Guillaume David · Product designer
About
I work closest to the people who build the product, and stay away from the finished pixel for as long as I can.
- Role
- Product designer, ZF
- Platforms
- iOS · Android · embedded HMI
- Now
- Truck navigation, sole designer
Design system, lead - Based
- France · remote
01 · Now
Two products,
one system
I joined ZF in 2023 on a ride-hailing booking app: the traveller app, native on iOS and Android, a little of the driver app, and the native iOS and Android design systems underneath. The Android one I built with a single engineer.
Today I own the mobile and touch branch of the design system behind the apps truck drivers use at work: twenty-five components across Jetpack Compose, React, and React on an embedded HMI, built with one designer I lead. Every module of the driver app is built from those components, so I also oversee how the designers on each module use them. The same components have to hold up in a workflow tool the driver reads while parked, with all the time in the world, and in a navigation app he gets a second to look at.
That navigation app is the other half of my work. For the past twelve months I’ve been the only designer on it, taken from the first sketch to release.
02 · Method
How I work
I bring engineering in from the first sketch. Most of my early work is deliberately rough: grey boxes and throwaway prototypes that exist to be argued with. We run short loops on them until the use cases and the technical limits are on the table, and only then do I raise the fidelity. Polishing a screen before you know what it has to survive is the most expensive way to find out.
When the users can’t be reached, the method has to change, not stop. Truck drivers are either driving or legally off duty. So research becomes verbatim mined from short interviews, structured teardowns of the tools drivers already use, and a shared glossary so that three teams mean the same thing by the same word.
Polishing a screen before you know what it has to survive is the most expensive way to find out.
03 · Background
Before
2014–17
Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Trained in illustration and concept art at the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts. I still sketch before I open Figma.
2017–20
Illustrator
Three years freelance. Finishing an image is the easy part once you know what it has to say.
2020–23
Freelance designer
Studi, an online training platform: started on UI, moved into UX. Moonshot Labs, a startup studio: the foundations of four early-stage B2B products.
2023 →
Product designer, ZF
A ride-hailing booking app on iOS and Android, then the driver apps: the design system and truck navigation.
Keep reading
All work →
Case study
Designing for the Glance
What a driver can take in with one look, and everything removed to get there.
Case study
Divergence is a decision
Twenty-five components across Compose, React and an embedded HMI, for a driver with one second and a driver with all the time in the world.