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Hi, I'm Luke!I'm a product designer, digital tinker, and systems thinker. Currently building software for veterinarians at Instinct.

Luke van ZylHi, I'm Luke!I'm a...

Case Studies

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My Career

Instinct Science

Instinct Science Instinct

Senior Product Designer

Oct 2025 – Present

Lead designer on veterinary software — clinical product work plus the design system that keeps a small team shipping at product speed.

Lead designer on Instinct’s veterinary software, working close to the live product. Alongside day-to-day product design I own the internal design system and a code-prototyping workflow that keeps iteration fast — so craft and delivery don’t trade off against each other.

  • Lead designer across Instinct’s core veterinary product surfaces
  • Own the internal design system that underpins product UI
  • Built a code-prototyping workflow that compressed iteration from weeks to hours
  • Focus: cut admin burden by meeting vets in their real workflow

PwC

PwC PwC

UX Design Manager

Jun 2023 – Oct 2025

Owned the design system behind 3,000+ products, shipped GenAI tooling that gave managers ~30% of their week back, and led design on the firm’s flagship AI product.

Promoted to manage craft and people at once: a team of designers, a design system serving thousands of products, and hands-on leadership on AI work the firm pitched to Fortune 500 clients. Built a suite of custom GPTs that automated the busywork — release notes, copy, tasks, reviews — so managers and designers could spend time on judgment, not formatting.

  • Managed and mentored a team of three designers while owning craft standards across product lines
  • Ran the design system that serviced 3,000+ products globally
  • Led GenAI workflow tooling that freed managers up to ~30% of their week
  • Lead designer on SDLC Canvas — took the firm’s flagship AI product from POC to Fortune 500 pitches

PwC

PwC PwC

Senior UX Designer

Dec 2021 – Jun 2023

Pitched and led a Figma migration for 120+ designers, rebuilt the design system, and launched a pattern library that stopped 50+ teams from reinventing the same screens.

Came into a Sketch / Abstract / InVision stack that was burning hours on versioning fights and blocking remote collaboration. Built the business case, piloted Figma, rebuilt 30+ system components natively, wrote 100+ pages of docs, and ran months of office hours until the whole department was on one tool — cutting ~3.5 hours/week of lost-work thrash to near zero and killing three redundant licenses.

  • Led the org-wide Figma migration and upskilled 120+ designers with curriculum, docs, and office hours
  • Audited and rebuilt the design system in Figma (atomic components, variants, real interaction states)
  • Led a UX pattern library for 50+ product teams — 86+ fewer one-off requests, 12 patterns shipped to the system site
  • Cut prototype cycles from weeks to days and unblocked concurrent, conflict-free collaboration

Blue Corona

Blue Corona Blue Corona

Senior Digital Designer

Feb 2021 – Dec 2021

Designed 80+ client sites and built a modular Figma page system that cut design time from 8–10 hours down to under 2.

Agency pace, marketing pressure, dozens of concurrent home-service brands. Instead of redrawing the same site structure every time, I built a modular Figma block system with client theming so designers could ship faster without tanking craft — some smaller projects dropped from a full day to ~30 minutes.

  • Designed and shipped custom sites for 80+ home-service companies
  • Led the Rapid Page Template Builder — ~80% less time on repeat layout work
  • Raised visual quality on templated builds without slowing delivery

Inovo

Inovo Inovo

Freelance Designer

Jun 2015 – Feb 2021

Built the craft from scratch — a 30k-subscriber YouTube channel into a solo studio shipping 40+ brand, web, and product projects end to end.

Years of owning the whole job: discovery, brand, web, product UI, and handoff — first as freelance, then as a formalized creative studio. Learned how to sell work, keep clients, and ship without a team to hide behind. The foundation under everything that came after.

  • Delivered 40+ client projects across branding, web, and product design
  • Grew a self-taught Mac tutorial channel to 30k+ subscribers and multi-million views
  • Turned one-off gigs into retainers and formalized the practice into a creative studio

Hear from my colleagues

Michael Lund

Michael Lund

Product Designer · Worked with Luke on the same team

Luke is the sharpest systems thinker I've ever worked with. He thinks about how the whole thing fits together and where the edges are, and he comes prepared with reasoning that drives conversations so stakeholders can quickly make informed decisions. He's fast, insightful, and thorough. And he doesn't ask for permission to fix something—by the time you've identified a problem, he's halfway through fixing it.

What I trust most about Luke is that his systems thinking doesn't just apply to design. It's how he organizes himself across every part of the work. He puts systems in place to streamline his own processes, and he's always learning and tinkering, constantly reinventing how he approaches something the moment he finds a better way. Because of this, I haven't been able to give him a project he can't tackle. The guy is a monster.

Beyond all that, he's humble, kind, and truly a joy to work with. He will elevate any environment he's in and amplify the team he's a part of.

Jamie Sutton

Jamie Sutton

Design Director · Senior to Luke

I've worked alongside Luke and have observed his impactful contributions to both projects and team dynamics. Luke consistently brings exceptional UX design expertise and excels at building strong relationships with teammates, stakeholders and clients.

He has established himself as a trusted expert, particularly when helping others to further up-skill on UX related tools like Figma and creating prototypes that help teams build a shared understanding with their stakeholders and clients.

His significant contributions to our widely adopted design system within our organization and his leadership as a key member of the team who supports it further highlights the value that he brings to what we do.

As a UX manager, Luke leads with empathy and humility, earning widespread respect from peers and executive leadership alike. He is deeply committed to his own continuous improvement and consistently supports the growth and success of those around him. Known for his creativity, technical expertise, honesty, inclusivity and integrity, Luke is very much a valuable member of our team.

Ashley Dischinger

Ashley Dischinger

Senior Technical Project Manager, Red Ventures · Managed Luke directly

I had the pleasure of bringing Luke onboard my team as a Senior Digital Designer at Blue Corona, Inc. I knew immediately from the early days of his tenure that he would play a key role in the development of our team's success. Luke certainly has a proven record of raw design talent, a forward-thinking understanding of UX/UI best practices, and an innate sense of creativity and innovation. Even more critical to the long-term success of the team, he took initiative to advocate for a software transition to Figma and successfully led subsequent team trainings to ensure the team, myself included, was well-versed on how to operate within a new system.

Luke took this one step further in working alongside another Senior Designer to develop a core set of templates, components, and design assets that would ultimately become Blue Corona's first ever Design System. This was critical in increasing operational efficiency and creating continuity in our design work, and was a great value add to the company's operations as a whole. Luke is truly a team player and always seeking ways to improve himself and his peers — all the while with a positive attitude! I'm fortunate to have had the pleasure of working with Luke, and any future employer can expect an exceptional hire in him.

Emmanuel Idehen

Emmanuel Idehen

Senior Manager, PwC · Worked with Luke on the same team

I have had the absolute pleasure of working with Luke, an incredible design leader who knows design systems inside and out. Luke was the driving force behind our move from Sketch to Figma, guiding the team every step of the way and building out a Figma library that's both intuitive and powerful. Thanks to his leadership, we now have a design system that's been adopted across more than 40 territories worldwide—a true testament to the impact of his work.

Luke brings so much more than just technical know-how. He's a pro at managing complex AI projects, collaborating seamlessly with stakeholders, developers, and designers, and always keeping the focus on delivering the best user experience possible. He has a knack for user research and an incredible ability to unite teams around a common goal.

Luke's talent for turning user insights into real, actionable design improvements has made a huge difference in our work. I have no doubt that he'll continue to make waves and inspire teams.

Goals This Year

How I'm spending my energy in 2026

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Experiments

f / 4 Reading tool · Interactive ApertureDHD Dial in how much of the page stays in focus. ↗
  • Human-Centered Design Issued by PwC
  • Intro to Web Accessibility Issued by edX
  • Inclusive Mindset Issued by PwC
Luke's Digital Brain

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