Michael Le · Portfolio Designer · Creator · Leader
Michael Le
Vibe~Embracing change Checked on May 2026

Focused on what really matters

Helping teams and users find clarity in a world of complexity

Dear friend,

At the end of the day, when you look past the code and the pixels, we are crafting digital tools to make it easier (and hopefully better)for a person to interact with complex systems. Creating technology is, at its core, an act of human connection.

My journey began in the engineering trenches of New York and London, building real-time risk and pricing systems for investment banks. Those early days taught me how to navigate dense data and intricate architectures from the inside out. Yet the deeper I went, the more I noticed a disconnect: a system can meet every technical requirement, but it means nothing if it neglects the why of the person using it.

Wanting to solve for the human intent is what drove me into product design. Since 2014, I have had the opportunity to design experiences across news publishing, hospitality, consumer applications, and the software development lifescycle. One thing for certain across all industries: complexity in a system is inevitable, but making that complexity invisible has been, and is, the ultimate goal.

After decades of thriving at the intersection of design, code, and human interaction, I am now embracing the next frontier: agentic workflows. As the boundaries between domains blur, my multidisciplinary background is a distinct advantage in shaping the next generation of user experiences. Understanding human needs is even more important today as technology augments more of how we work, live, and think.

Designer in craft. Creator with heart. Leader by nature.

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Case studiesStories of design applied

A collection of moments in time where I applied research and insights to deliver customer outcomes through the practice of design.

Connecting context for developers and AI

At GitLab, I designed experiences across the software development lifecycle focused on source code, code review, and editing tools to support over a million monthly developers.

I started by making it easier for people to share their knowledge by integrating a rich text editing experience on top of Markdown. I have explored the complexity of settings hierarchy and discoverability for teams managing hundreds of projects. Lately I have been streamlining the code review workflow through user flow improvements and AI code reviews.

Case study available upon request.

Michael Le
Hello! I'm Michael

Scaling a design system across a platform

At Kounta (now Lightspeed) helps hospitality businesses operate efficiently by shaping and building the software they use everyday. My role as a leader of a team of designers and developers was bringing the brand to life as we were expanding from a single product into a platform.

From a design perspective, the product rebrand involved us translating the brand vision into product so that it elevates the experience for our customers.

This project allowed with my coding experience and love of HTML/CSS to lead the design system. This was a fundamental bridge between the design and engineering teams for delivering a consistent experience for our customers across five product areas.

Simplifying product through discovery

One of the most common queries for online delivery services is "Where is my order?"

The team was about to start work on a big piece of work but as we did more research we discovered flaws in what we thought the user knew. This lead us to pivot on our direction to make our final solution more usable

The moral of this story is to continually get your design in front of your customers so you can get better context.

Responsive design at scale

The challenge at The Telegraph was massive: translate a legacy news product into a modern, responsive ecosystem.

My role involved championing the user perspective through user research and embedding data-driven insights directly into the design process so that we could build alignment across product, engineering, and editorial teams.

The resulting responsive system successfully combined digital publication and ads while elevating the reading experience for millions of daily visitors.