Product Design Leader
Alex Zapadenko
Product design leader with 15+ years across enterprise platforms, B2B SaaS, and 0→1 products. Currently directing AI-driven design at Banyan Software, shaping both the AI-assisted pipeline and the next-generation experiences it ships across a portfolio of 50+ vertical SaaS products. Recently designed the unification of Intuit Mailchimp Transactional — a developer-focused email API — into the core Mailchimp product. Earlier, scaled TheoremOne's design team from 10 to 50+ and integrated a 200-person global design practice at Monks. I do my best work where I can set strategy, ship complex products, and build the teams behind them.
Years of experience
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In design leadership
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Largest team led
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Designers hired
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Projects delivered
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Industries served
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Cases
Selected work
A selection of work spanning enterprise platforms, B2B SaaS, and 0→1 products.
Products
Tentaplex
An old project, brought back. Years ago I led design on a workspace with a graph database hidden under it. The product wrapped up; the idea stuck. Now I'm rebuilding it from scratch, on my own, as a native Mac app, and this time the graph is the front door.
Tentanote
A Mac app that reads what your Mac already holds, mail, calendar, notes, files and tabs, and sorts it into the projects of your life.Native Mac app · Waitlist open
Tentabase
The database under Tentanote. Records go in, it works out what relates to what from what they say, and it can tell you why.Graph database · Not open yet
Products
YumLog
A voice-first calorie tracker. The Apple Watch is the main way in, and the iPhone app is the full companion: the day at a glance, chat, photo logging, progress, usuals and recipes.
Code
Experiments
Side projects I build to test how AI changes product design, prototyping, and delivery.
Usage Graph
Every token, component and screen in this site, derived from source and drawn as one graph you can point at
Motive
A live fleet-tracking map with AI-generated telemetry, streamed from Postgres
Pathfinder
A Pathfinder 2e character builder with AI portraits that restyle every time you re-equip
Poppy
A voice-first AI assistant for teachers — lesson plans, parent notes, quizzes
Misc
Other client work
The changing economics of small software
An app earning a few hundred dollars a month was hardly worth building when it took a designer, a developer and months. Built by one person in a week, it can be a small business. What that changes about who builds software, how they decide, and how hard it gets to be found.
Seam carving in the browser
CSS can squash, crop or letterbox a picture, but it can't tell which pixels matter. Seam carving can, and there are three places to run it for a web page, each trading work before the page ships against work while it's open.
Recording a product demo with Claude
A demo video is the most trusted artefact a team ships and the only one nothing checks. Write it as a script whose every step declares what the screen should do, and a demo that has stopped being true fails instead of playing.
AIUX
Patterns for AI products
The recurring problems in products whose output is generated rather than retrieved.
Resume
The path so far
Download resumeTentaplex
Founder
Sep 2026 – Present · 2 mos
Building Tentanote, a Mac app where everything you save stays findable, and Tentabase, the graph database under it.
Banyan Software
Principal Architect, AI Product Design
May 2026 – Present · 6 mos
Direct AI-driven design for Banyan's internal Software Modernization Factory, which is retooling a portfolio of 50+ vertical SaaS products across the group. Built the design system that powers the applications going through the modernization, and shape both the AI-assisted pipeline that does the work and the product experiences it ships, with AI-assisted workflows where legacy interfaces stood.
product.inc
Principal Product Designer
Dec 2022 – Present · 3 yrs 11 mos
Run a fractional design practice for early-stage founders, from product strategy through launch. Anchor ongoing engagements at EarthWonders (e-commerce) and Edvo (B2C SaaS), and ship 0→1 concepts, marketing sites, and investor materials for Cracken AGI, Journify, UnboxAI, and other emerging startups.
Work together
Find the mode that fits
AI transformation for design teams
I help design teams use AI for production work while strengthening the judgment that makes the work good.
- A design system models can read
- Workflows the team can run
- Evidence of what improved
Full-time and fractional roles
- Full-time Director
- Teams that need a long-term design leader to scale people, systems, and delivery.
- Full-time Principal
- Hands-on execution in complex areas where an expert IC leads by doing.
- Fractional (1–3 days/wk)
- Growing teams that need senior leadership without adding a full headcount.
Shop
Exit through the gift shop
Pushok is a good boy, but good boys still owe rent, and it is hard to hold down a job without thumbs. Every figure sold goes to his college fund.
