Brad Grabowski, product design leader

Product Design Leader

15+ Years Experience

How I Work

AI made building easier. It didn’t make knowing what to build easier.

I work at the intersection of customer needs, business strategy, and technology, partnering with product and engineering to find the problem worth solving before I open Figma. My focus is shaping product direction and simplifying complex B2B, B2C and enterprise experiences.

I hold a high bar for craft, stay close to research, and build the systems, not just the screens, that make good design hold up as a product scales.

A close-up of design book spines on a shelf

Design & Leadership Principles

Start with the right problem

Good design starts with understanding what actually needs to change, and why, before deciding what to build.

Bring design in as a partner

The best outcomes happen when design helps shape what gets built, not just how it looks.

Create clarity, then get out of the way

Give people context, a clear bar for quality, and the ownership to meet it themselves.

Build systems, not one-off wins

Good design should be repeatable across a team, not dependent on whoever's in the room.

Tie every decision to outcomes

Design succeeds when customer needs, business goals, and the metrics that matter actually line up.

Use AI to raise the ceiling, not replace judgment

AI should expand what a team can do while people stay in control of the decisions that matter.

Stay close to the craft, not the approval chain

Involved enough to protect quality; far enough back that the team owns the work.

Currently Reading

Sentient Design by Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred, on a desk beside a keyboard and mouse

Sentient Design by Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred

Sentient Design explores how AI changes product design: from creating interfaces that respond to commands to designing systems that understand intent, adapt to context, make recommendations, and increasingly take action on a user's behalf. The central idea is that successful AI products create a thoughtful partnership between people and intelligent systems, using AI to increase human capability while preserving judgment, transparency, and control.

Companies I’ve worked with