Kat Angeles – Portfolio

Give me the TL;DR on Kat Angeles.

I am a Principal UX Designer with a decade of experience leading complex, data-dense product redesigns at TripIt (SAP Concur). I specialize in synthesizing massive amounts of information into highly scannable, cross-platform experiences, managing continuous feedback loops with Customer Support, and driving measurable business impact.

Can you show me an example of how your design decisions drove measurable business results?

Absolutely. Let’s look at the TripIt.com EU-Compliance Redesign.

The Challenge: TripIt’s legacy web experience lagged behind its mobile counterpart and lacked the necessary legal compliance to expand effectively into the European market.

The Action: As the solo UX practitioner, I led a 12-month, end-to-end redesign of the entire web application. This involved porting mobile-exclusive capabilities to achieve cross-platform feature parity, overhauling the information architecture of multi-layered itinerary data to make dense trip plans scannable, and establishing continuous feedback loops with Customer Support to iterate and bridge legacy gaps.

The Impact: Successfully launched an EU-compliant web experience that unlocked a major international market, directly driving a 17% increase in new user sign-ups while drastically improving overall platform performance. This also laid the groundwork for further iteration leading up to a full launch across all TripIt users.

At the Principal level, dealing with dense, multi-layered data is critical. How do you approach complex information architecture?

Every project differs, but an approach I’ve taken regularly is to ensure you’re getting the information you need, when you need it. A great example is how I streamlined the TripIt Plan Creation flow.

The Challenge: Following a new web rollout, users experienced major friction compared to the classic web, citing too many clicks, missing trip context (like Trip Description), and the inability to view key details on a single page. This excessive navigation led to incomplete data entries and a loss of user confidence.

The Action: As the Principal UX Designer, I led the end-to-end redesign to restructure plan creation into a single, rich flow. I restored critical features like Trip Description to close parity gaps with the iOS app, promoted key fields for in-line editing, and reduced full-page navigations to mitigate latency.

The Impact: The update successfully reduced clicks and page switching, improving the time-to-complete for common plan types. This directly resulted in higher fill-rates for critical data at creation and a significant reduction in negative user feedback regarding missing information.

For a more unconventional example, I also applied these same UX systems-thinking principles to design custom, highly adaptive UI cards for a tabletop RPG campaign to reduce cognitive overload for new players.

How do you handle cross-functional alignment and developer handoff?

By building single sources of truth. I initiated and built TripIt’s foundational Design Language System (DLS) from the ground up, standardizing typography and building a nested-symbol component library. This radically accelerated engineering handoff and bridged the operational gap between design and the codebase.

Consider us intrigued! What would it be like to work with you?

I’ve included a slideshow further below, containing some of my most recent feedback from co-workers. Hopefully this helps give you a better idea!

Data Behind the Design: Optimizing for the Recruiter's Time

As a Principal UX Designer, my first “user” is the hiring manager reviewing this page. Industry data shows a stark reality regarding how portfolios are actually consumed:

The 1-Minute Skim: Most UX portfolios are initially screened for less than 60 seconds. (via Interaction Design Foundation – IxDF)
The 3-Minute Window: 80% of recruiters say they spend 3 minutes or less on a candidate’s portfolio. (via UX Collective)
The 30-Second Cut: Design managers reviewing senior-level roles will often bounce within 30 seconds if the high-level business impact is buried in long-form paragraphs. (via UX Collective)

The UX Solution: Traditional, heavy case studies actively fight against these constraints. This landing page was intentionally designed to respect the user’s time by anticipating their core questions and delivering immediate, high-impact answers.

Zero Cognitive Load: The conversational UI removes the need to hunt for navigation links or scroll through massive project histories.
Focus on Business Impact: Information architecture is prioritized to deliver the “TL;DR” and quantifiable business outcomes within the first 30 seconds of reading.

Kat consistently manages everyone's valuable time in UX Design Review meetings by keeping the focus on critical discussions and decision points, documenting questions and actions in Figma to ensure all questions and feedback are tracked and addressed, and by steering conversations away from side topics and towards generating consensus on the designs needing review. She also continues to put the user front and center in evaluating the effectiveness of design decisions while taking the time to understand and accommodate technical limitations of each platform.

Hi Kat, I just wanted to say thank you for these amazing years of work we had together. My sister is also a designer so I learned a lot about it from her, specially how much to appreciate the design area, but she has just recently migrated to the UX area. You were always the example of a great UX designer that I shared with her. It was one of the favorite parts of my work to participate in design and product meetings, hearing you explain why something should be one way or another, sharing examples and research, I've learned so much from you. Thank you for everything! TripIt will not be the same anymore.

I can't thank you enough for your hard work putting together and leading our creative vision workshop. You turned my ambiguous ideas, a lot of asks, many questions, and nebulous targets into an invigorating and thought-provoking two days that have helped us achieve no less than giving shape to what good looks like at Concur, and I can't wait to see the impact that makes. I'm once again wowed by your skills and perspective and leadership and am over the moon that I get to work with such a talented team. Thank you!

Kat, when we became part of the same team, I told you I respected your work and was looking forward to partnering with you. You lived up to every bit of what I was hoping for in a partnership. I really admired how well you communicate, how thoughtful your designs were, how much you listened and included different perspectives, and how well you navigated strong opinions. We had so many plans for the future and we were just about to hit our stride. I wish you all the best in your career and will keep in touch. We are TripIt family.

Kat, I know this year has had its struggles and challenges, but I really value how you’ve been such a pillar for the team through it all. I always know I can rely on you to keep things moving forward smoothly, even when things are uncertain, and you consistently bring great design thinking and high-quality work to the table. Of course, I also deeply appreciate your strong collaboration with product and engineering partners—you build trust, communicate clearly, and help bridge gaps that make projects run more smoothly and generally just make things easier for everyone! You’ve been leading the way for TripIt design in a meaningful way, setting a strong example with your reliability and expertise.