web-based system for creating and managing nutritional sheets. My focus was on product design, user experience, and interface design for nutrition professionals.

EuTech - Nutritional Sheets Platform

E-commerce platform specializing in retro games. I was responsible for the entire product design process, including branding, graphic materials (Instagram posts, stories), wireframes, and all UX/UI design for the online store.

Kanto dos Jogos - Retro Games E-commerce

Branding and logo design project for Libera Já, a digital platform. Responsible for creating the visual identity, including logo, color palette, and brand guidelines to ensure a strong and memorable presence.

Libera Já - Branding & Logo Design

As the sole product designer at a German startup, I worked on the activation redesign from September 2024 to August 2025. During that period, onboarding abandonment fell from 50% to 25% and the customer base grew from 0 to 100 paying clients.

Multidrop - B2B2C Sales Platform

Product Designer at PariPassu from July to October 2025. I built the design system from scratch, with more than 110 components.

PariPassu: Rastreador and CliCQ

Served as Marketing Director at Pixel, a junior enterprise. Supervised the company's rebranding, created graphic arts for Instagram, managed email marketing, and led the visual communication strategy.

Pixel - Junior Enterprise Marketing & Branding

Tonight is an events app designed to help users discover, personalize, and attend parties and events. Users can sign up, set their preferences for event types, browse all available events, buy tickets, view venues, share event links, and manage their profiles. The app also features an admin system for event organizers to add and manage events.

Tonight - Events App

I shipped an open-source brutalist design system from scratch  -  multi-platform tokens, 10 primitives, 8 patterns, a public docs site, and a Swift package  -  in 48 hours, using Claude Code as an operating system for product work. The result is the visual spine of Timeouts, my iOS social fitness app for time off the phone. This is not vibe coding: every component ran through a loop of brainstorming → planning → test-driven execution → code review, with skills, persistent memory, and subagents preserving context and product judgment.

Touch Grass: Open-Source Brutalist Design System, Shipped with Claude Code

Global Product Designer at Wellhub from June 2025 to June 2026, working on end-to-end global journeys in a corporate wellness platform with about 50 million users across 18 countries.

Wellhub

The graphic and brand layer behind my work: visual systems, identity, and pieces that hold up product decisions. It is the visual base I carry into design in the AI era.

Xikota Studio: a historical brand and visual systems case

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All published projects now have a dedicated route. From home to the listing, and from the listing to each case, navigation is continuous.

This outdated version of the portfolio is no longer published. The current work is available on the projects page.

Retired case | Thiago Xikota

This case has been retired

Current founder work first, then enterprise-scale product evidence.

Proof across AI, product, and systems

Experimental study (n=10) on how Specification Literacy moderates homogenization in AI-generated interfaces. AIMEDIA 2026 (IARIA), published.

Lessons Learned

Improving Accessibility Without Changing the Visual Contract

The Problem

What I Tried

Why It Failed

The Shift

The Lesson

The Outcome

Impact