Sup, I'm Martha

Lead Product Designer @ Halftone Digital

Product Design & Strategy

@ Halftone Digital ->

Story artist turned designer bringing human experiences into systems thinking and strategic team alignment.

Call me, beep me, if you wanna reach me —

marginmags@gmail.com

Resume

Featured Projects

I've worked on some cool stuff, but here are some of my favorite projects

Senior Product Designer @ Firstbase (acquired by AppDirect)

From inboxes to infrastructure: 0→1 service design for the second half of Firstbase's customer lifecycle.

#Service Design

#Zero to One

#Multiplayer workflows

Read More ->

Pre-product Design Consultant @ Freeplay.ai

A design vision for AI ops: shaping the early product direction of an LLM tooling startup.

#Design Vision

#AI-native B2B

#Product Strategy

Read More ->

UI Designer @ Amwell

From third-party patchwork to a platform built to scale: designing the admin backbone of a B2B telehealth product.

#Information Architecture

#Systems Thinking

#Enterprise UX

Read More ->

UI Designer @ Amwell

From third-party patchwork to a platform built to scale: designing the admin backbone of a B2B telehealth product.

#Information Architecture

#Systems Thinking

#Enterprise UX

Read More ->

A lil bit about me …

Martha Magsombol (she/her)

Lifelong curious story puzzler & logical creative

— Based in Spain and the Internet

Before product design, I studied story-driven work in animation and game dev from the creative lens of scriptwriting, storyboarding, visual development, and filmmaking. This required me to study behaviors, history, environments, and movement of characters (people, animals, and objects) to create immersive worlds for a variety of audiences.

In product design, this has translated into thinking about the holistic narratives of key players involved in a given customer’s journey. I’m fascinated by experiences powered by many moving parts. I believe that while the perceived outcome of my design process may be pixels on a screen, my ultimate goal is to bring positive experiences to people in and out of their lil light up devices.

These days, I'm investing in my own AI/LLM education and building a design tool focused on the future of design in AI-era software teams. This work directly informs the strategic conversations I bring to my team — including the AI-readiness strategy shaping how Adobe Express's design system evolves.

💬 I am fluent in English and Tagalog. Ahora, estoy aprendiendo español para mi vida nueva aquí en España.

Where I've worked …

I've had the privilege to work on some cool stuff

Currently

Design Systems · Adobe Express (via Halftone Digital)

2025 - present

Designing the AI-readiness strategy that's shaping how 200+ designers work.

Previously

Senior Product Designer · BackerKit

2023 - 2024

Founding designer on a crowdfunding platform that smashed historical records.

Product Design Consultant · Freeplay

2023

Founding-stage UX vision for an LLM tooling startup.

Senior Product Designer · Firstbase (acquired by AppDirect)

2021 - 2023

0→1 service design for a B2B equipment platform.

Product Designer · Freelance

2020 - 2021

End-to-end design consultation for various clients including Amwell, Franck, Project Lela.

Way back when

Story Artist

2016 - 2020

Storytelling with digital and physical media across animation and illustration. Still my hobby.

Kind words from past teammates ...

Carmen Ruse, Group Design Manager @ Adobe

"What sets Martha apart is her mix of proactive problem-solving, thoughtful feedback, and genuine leadership. She not only delivers high-quality design work but also strengthens the team around her. Whether it’s documenting best practices, advocating for accessibility, or mentoring junior designers, she consistently pushes the system and the team forward."

Ian Cairns, CEO/Cofounder @ Freeplay

Carmen R, Design Manager @ Adobe

Ian Cairns, CEO/Cofounder @ Freeplay

"Martha is a rare designer with strong UX skills and a passion for complicated B2B and backend workflows. She worked across our product & internal tools, took core parts of our product truly from zero to one, and brought clarity to product experiences for all her customers. And a big, important plus: She was beloved by all of her stakeholders & collaborators. You'd be lucky to work with her."

Ian C, CEO & Cofounder @ Freeplay

Jordan Lawrence, Software Engineer @ Sanity

“I’ve worked with many so far in my career, and none have come close to Martha’s clear conscientiousness both for the user’s perspective in her designs, but also in conveying all necessary information for engineers to work from her designs. This is an extremely rare skill I have found in the UX design space, and so for Martha to possess the ability to view her designs with an engineer’s hat on, does not only make our lives in engineering simpler but it leads to quicker and more rapid development.”

Jordan L, SWE @ Sanity

Dan De Vries, Head of Ops @ fiveonefour

"Martha is one of the most creative designers I have had the pleasure of working with. She can quickly take extremely complex subject matter and break it down into digestible form by asking great questions. From there, she really will impress! She can rapidly put together designs that will blow you out of the water. She does all of this while radiating the most authentic positivity. It was always a highlight for me when Martha was walking me through one of her designs, wire frames or process flows."

Dan D, Head of Ops @ fiveonefour

Robbin Arcega, Senior Product Designer @ Procore

"A natural storyteller, Martha is incredibly talented in anything design-related: her beautiful portfolio speaks for her work. Her approach is human-centered, data-driven, and comes from a place of genuine empathy and curiosity. A natural leader, it's a guarantee that if Martha is on the team, whatever you need to get done will be done. Her background in animation allows her to express her ideas and thoughts clearly to stakeholders, clients, and internal team members (plus, her illustrations are a joy to look at). If she's on the job, know that you will get top-quality work with just the right amount of research. I would recommend Martha a thousand times over if I could."

Robbin A, Senior Product Designer @ Procore

Kristen Sunny, Product Designer @ Microsoft

"Passionate, driven, collaborative, and talented are just a few words that come to mind when I think of Martha. I had the pleasure of working with her on several projects, and was lucky enough to be able to learn from her along the way. Martha approaches any project with curiosity and excitement, giving her all to provide high-quality work, and she encourages her teammates to do the same. She is a natural self-starter and takes the initiative to dig deep to truly make sure she understands user needs and business goals, especially when faced with ambiguity. She consistently goes above and beyond to add beautiful polish to her projects, ensuring that products are both useful and delightful for users. Always curious, she devotes her time to learning new skills, which she is happy to share with her colleagues and fellow designers. Any team/company would be lucky to have Martha, and I wholeheartedly recommend her!"

Kristen S, Product Designer @ Microsoft

Abdullah Aldegaither, Senior PM Manager @ AppDirect

"Martha has been a fantastic collaborator and a team player. She cares deeply for our customers and internal stakeholders, and would go out of her way to ensure that their voices are heard. She actively seeks to become more competent by eliciting feedback from her peers, PMs and stakeholders and developing a deep understanding of our customer pain points. Her easy going personality makes Martha very approachable and easy to work with."

Abdullah A, Senior PM Manager @ AppDirect