Howdy! 👋 My name is Adriana Morales, and my love for design and tech started with a little Avatar: the Last Airbender fansite I built as a kid. Many years later, I’m excited and grateful to be able to work with amazing, talented folks from all backgrounds to bring simplicity to complex problems and enabling people to achieve their goals.

I believe in nurturing the talent and compassion of the next generation of designers by creating a psychologically safe space for them to fail nobly, learn, and grow.

Outside the studio, I’m highly involved in the Austin running community. I’m a Trail Roots members and love to train, run and race marathons around the country. I think waking up at 6 am to go run 3 hours in the woods is fun (so long as there are post-run tacos!). You can also find me overcoming my fear of heights through climbing at local rock gyms, or bribing my dog with peanut butter to run with me.

The journey so far…

H-E-B Digital

Principal Designer - Mortar Design System (July 2022 - present)

  • Led the development of H-E-B's next-generation design system, enabling cohesive experiences across multiple platforms (web, mobile native) and brands.

  • Organized and led UX audits to connect design initiatives, document decisions, and inform future strategies for Mortar. Shifted focus from component-level thinking to end-to-end journeys and systems.

  • Promoted accessibility through training sessions, creating design accessibility checklists, and implementing tooling to empower designers and developers.

  • Bridged the gap between design and mobile native engineering teams. By initiating mobile design office hours and fostering conversations between designers and engineers, I laid the groundwork for better collaboration and adherence to platform guidelines. This established platform-adherent patterns and reduced tech and design debt to ensure cohesive mobile experiences aligned with Apple HIG and Material Design guidelines.

PayPal

Senior UX Designer / UX Lead on PayPal Developer (Oct 2021 — July 2022)

As a Senior UX Designer on PayPal Developer, I co-led and crafted an intuitive, elegant developer experience that allowed merchants and developers from small-to-medium businesses and large enterprises to quickly integrate PayPal’s payment integrations, APIs, and tools into their businesses.

My focus areas included:

  • Designing lead-gen tools and products to help developers explore, experiment, and play with PayPal’s integrations, now and for any future checkout product offering.

  • Brought design thinking and best practices to a growing team that has been engineering and product lead

  • Improved design culture around critiques and shareouts within the PayPal Merchant org by hosting and leading weekly design critiques.

IBM

Design lead on IBM Cloud (Jan 2019 — Oct 2021)

As a design lead on Cloud PAL, I led and instrumented the creation of a pattern and asset library built on top of Carbon 10 to bring UX consistency across the IBM Cloud platform for over 200+ services, 80+ design teams, and 500+ developers.

  • Cloud PAL saved an average of 2,000 dev and design time per pattern, and IBM Cloud UI teams became 80% per efficient.

  • Drove design execution from early-stage low-fi concepts to high-fidelity, interactive prototypes using both sketch and code for key experiences across IBM Cloud.

  • Delivered: industry-standard design guidance, developer and designer collaboration tools, quality assurance design process, scalable design system, and a decentralized governance process.

Cohort Coach – Pattern Program (Jan 2020 — March 2020)

Patterns is IBM’s six-week Design Education Program for early-career designers. I mentored a team (4 designers) throughout their 6-week onboarding while leading educational sessions on developing leadership skills for fellow coaches and patternites. 


UX Designer and lead, IBM Cloud Platform – IBM Cloud (Nov 2017 — Jan 2019)

As a UX designer and lead on Identity & Access Management on IBM Cloud, I designed and drove the unification of both IBM Cloud and Softlayer’s login experience and access management systems. I designed the best possible experiences that not only improved the functionality, utility, and adoption of IAM but aligned and united disparate leadership orgs on a central focus. 


UX / Visual Designer – Z Systems (Jul 2015 – Dec 2017)

As a UX and visual designer in z Systems, I was responsible for integrating design thinking into engineering workflows, modernize legacy UIs, and incorporate the IBM Design Language into every facet of the Service Management Suite and z Operational Insights product offerings.

Adobe

UX/UI Designer – Adobe PhoneGap Build (Oct 2013 — May 2014)

  • Redesigned the interface of the plugin pages to improve plugin findability and searchability.

  • Created an onboarding experience to lowered barriers of entry to new users while increasing new user engagement.

Education

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

Dual B.S. in Electronic Media, Arts, & Communication and Information Technology & Web Science

2011-2015

Speaking Engagements

Design System Summit - Panelist

November 15, 2025

H-E-B Digital - I/O Speaker

October 2023

TX State - Comm Des Exit Review

Winter 2022

General Assembly - Speaker

Sprint 2021

Awards / Achievements

H-E-B Digital - Women of Distinction

April 2024

ECHOS Design Leadership

Fall 2021

Outstanding Technical Achievement 

IBM 2017 and 2020

Founders Recipient Award

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2014

Patents

Expertise

  • Design systems

  • Accessibility design

  • Mobile native design best practices & patterns

  • System thinking

  • Enterprise design thinking

  • Service design

  • UI / Visual design

  • Interactive design

  • Information architecture

  • Agile / project management

Get in touch

Let’s work together.

Let’s talk design systems, complex problems, or swap recipes.