Fran Bencosme · Product praxis est. 2008
I don't just design;I BUILD
UX · Product Strategy · Digital Experiences · Branding
↓I believe products should have a point of view. Here's mine.
About
Short sentences. Long story
I'm Fran Bencosme, a product designer and strategist from Santo Domingo. Eighteen years, and never a straight line. I started freelance in design, and later I was writing code for phones that no longer exist. Today I lead products from the first question to the last shipped screen.
I work across UX, branding, product strategy and digital experiences. Not because I couldn't choose. Because the best products are built where those disciplines meet.
Still curious. Less patient with nonsense.
- 40+
- products shipped, campaign work not counted
- 18
- years in the craft
- 4
- disciplines, one point of view
- 13
- countries the work reached
Santo Domingo, most days.
Eighteen years. The through line is the problem, never the tool.
Selected work
Judge for yourself
Three problems that were not what the brief said they were.
-
Project 01
Banco BHD · The design system stopped at the app and the website. The campaigns lived outside it
Every campaign got invented again, and each one drifted a little further from the bank's own identity. The team expanded the system into paid and owned channels, with AI agents doing the heavy lifting on email formats. Producing a piece went from three days to one.
Cuenta Móvil and the credit card landing. Built to sell, and they did. New page templates, so bhd.com.do could stay consistent while it kept publishing. -
Project 02
Redviver · The consultancy I cofounded, building platforms nobody is obliged to use
Rescate Ozama with UNDP and The Ocean Cleanup. Empresas por el Clima, where a tool called RDuce Tu Huella turns a company's emissions into a number it can watch move. SEDECINE for the film industry. A bank has customers and a ministry has citizens; a climate platform has neither.
Systems built per client, from a shared skeleton. Handover has to outlive us. Research in the country, with the people who will use it. No exceptions. -
Project 03
OPTIC · Designing services for people who never chose to use them
No competitor, no campaign, no option to walk away. People arrive because they have to, so every friction left behind is a tax on someone's day. Three services: the innovation lab and the 3D site you ride through, a case reporting service, and a city app that took 250 reports in its first week.
Refusing to put administrative vocabulary in front of citizens. Every phrase has an owner who chose it for a reason. That is the slow part.
Good work speaks for itself.
Then I explain what it was thinking.
How I work
Four things I believe
Eighteen years taught me a few things I no longer argue about. These are the ones that change the work.
-
01
Strategy before pixels.
I start with the business and the person using the thing, not the screen. The best design decision is often the one that removes work instead of adding it.
So the first thing I deliver is usually a shorter list.
Read: Saying no is the deliverable -
02
A brand is a promise.
Identity is not decoration. It is what people expect from you before they read a single word, and it has to mean something.
So we write down what it must mean before anyone draws.
Read: A logo is not an opinion -
03
It is not done until it ships.
I speak developer and stay through the build, so what we designed is what people actually get. Not a pretty file nobody uses.
So I stay in the thread while it is built, not after.
Read: Nothing is finished in Figma -
04
AI gives me speed, not judgement.
I use it for research, for testing, for building, and to reach more versions than I could alone. What it does not do is decide. The judgement about what is worth building stays mine.
So you get more options, and still get the reason I picked one.
See: the agents at Banco BHD
Eighteen years in, my best tool is still a question
Process
I understand first
No sacred methodology. Five things I refuse to skip, in order.
- 01
Ask
The uncomfortable question, before anything else.
- 02
Frame
The real problem, not the one the brief describes.
- 03
Cut
Until only what matters is left on the screen.
- 04
Test
With real users, so prototypes are wrong early and cheap.
- 05
Ship
Stay through the build, until it works in someone's hands.
Common questions
Do you work with clients outside the Dominican Republic?
Yes. I am based in Santo Domingo and my work has shipped into thirteen countries, among them the United States, Canada, England, France, Spain, Russia, India, China, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Costa Rica. Much of that came through Amazon campaigns at Theorem, where a brief could arrive from anywhere and had to work in a language I did not speak. Remote collaboration is the normal case, not the exception.
Do you only design, or do you stay through the build?
I stay. For two years at Theorem I built HTML5 rich media ad units on the Celtra platform: animating them, optimizing them, adapting one campaign across dozens of screen sizes, with some JavaScript for the custom builds. Mostly mobile, some desktop. That is where I learned to speak the builders' language and to stay available while the thing ships. A design is not delivered when the file is approved; it is delivered when someone who does not work on it uses it and gets what they came for.
What do you need from me to start?
The problem as you see it, and access to the people who live with it. Not a specification. The first thing I do is work out whether the problem you described is the problem you actually have, which is why the first step is asking rather than designing.
What kind of projects do you take?
I do not take every project. I take the ones where I can build something that matters: complex problems that need UX, product strategy, branding and digital experiences to be handled as one thing rather than four separate briefs.
How much does a project cost?
There is no list price. Every engagement is tailored to the problem rather than sold as a package, so the figure comes from the work itself. What moves it: the scope, whether you need discovery, delivery or both, and whether I stay through the build. You get a number after the first conversation and before any work starts.
How long does a project take?
It depends on the problem, and I would rather say that than quote a number I have to walk back later. A focused piece of work runs in weeks; a product taken end to end runs in months. We set the timeline together once I understand what we are actually solving, which is the first step of the process above.
18.4861° N, 69.9312° W · working worldwide
Contact
Your move
Thank you for traveling this far.
If you carry a complex problem, the next sentence is yours.