Alan Tippins – Product Designer building thoughtful products & teams

About

Hey, I'm Alan. I'm a product designer who builds. I've built and led design teams at B2B companies, working across product, brand, and go-to-market. I've also shipped products end-to-end on my own. I understand trade-offs, bridge design and engineering, and move fast whether I'm collaborating or building independently.

I specialize in the transition from "it works" to "it scales." Most companies hit a wall around 1→n: they've proven the concept, but their design doesn't grow with them. I build the foundations that help teams move faster without breaking things. Design systems that guide without constraining, processes that scale, and tools that adapt to how people actually work.

Right now I'm leading design and marketing at Sibi, where we're rethinking procurement for property operations. I'm also building mkr.cards, a spatial canvas that turns visual thinking into AI-ready specs. It's in market with paying customers and solves a problem I had myself: AI tools need context, but writing linear documentation when you think spatially kills momentum.

Before Sibi, I built design systems and led teams at Vitally (Customer Success platform), Teamflow (virtual office for remote teams), and Litmus (email testing). I've shipped redesigns, launched platforms, scaled design orgs, and helped products grow through the messy 0→1 and 1→n stages.

I believe design should be invisible in the best way. It gets out of your way and lets you focus on the work. I'm obsessed with spatial thinking, systems that scale without sacrificing craft, and building tools that actually help people do their jobs better. I think spatially but build systematically. I use a workflow that bridges visual ideation and AI-powered development—starting with spatial canvases and converting them into AI-ready READMEs.

I'm building in public and love helping people figure out the messy transitions between stages. Whether that's talking through design systems, sharing my methodology, or just working through trade-offs, I'm always up for a conversation about how teams can work better.

View my work or get in touch.

Work

mkr.cards

Spatial canvas for AI-ready project specs. AI coding tools need context, but writing linear specs when you think visually kills momentum. Built and launched end-to-end, design to code, creating a canvas where visual thinking becomes AI-ready documentation.

Buscar — Sibi

AI-powered procurement analytics that speaks your language. Designed end-to-end from concept to launch. Buscar lets supply chain teams dig into their data by asking questions in plain English, turning "what's delayed?" into instant answers without the dashboard complexity.

Vitally

Customer Success platform for B2B SaaS teams. CS teams were drowning in scattered data, jumping between tools just to understand their customers. Built the design system and led the product redesign that transformed fragmented insights into actionable strategy, helping teams move from reactive to proactive at scale.

Teamflow - Founding Designer (Seed → Series B, $35M raised)

Virtual office that made remote feel less remote. Designed spatial audio, persistent rooms, and spontaneous conversations through a game-like interface. Because the best collaboration happens in the hallway, not on your calendar, we brought that magic back to distributed teams.