# Alexander Mayes > Principal Designer @ Character.AI | Driving Design Leadership in AI | Scalable UX, Vision, Human-Centered AI Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/alexandermayes πŸ‘‹ Hey, I’m Alexander! Currently a Principal Designer at Character.AI, workin' on the core app, creator tools, and social features. I also wrangle our design system along with helping our overall product strategy of the company. What I Do βˆ™ Design and translate bleeding-edge GenAI research into friendly, polished products. βˆ™ Balance people problems with business impact to make sure products are thoughtfully designed with people in mind. βˆ™ Align product, research, and engineering around the same north star so we can work together well as a team towards a single goal. Where I've Been βˆ™ TikTok – built a GenAI team from scratch and shipped multimodal creator tools for short-form video. βˆ™ Meta AI – took blue-sky GenAI and incorproate them across a variety of apps. βˆ™ Coinbase NFT – gave Web3 newbies an easy on-ramp to the world of NFTs. βˆ™ Facebook (Portal TV & Building 8) – leveled-up living-room video calls and AR experiments. βˆ™ Instagram – helped 25M+ creators (even BeyoncΓ©!) win on the ’Gram. After a decade, my goal is still the same: make new tech feel easy and help teams ship stuff they can feel proud about. When I’m not in Figma, you’ll catch me tanking WoW raids, smacking softballs, or tending a live-fire BBQ with friends. ## Work Experience ### Principal Designer, Gen AI @ Character.AI Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area As a principal desiger at C.AI I lead and design core parts of the app. Primarily centered around creators, core architecture, and social. βˆ™ Creators: I’m designing creation tools and editing flows that make it so anyone can create, manage, and monetize their AI characters. βˆ™ Core app: From first-run onboarding to chat and discovery, I own and design the end-to-end flows that keep people engaged and coming back. Additionally, I own all app navgigation and architecture. βˆ™ Design system: I maintain our shared component library and tokenized color/typography system, so new features ship faster and new designers can onboard quicker. βˆ™ Social feed: New project about how conversations, character updates, and community highlights surface in the app overall. At Character we tend to wear a lot of hats, so I do my fair share of research, PMing, and managing as well. ### Owner @ FlyBot Design Jan 2011 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area ### Design, Generative AI @ Meta Jan 2024 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco, California, United States - Worked on new Gen AI products at Meta AI ### Design Leader, Generative AI @ TikTok Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area - Led software design for TikTok Creative Studio (Originally TikTok Cue). A generative AI video platform that allows creators and businesses to generative TikToks from scratch using AI and text. - Designed all core features and core architecture. Along with delegating work to other designers that joined - Pitched and started the project within the first 3 months of me joining TikTok. At the time we were only working on an assistant. - Helped recruit not only designers, but other disciplines as well. (PMs, Eng, and PMM). Managed our team of designers. https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/22/tiktok-turns-to-generative-ai-to-boost-its-ads-business/ ### Design Lead, Coinbase NFT @ Coinbase Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Bay Area - Led software design for Coinbase NFT. Originally, joined as the sole and first designer on a team of 5. Planned out the product's architecture, along with creating it's unique design system. - Designed core features including Profiles, Collections, Search, Shop, and the Following Feed. - Helped grow the design team from just me to 6 designers. Interviewed engineers, product leaders, and researchers for our team. - Mentored junior designers, along with managing the work stream of design projects for our team while report to the Head of Design. ### Lead Product Designer, Portal Human Interfaces @ Facebook Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Menlo Park, California, United States - Led part of the human interfaces team at Portal for Facebook. Worked included setting standards for future Portal products, creating consistency between all hardware products, and aligning design strategy to our overall goals for Portal. - Currently working on future hardware devices and forward thinking software. ### Lead Product Designer, Portal TV at Facebook @ Facebook Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | Menlo Park, California, United States - Led software design for the new Portal TV device. This was the fastest selling device at the time of release and was the first time Facebook had designed an OS for a TV hardware product. - Designed the new OS for Portal that was TV specific and worked with the social network of Facebook. Had heavy involvement in shaping our product strategy, research, and fit and finish design. Collaborated with third party vendors / business team to help acquire new apps like Amazon Prime Now and Showtime. ### Lead AR Product Designer, Facebook, Building 8 @ Facebook Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | Menlo Park, California, United States - Led design for Building 8's new AR experience team. This work was highly confidential. This was apart of the landing team that was dedicated to finding new experiences within Facebook and for new hardware. - Designed augmented reality user-experiences from low-fidelity sketches to high-fidelity pixel perfect mock-ups, while staying abreast of AR UX trends. - Helped push strategy and ideas, by creating rapid prototypes to help validate design concepts with executive stakeholders. Including Zuck and Boz. ### Product Designer – Facebook, Pages @ Facebook Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Menlo Park, California - Led design for Small Businesses and Promotion for the Facebook Pages team. Redesigned Boost Post features along with business management. Navigated the transition between our team in NYC design to back to Menlo Park. Increased our overall success rate of flows by 5-8% over the year. - Transitioned the work to another team after a reorg. ### Senior Product Designer @ Instagram Jan 2015 – Jan 2017 | Menlo Park, CA Businesses on Instagram - Led the design work the shaped the building of business products on Instagram. Products included: native business profiles, top account insights, B2C Communication, and more) This platform was scaled to 25M monthly active businesses on by 2018. - Businesses wanted to join Instagram to connect with real people and not just sell ads to them. For many, Instagram is their default business platform now (especially in Asia). Today, many businesses on Instagram use the platform to find, connect and engage with their customers and drive their business successfully online. ### Product Designer @ Curalate Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 - Created interaction models, screen designs, and UI details that promoted ease of use and optimized the user experience - Managed multiple projects, while working closely between product and engineering - Iterated on ideas quickly and effectively - Obsessed over details and consistency, but saw the bigger picture - Contributed to high-level strategic decisions with the rest of the product and executive team - Owned and maintained our product style guide ### UX Designer @ Free People (URBN Inc.) Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 - Designed user experiences – from idea conception, to wireframe & prototyping, to design & implementation. - Created storyboards, flows, wireframes & high-fidelity prototypes to communicate design concepts to stakeholders. - Created innovative solutions for new and existing online experiences, and ensured that they met both business objectives and end-user expectations. - Multitasked and managed multiple small & large projects. - Worked collaboratively & iteratively with stakeholders, designers, developers, & QA teams to execute and deliver a flawless end-product. ### Interactive Designer @ Jacob Tyler Creative Group Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 - Created innovative digital, interactive and social media marketing and advertisement campaigns. - Used my expertise in typography, graphic design, art direction, photography, video, and web to help out with a multitude of different projects. - Leveraged web analytics, social media data mining, API’s, and real-time digital marketing strategies to make educated design decisions. - Designed front-end / UI elements such as web pages, e-mail newsletters, and social media graphics. - Collaborated with the marketing team, IT team, as well as outside web development vendors to turn designs into fully functional websites. ### Visual Effects / Motion Graphics Designer @ the Agency san diego Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 - Created and art directed an advertising campaign for Fujikura Golf. - Designed and produced 3D renderings, AE compositing, Title Design, setting graphics to custom scores, and other graphic work. - Worked closely with a 3D modeler to develop final videos used to inform customers of Fujikura on new technology. - Art directed when it came to overall concepts. ### Motion Graphics Intern @ mOcean LA Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Burbank, CA - Worked in the theatrical department helping to design and produce motion graphics that include teaser/theatrical trailer, TV Spots, and Main Title Design for feature films. - Digitally painted and designed screen slates for animatics. - Created concepts for trailers and other interactive film advertisements. - Produced, animated, and rendered 3D text elements for trailers and TV spots. - Communicated and presented to Disney, Warner Brothers, and many other movie studios in the industry. ### Graphic Designer @ the Agency san diego Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 - Designed a wide array of graphic design pieces ranging from brand development to advertisements - Learned to work through creative problems and come up with visual solutions. ### Graphic Designer @ California Miramar University Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 - Designed landing pages and other web material for their marketing team. ### Graphic Designer @ Brian Tracy International Jan 2010 – Jan 2010 - Worked closely with the marketing team at Brian Tracy International doing web based graphics - Created print and digital collateral for corporate events. ### Graphic Designer @ Green Light Media Jan 2007 – Jan 2009 - Designed entertainment promotional material for events. ## Education ### Bachelor's degree in Graphic Design The Art Institutes ### High School Diploma in General Education Liberty High School ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/alexandermayes - Portfolio: http://www.flybotdesign.com - Portfolio: http://www.alexandermayes.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/alexandermayes JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/alexandermayes/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13