About Me
I grew up in San José, Costa Rica, in a tight-knit community where helping others understand things was just part of everyday life. If someone didn’t get something, you stopped what you were doing and figured it out together. Looking back, that mindset probably pulled me toward design.
During my undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, I became an advisor in a startup accelerator. That was the first time I watched a product’s design change a company’s trajectory. Not just how it looked, but whether people used it and whether it survived. Something clicked. Design wasn’t decoration. It was the decision shaping everything downstream.
That conviction led me to DoorList, where I joined as the founding designer. I led a strategic pivot that transformed how the product worked and helped grow the platform to over 800,000 users. It taught me what happens when design has a real seat at the table, and what breaks when it doesn’t.
I later moved to Seattle to pursue the Master of Human-Centered Design & Engineering (MHCI+D) at the University of Washington, expanding how I think about systems, leadership, and the role design plays at scale.
Lately I’ve been rediscovering the joy of building. I’m a doom-vibe coder on a quiet quest to automate my life. That energy led me to create Phantom Slides, a context-aware presentation tool with zero AI slop that generates structured, beautiful slides in a fraction of the time. If something in my workflow feels slow or broken, I’d rather build the fix than wait for someone else to.
Experience
Lead UI/UX Designer
DoorList
Feb 2024 - Present
Grew user base 6× (45K → 300K+) by redesigning invite flows to make users—not hosts—the growth engine
3.4× increase in 7-day retention (14% → 48%) after launching a personalized home feed and RSVP flows with friend visibility
5× lift in invite throughput by launching smart +1 suggestions and letting guests preview mutuals before RSVPing
Drove 40% increase in paid event bookings and 20% uplift in web-to-app installs by launching a responsive portal with guided funnels
Identified social visibility as the retention driver and doubled down on Friends features — users with 3+ friends returned 4× more often
Product Design Intern
CareYaya
Sep 2023 - Dec 2023
Delivered a 94% NPS in prototype testing of a modular study-deck customization flow tailored to caregiver workflows
Increased engineering speed by 16% through establishing an expandable design system in Figma, while collaborating with the product owner and a team of SWEs
Improved user satisfaction by 26% through introducing the AI and Spaced Repetition feature to tailor the needs of pre-med students who are struggling to balance academic performance and CareYaya caretaker responsibilities
Product Design Intern
Ren
Sep 2022 - Dec 2022
Generated $250K in new revenue and onboarded 2,000+ factories by designing and deploying a SaaS B2B onboarding system that secured 5+ clients in three months
Increased user engagement by 35% by crafting a real-time dashboard for editor activities, file processing status, and updates, empowering users with full process visibility
Cut manual processing in half by building automated data-upload tools with built-in error checks
Education
MHCI+D
University of Washington
September 2025- September 2026
Bachelor in Communication
University of Pennsylvania
Aug 2019- Dec 2023
Graduating magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Communication (Data & Network Sciences concentration, Consumer Psychology minor), I learned to turn complex data into actionable insights about user behavior.
REACH OUT!
If you're building for education, care, or real-life complexity, reach out: naoboru@sas.upenn.edu — I’d love to collaborate.