Rafael Polutta - Product Designer based in Hamburg

Rafael Polutta is a product designer with 11 years of experience designing useful and mindful digital products with startups and known brands.

His work includes design systems, mobile app experiences, accessible component defaults, designer-engineer workflows, digital wellbeing products, storytelling, and AI-assisted design practice.

SelectedProjects

Side Project

Carpenter & Story Mode

Two World of Warcraft addons that make dense game systems easier to read without losing their character.

Story Mode turns quest text into chapters, recaps, progress, and a journal, so players can return to the story without losing the thread.

Carpenter quiets Blizzard’s UI with cleaner chat, readable combat feedback, and small interface decisions that reduce friction without replacing the game.

See the addons
Side Project

hejhub

A personal start page for digital wellbeing: fewer rabbit holes, more intentional starts.

I designed and built the full product: widget cards, shortcuts, content links, and soft constraints for the sites I actually use.

The project turns a private habit into a working product idea: design can shape attention, not only decorate access.

Open hejhub

Future Project

Side Project

YouTube

A self-directed practice in filming, editing, color grading, writing, and telling stories in motion.

I own the whole process: idea, script, camera, edit, color, pacing, sound, publishing, and learning in public.

It matters because good product design is also sequencing, restraint, and point of view. Video makes that craft visible.

Watch the channel
Daumenkino podcast cover
2019–2025

Daumenkino

A weekly film podcast about cinema, movie theater rituals, and the stories we kept talking about.

For more than six years, my friend Ann-Sophie and I produced, recorded, edited, published, and shaped 190 episodes together.

It trained consistency, taste, pacing, and critique. A side project became a Monday ritual, and a shared film practice that still exists off-record.

Give it a listen
2020–Present

Design System

Joined Phrase as the only designer when no design system existed; Syntax became the shared foundation for every product team.

I built the component language, Figma structure, guidelines, accessible component defaults, and designer-engineer workflow behind Syntax.

I advocated for dedicated engineering ownership and helped turn design-system work from side effort into product infrastructure.

Visit Phrase
2019–2020

Share Now App

Helped merge car2go and DriveNow into one unified mobility product and brand experience.

I focused on trust, orientation, familiar patterns, and clear mobile flows for existing users across cities and brands.

The work was not about a dramatic redesign. It was about carrying people through change without breaking confidence.

2015–2019

car2go App

Core mobile app experiences for a global carsharing product across every major platform.

I worked across iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry on finding, booking, opening, driving, and ending a trip.

The app had to feel fast, clear, and trustworthy under real-world pressure. In 2017, Time listed it among the year’s top apps.

See the Time list