LENA FISCHER
Lead Product Designer
I design systems and tools that disappear into the workflow. Ten years making
complex things feel simple — healthcare, developer platforms, and everything in
between.
hello@lenafischer.design · Berlin, Germany · lenafischer.design · Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/lenafischer · Read.cv: https://read.cv/lenafischer · LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lenafischer

ABOUT
─────────────
I started in hospital UX research, watching nurses work 12-hour shifts on
software that fought them at every turn. That experience burned a conviction
into my work: tools should feel like they're on your side. Since then I've
designed design systems at Figma, healthcare workflows at Clue, and developer
dashboards at Vercel. I care about information density, motion that means
something, and accessibility as a baseline, not a checklist.

EXPERIENCE
──────────────────
Lead Product Designer, Design Systems — Figma  ·  Berlin (remote)
2023 – Present
  Design lead for Figma's internal design system team, shaping the components
  and patterns used by 200+ designers across the company.
  • Redesigned the component library architecture to support theming, reducing
  token overrides from 340 to 28 across 12 product surfaces.
  • Led the accessibility audit that brought Figma's editor UI from WCAG A
  partial to AA full compliance.
  • Created the contribution model that grew external component submissions from
  2/quarter to 15/quarter.
  • Facilitated 40+ cross-team design critiques and established the design
  system governance process.
  Figma · Design Systems · Accessibility · Design Tokens

Senior Product Designer, Dashboard — Vercel  ·  Berlin (remote)
2021 – 2023
  Owned the core developer dashboard experience: deployments, logs, analytics,
  and project settings.
  • Redesigned the deployment detail page, improving the task-completion rate
  for debugging failed deploys by 34%.
  • Built the real-time log viewer that became the #1 most-used Dashboard
  feature by session time.
  • Created the Vercel design system's data visualization guidelines, adopted
  across all analytics surfaces.
  • Reduced onboarding drop-off by 18% through a progressive disclosure redesign
  of the project creation flow.
  Figma · React · Storybook · User Research

Product Designer — Clue (Period & Cycle Tracking)  ·  Berlin, Germany
2018 – 2021
  Design for a health app used by 12M people monthly. Focus on data
  visualization, tracking flows, and sensitive health content.
  • Redesigned the cycle prediction visualization; user trust in predictions
  increased by 22% (measured via in-app survey).
  • Designed the "Health Report" export feature used by 800K users to share
  cycle data with their doctors.
  • Established Clue's inclusive design guidelines for gender-neutral language
  and body-diverse illustration.
  Sketch · Principle · HealthKit · Inclusive Design

UX Researcher & Designer — Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin  ·  Berlin, Germany
2015 – 2018
  Embedded researcher in the nursing informatics department. Redesigned clinical
  documentation workflows.
  • Led contextual inquiry studies across 6 hospital wards; findings reshaped
  the ICU documentation system used by 2,000 nurses.
  • Reduced medication reconciliation errors by 41% through a redesigned intake
  checklist.
  • Published two papers on clinical UX in the International Journal of Medical
  Informatics.
  User Research · Contextual Inquiry · Healthcare UX

SELECTED CASE STUDIES
─────────────────────────────
Figma Design System Theming — Design Lead  (2024)
  https://lenafischer.design/case/figma-theming
  How we reduced 340 token overrides to 28 while supporting 4 product themes. A
  story about naming conventions, governance, and letting go of pixel
  perfection.
  Tech: Design Tokens, Figma Variables

Vercel Log Viewer — Designer  (2022)
  https://lenafischer.design/case/vercel-logs
  Designing a real-time log streaming interface for developers who are already
  frustrated. Research, prototyping, and the importance of monospace fonts.
  Tech: Figma, React, WebSockets

Clue Health Report — Designer  (2020)
  https://lenafischer.design/case/clue-health-report
  An export feature that helps 800K users share intimate health data with
  doctors. Privacy-first design in a sensitive context.
  Tech: Sketch, Principle, HealthKit

ICU Documentation Redesign — Lead Researcher & Designer  (2017)
  https://lenafischer.design/case/charite-icu
  Contextual inquiry in intensive care: how shadowing nurses for 200 hours
  changed a hospital's approach to clinical software.
  Tech: Axure, Contextual Inquiry

EDUCATION
─────────────────
MA, Design Research — Universität der Künste Berlin  (2015)
  Thesis: "Designing for clinical time pressure: a framework for high-stakes
  healthcare interfaces."

BA, Communication Design — Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin  (2013)

RECOGNITION
───────────────────
Red Dot Design Award — Interface Design — Red Dot  (2021)
  For the Clue cycle prediction visualization.
iF Design Award — iF International Forum Design  (2020)
  Clue Health Report feature.
Best Paper — Clinical UX Track — MedInfo Conference  (2017)
  ICU documentation workflow research.

LANGUAGES
─────────────────
German — Native  ·  English — Fluent  ·  French — Conversational