About Daniel Kalman
Product designer who codes. Strong design foundations matter more than ever when working with AI.
- Title
- Product Designer
- Experience
- 15+ years
- Location
- Berlin
- Currently
- Zulip (open source team chat, core team, since April 2026) and Biene Club (own AI consulting practice, since March 2026)
- Previously
- Entropy, Radicle, Parity Technologies, Linkurious, DotLoop, Prezi, SatoshiPay
- Skills
- Figma, React, Svelte, TypeScript, design systems, user research, prototyping
- Available for work
- Yes
- hey@danielkalman.design
Philosophy
Designer who codes. Strong design foundations matter more than ever when working with AI. I build prototypes to validate ideas fast and design systems to keep things from falling apart.
Experience
- Zulip — Open source team chat. April 2026 – Present, Berlin, Germany. As part of the core team I design the web and desktop apps, take proposals from research through to shipped code, and look after the design system.
- Biene Club — AI consulting. March 2026 – Present, Berlin, Germany. My own practice. I take a feature from research and design through to working code, and write the evals that show it holds up.
- Entropy — Blockchain workflow automation platform. June 2025 – March 2026, Berlin, Germany. Responsible for everything design. Research and ideation, building and testing prototypes and planning execution of the front end.
- Radicle — Sovereign code collaboration. May 2023 – June 2025, Berlin, Germany. Responsible for the UX of the web and desktop apps, and the design system. Also refined the front end, implemented the design system and worked on the visual design of the apps.
- Parity Technologies — Products for Polkadot. October 2021 – January 2024, Berlin, Germany. As a product designer at Parity, helped create the Polkadot design system and worked on decentralized apps like the Delegation Dashboard and Multisig Commander.
- Quarters — Co-living management platform. November 2020 – May 2021, Berlin, Germany. An attempt to return to web2 that did not stick — the work I care about is in decentralization and distributed systems.
- SatoshiPay — Cryptocurrency payments and content monetization. March 2018 – November 2020, Berlin, Germany. As the first product designer, designed and built prototypes for monetizing content using cryptocurrency, and an app to facilitate cross-border payments.
- Linkurious — Graph visualization and analysis. January 2017 – July 2017, Paris, France. As a UX consultant, helped Linkurious improve the usability of their graph visualization tool.
- TOTL — Automatic journaling app. January 2015 – July 2017, San Francisco, CA. An experimental project that refined my skills in data visualization and rapid prototyping, and taught me the importance of user research and testing.
- Dotloop — Paperless real estate transaction management. January 2015 – April 2015, San Francisco, CA. Integrated a camera into the Dotloop app so real estate agents could document property acquisitions. The company was acquired by Zillow shortly after.
- Prezi — Zooming presentation software. July 2011 – December 2014, Budapest, Hungary. My first job as a UX designer. Learned about user research, A/B testing and how rapid prototyping supports both. Designed the capability to reuse content from previous presentations.
Case studies
- Beeline — From intent to proof (2026): A demonstration of eval-driven development for AI features. Describe a feature in one sentence; Beeline builds it, derives a testable definition of "good" (the seed), generates a dataset and scorers from it, grades the result, rewrites until every scorer passes, deploys it behind a live URL, and keeps scoring real production calls.
- Good Listener — Local transcriptions for therapists (2026): Local AI transcription app for therapists. Privacy-first — runs entirely locally using Whisper models, no cloud uploads.
- Auto — Collaborative workflow builder for blockchain automations (2025): Visual workflow builder with real-time multiplayer (Figma-like). Bridges on-chain triggers and off-chain actions. Built at Entropy Cryptography.
- Radicle Desktop — Your Code on Your Machine (2024): Desktop app for Radicle, a decentralized peer-to-peer code collaboration platform. Manage issues, patches, code review, and notifications. Write and review offline, sync when back online.
- Radicle Design System — Consistency By Design (2024): Complete design system for the Radicle ecosystem. Design tokens, component library, Figma integration, CSS variables, icon system — connecting design tooling directly to code.
- Open Gov Delegation Dashboard — Making Polkadot governance accessible (2023): Governance delegation tool for Polkadot. Lets token holders browse delegate profiles, understand voting history, and delegate tokens across governance tracks.
- Polkadot Design System — A system to define the look and experience of web3 (2023): Shared design language for the Polkadot ecosystem. Token pipeline: Figma → Token Studio → Style Dictionary → CSS variables + Tailwind config.
- Solar Wallet — A Stellar wallet built for simplicity (2019): Stellar wallet designed for simplicity. In-app onboarding, unified send/withdraw, multi-signature support — one of the first Stellar wallets to offer enterprise-grade multi-sig.
- One Family — Baby tracking supercharged (2020): Baby tracking concept app — a personal concept project, never built. Tracks feeds, naps, and routines then generates a personalised schedule. Sleep coach and contextual knowledge base included.
- SatoshiPay Micropayments — Micropayments for the web (2019): Redesigned micropayment UI for SatoshiPay. Streamlined purchasing flow, new account creation, adaptable containers that blend into any publisher's website.
Writing
- AX has two faces (2026 May 18): Agent Experience is half the story. Agents need to use your product, and humans need to trust your agentic features. Both are design work.
- A website for the AI age (2026 Mar 10): Most websites are made for humans. I added one constraint when rebuilding this portfolio: it should work as well for AI agents as it does for people.
- A design system is documented decisions (2026 Feb 18): A design system isn't only a component library. When I structure tokens, components, and rules, I'm solidifying the choices I've made deliberately.
- Why I design again (2025 Dec 29): AI agents can have working software ready by lunch. What I've come to understand is that I was confusing activity with progress.