André Czupala

Senior Product Designer

I design products and the systems they stand on.

Frankfurt am Main Working since 2010 B.Sc. UX Design

Focus

About me

I started in prepress in 2010. I have been designing since 2011, and working in UX design since 2019. I like to follow a product from research through concept to implementation. Along the way I notice where work repeats, and I build the system for it out of components, tokens, rules and review steps. At first that is extra work. Once several people work on the same product, the effort pays off, because everyone uses the same foundation and a change in one place applies everywhere. Today I build systems like that with AI models, which I brief like team members.

End-to-end product design

Research, concept, prototype, handover to development, support through to launch.

04/2022 to 05/2023 GoTiger, Berlin

GoTiger App

Quick-commerce delivery for Asian groceries

GoTiger delivered Asian groceries in Berlin, and I designed the app for the service. One problem lay outside the app. Without prior knowledge, you don't know what you could actually buy in an Asian supermarket. So every product detail page explained the product, and recipes added the ingredients to the basket with one tap, scaled to the portion size. You deselected whatever you already had at home. There was also a swipe game for finding the right recipe. All of it went live.

Approach: I started with a survey of the target group, and later user tests in interviews followed. That was enough to see what needed improving. When a colleague left, I took over her tasks as well and briefed the external development team from then on.

View prototype Figma Project as PDF 2.0 MB
2024 Digital agency, Munich

The “one conference” app

Redesigned for mobile and desktop

In 2024, at a digital agency in Munich, I redesigned the internal conference app “one conference” for mobile and desktop and added features. To do that, I built a Figma prototype with tokens and variables, so the flows ran inside the prototype itself, and handed it over to the in-house developers.

Result: My version ran at the annual conference.

Design systems

I build design systems, from design tokens through several layers to nested components and flows, with what Figma provides.

2024 Digital agency, Munich

A library for Volkswagen

Figma components for the Volkswagen pages

In 2024, at a digital agency in Munich, I built the websites for two Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles models, the ID. Buzz and the California. The manufacturer had documented its components, but our team did not have them as Figma components. I gradually built an internal library in Figma so that we would not have to recreate them again and again.

Result: My colleagues building the other Volkswagen pages wondered why they hadn't thought of it themselves, and they were grateful.

2024 Digital agency, Munich

A token-based design system

Switchable to other brands in a few clicks

On my own initiative, I built a token-based design system in 2024, because the agency's white-label system, which we used to build client projects, was spread across several files. The system can be switched to other brands in a few clicks and includes light and dark mode. I don't know whether it is in use today.

Result: When I presented it, everyone was astonished at first, and it was not immediately clear how it worked technically. So I used a demo library to show what the system did; it stayed with the agency. Afterwards, the people in charge spoke with me one on one to understand it in detail.

AI-assisted systems

In code, compilers and tests tell you whether something is right. For design and copy there is no compiler, so someone who knows the craft has to write the rules and review steps.

For a long time now, I have been building systems that handle recurring work. An early example goes back more than ten years, before AI tools like Claude Code. For a recurring report, I built an input form with the calculations and charts behind it, and the finished report came out at the push of a button.

Since 12/2025 At the agency

A library of building blocks for automated pages

Layouts that became building blocks

At the moment I am responsible for landing pages at another agency, concept, design and copy included. I began there by building page layouts by hand and writing my own rules for copy and design as the basis for evaluation. Back then I set up a small design system in Figma for each client so that I could design consistently myself.

Result: Those layouts have become 26 building blocks, and pages are now generated from them automatically. If a client has no design system yet, or only an inadequate one, a new one is created at the start of the project according to rules and applied to the building blocks. What I had built by hand as layouts has become the basis of automated production.

Since 12/2025 At the agency

A wizard for landing pages

From a stored brief to a finished page

The building blocks and the rules I wrote have since become the basis of a system, built with Claude Code, that produces landing pages, copy included. A brief is stored for a client, and from it the system builds a page with suitable sections and copy. The page appears in a wizard that I designed and built. The idea is that anyone on the team can create a landing page in a few clicks. The copy sits on the left as a form, the page preview on the right, switchable to the mobile view. Anyone who wants to put in more effort can add, remove or move sections. The overall layout is set by a template. Accessibility is a condition for sign-off, not something fixed afterwards.

Result: By hand, as I remember it, the first build of a page alone took half a day to a full day, without copy and without the mobile version. With the wizard, the first version including copy is ready in about five minutes; corrections are extra. The wizard is finished and still runs locally on my machine, and the move into the shared setup is pending.

Not shown: The rights belong to my employer, so I can't show any of it.

From university

10/2024 to 03/2025 Bachelor's thesis

filo

Messages and files in one place

filo, my bachelor's thesis, came out of everyday work. You look for a message about a project and can't remember where it was. Did it come by email or via Slack? And the file that went with it, was it on the drive or somewhere in a chat? Searching like that costs time, and when things get hectic, it turns into stress. I wanted an interface that brings everything together in one place without everyone having to use the same tool. I was surprised how many people feel the same way.

Result: I built the interface as a clickable Figma prototype that simulates its states with 271 variables and no backend. I evaluated the prototype with 23 participants in moderated online sessions. Participants with little technical experience managed it too. I was pleased about that.

Read the thesis PDF, 74 pages, German
Summer semester 2022 Study project

colibre

Concept and app prototype

colibre was a university project in the summer term of 2022, in a team of three. We all liked hiking, so we asked ourselves what we were missing out there. That led to the concept of an outdoor app with a map, routes, a shop for gear and a chat with people who had walked the same route. The Colispot, the button in the middle of the navigation, was the core. With it you could mark a beautiful spot on the map and share it.

Approach: As the most experienced member of the team, I divided the tasks by skill and built the interactive Figma prototype myself.

View prototype Figma

How I work

My focus is UX, and the interface is the part of it you can see. Long-lived products matter to me, because that is where care is rewarded. I love reducing complexity and making things simpler for the people who use them.

Contact

I'm happy to talk about product design, design systems and AI.