About — Esteban Contreras | Product Designer & AI/UX Specialist

The Story

Esteban Contreras

Product Designer Guadalajara, MX

Documentary filmmaker turned product designer. I began my career behind the camera, where I developed a deep sensitivity to human context, narrative structure, and the craft of visual storytelling. Those foundations naturally matured into a practice in user experience design, where understanding motivation, constraint, and environment is critical to building products that resonate in the real world.

I care most about the space where empathy meets engineering.

Today my work centers on empathy-driven design and AI-powered systems, informed by more than four years working with generative AI technologies and over two years dedicated specifically to designing AI experiences.

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Currently Product Designer at ClickGuard

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Exploring Claude Code and GPT Codex

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Reading Cyberselfish, Paulina Borsook (2000)

Toolkit & Approach

01

Human-Centered Design

Research first, then design. User interviews, real problems, and iterating until the solution actually works for people.

02

Design + AI Prototyping

Figma, Adobe Suite, and AI tools working together for fast prototyping and exploring ideas beyond static mockups.

03

Systems & Architecture

Design systems, information architecture, and cross-platform consistency with clean design-to-dev handoff.

Design Tools

Figma Adobe Creative Suite Affinity Suite Framer Da Vinci Resolve

IDEs & AI Prototyping

GPT Codex Claude Code Cursor Antigravity Figma Make Google Stitch Magic Path Paper Builder.io

AI Cloud Tools

Midjourney RunwayML Manus NotebookLM Genspark Lovable V0 Replit

Research & Strategy

LLM Integration User Interviews Personas Empathy Mapping Journey Mapping Competitive Analysis Information Architecture Usability Testing

What I Do

What I Focus On

Most of my work sits at the intersection of product design and AI, which in practice means I spend a lot of time figuring out how to make complex tools feel simple and how to get from an idea to something real as quickly as possible.

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AI Product Design

I design products where the AI isn't a feature bolted on at the end but something that shapes how the whole interface works, from how a user phrases a request to how the system responds, surfaces information, and handles uncertainty when it doesn't have a clear answer.

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UX Research & Strategy

I run usability tests, build journey maps, and do competitive analysis to understand what users are actually trying to accomplish so that product decisions come from observed behavior rather than assumptions about what people might want.

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AI Prototyping with Code

I use Claude Code and GPT Codex to build working prototypes instead of just designing static screens, which means I can test real interactions and validate ideas with functional software before a full engineering team gets involved.

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Visual & Interaction Design

I care a lot about the details that make an interface feel considered rather than generic, things like how a transition eases, how elements are spaced, whether a hover state communicates the right intent, and how the overall layout guides someone through a page without them having to think about it.

Education & Certifications

Education

I hold a Bachelor's Degree in Communication and Digital Media (2021) from Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), where I also minored in: