10+ years of design practice Index / 01 — Selected Works

Product Designer
shaping experiences
that ship & scale.

Designing intuitive, scalable products where users needs meet business reality. Currently working on the booking experience at Princess Cruises.

Based inFlorida, USA CurrentlyPrincess Cruises
Selected Works✦ Behavioral Analysis✦ Product Designer✦ Design Systems✦ Product Strategy✦ Selected Works✦ Behavioral Analysis✦ Product Designer✦ Design Systems✦ Product Strategy✦
§ 01 — Selected Works

Designs that moved numbers.
Selected works.

/01 Casino Landing Page Princess Cruises 2025 /01 — Casino Web · 2025 /02 Slot Tournament Princess Cruises 2024 /02 — Tournament Onboard · 2024 /03 Stateroom Selection Princess Cruises 2024 Web+App · 2024 /04 Civicaverse Civicaverse 2024 - 2026 /04 — Civicaverse Web · 2024 → 2026
Preview
§ 02 — Approach
Ruben Curbelo

I design products by thinking in systems first — connecting research, business strategy, and craft into experiences that scale beyond the screen they're built on. I've led and mentored multidisciplinary teams of 10+ designers across complex product environments to deliver measurable results.

§ 03 — Framework

Framework.

A phased approach shared across projects. Each initiative is unique — methods may vary depending on context.

1

Discovery

  • Analyze data (Adobe, FullStory)
  • Competitive analysis
  • Stakeholder interviews if necessary
  • Design feasibility analysis
  • User tests, surveys
2

Design

  • User journey analysis
  • Touchpoints definition
  • Sketches, wireframes
  • ADA review
  • Stakeholder alignment
  • Internal UX team review
3

Leadership approval

  • Rounds of review planning
  • Presentation preparation
  • Success metrics definition
  • Apply leadership feedback
4

Handoff

  • Deliverables refinement
  • Accessibility, usability, interaction and design definitions
  • Source of truth definitions
5

Design review

  • Collaboration: engaged with engineers during build
  • QA: review against specs
  • Problem-solving: adjust for constraints
  • Iteration: refine from feedback
10+
Years designing
shipped products
10+
Designers led &
mentored across teams
4
Product orgs
spanning enterprise to civic
∞
Critiques given
and gratefully received
§ 04 — Experience

A track record of shipping, leading, listening.

2024 — Present
Princess CruisesSenior UX/UI Designer
Lead designer of the end-to-end booking funnel — owning the guest journey from the moment a cruise is chosen through to a confirmed booking. Partnering with research and engineering to ship cohesive flows across web and native for 2M+ guests annually.
Design Lead
Systems
Cross-platform
2024
NiftyKitDApp QA Specialist
Tested a web3 game with live on-chain transactions and the Haraki Murakami NFT marketplace, which traded over 26K ETH in volume. Led QA, on-chain transaction auditing, and delivered UX recommendations across the experience.
QA
Web3
UX audit
2020 — 2023
Earlier RolesSenior & Mid-Level Product Designer
Series of senior IC roles across fintech, SaaS, and blockchain technologies. Shipped dashboards and onboarding experiences that enhanced user understanding and supported smoother activation journeys.
IC
Product
Conversion
2014 — 2019
IndependentDesigner / Generalist
Independent design work spanning an education platform, an online cultural magazine, and an engineering firm's website. Built the foundation of how I approach systems-thinking today.
Independent
Brand
Foundations