About Me
I’m María, a Lead Product Designer with 10+ years of experience specializing in B2B (Fintech, SaaS), based in Barcelona and working remotely.
I have been in charge of the end-to-end design process, leading user experience in several startups, where I worked with the C-levels to shape the product.
I would underscore my strong collaboration with developers. I bring significant experience working within cross-functional teams. I am familiar with the architecture of leading-edge frameworks (React, Vue) and have hands-on experience with Design Systems.
Keeping up with the newest trends, technologies, and methodologies in user experience design is vital to me. I am often engaged in reading design books and articles or attending conferences and workshops.
My passion for design drives me to give back to the Design Community. Recently, I channeled this enthusiasm into organizing the WIAD (World Information Architecture Day) 2024 Local Event in Barcelona, bringing together 80 attendees and 7 inspiring speakers. Currently, I am preparing the 2025 event.
Outside of work, I love singing my favorite rock anthems 🎤 🎶, I have been honing my skills at a Rock Academy for over 7 years. I am an avid reader 📚, and as a true foodie, I relish exploring new restaurants or experimenting in the kitchen. I also cherish time with friends—it is how I recharge and stay energized.
m.rey.oyonarte@gmail.comCertifications
Advanced Design Systems.
A Brad Frost's online workshop at Smashing Conference
November 2024
Full workshop, delivered in five 2-hour long sessions.
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👉 How to architect a design system ecosystem that’s tuned to your organization’s specific needs and goals.
👉 Governing design system recipes.
👉 Creating and managing multi-brand and multi-product design systems.
👉 Advanced design token architecture, naming conventions, process, and best practices.
👉 Component API design naming conventions, processes, and best practices for Figma and code.
👉 UI component construction and composability best practices for Figma and code.
👉 Best practices for design system team structure, roles, and position within your organization.
👉 Best practices for governance, contribution, and release processes.
👉 Communication and relationship best practices to ensure the long-term health of the design system and the digital products it serves.
Creating and Maintaining Successful Design Systems.
A Brad Frost's online workshop at Smashing Conference
November 2021
Full workshop, delivered in five 2-hour long sessions.
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👉 Selling Design Systems
👉 A Pattern-Based Process
👉 Atomic Design Principles
👉 Creating a rock-solid component library
👉 Anatomy of Effective Reference Website
👉 Design System Maintenance
Practical Accessibility Today
Online workshop taugh by Sara Soueidan
May - November 2023
Practical Accessibility is a self-paced, get-right-down-to-it video course designed to demystify web accessibility and equip you with the knowledge you need to confidently create more accessible websites and web applications today.
👉 Process for building accessible components from scratch?
👉 Semantic HTML
👉 Accessibility tree
👉 ARIA
👉 WCAG
…and many, many more
Design Sprint Masterclass Certificate
AJ&Smart. Jake Knapp, Jonathan Courtney
4 December 2020
The Design Sprint is a four-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. Developed at GV, it’s a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, behavior science, design thinking, and more—packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use.
The core principles of the Design Sprint are:
👉 Working Together Alone (removing personal biases and levelling the playing field)
👉 Tangible (ideas) over Discussion
👉 Getting Started over Being Right
👉 Don't rely on creativity
Referrals
Antonio Llamas Paniagua
Software architect at Inditex
"A great professional and a dedicated person, a pleasure to have worked with her."
Daniel Weselius
Head of Product XP and Sell-Side Lending at Bankable
"María brings a proactive and autonomous approach to her work, always ensuring that the user's needs and problems are at the forefront of every decision she makes. [...] One of María's standout qualities is her ability to seamlessly align her work with the broader business and product strategy. Whether leading teams or working directly with developers, she always maintains focus on the user experience while also keeping key business objectives in mind. Her leadership skills shine through in fast-paced environments, particularly in startups and early-stage products, where she consistently prioritizes the most impactful features and adapts quickly to change."
Rolando Caldas
Tech Team Lead at Qualifyze | CTO at Pridatec (exited)
"Beyond personal qualities, her work was of a very high level, involved in all phases of project development, with fresh ideas, commitment and surprising results."
Felipe Rivero de Aguilar
UX Designer Manager at Balidea
"Her work has always been of an extraordinary level, and that is due to the fact that she is very inquisitive in the doubts that arise when undertaking a new job. Something that always caught my attention is that he didn't let anything go overlooked. As a designer and expert in usability and user experience, she always opted for having a good conversation to present to the interlocutor all the doubts that arise before starting anything (something that she demonstrated served to save a large amount of work on changes). With María we never got a no to initial approaches, thanks to her information acquisition processes the needs of the requested proposals were clear and everything was simpler. The truth is, we were extremely lucky to have her during the time she was working with us [...]"
Rubén Dopico
Software Developer
"It is quite common for there to be communication problems between developers and designers, due to their different perspectives. Working with her was the opposite: close, and willing to propose alternatives to any problem."
Jorge Guijarro
UX Designer at Bankable
"Although I did not have the opportunity to work directly with her, I have had the privilege of taking over her responsibilities and benefiting from her excellent documentation work and handover process."
