Absinthe Wu

Hey 👋🏻, I’m

Absinthe Wu

Senior Product Design Engineer

I design the system and own the decision. Currently in Munich at cplace, teaching enterprise software to work alongside AI.

See my work More about me
Absinthe Wu
🏆15× hackathon winner📍Munich🦜CN · EN · JPN · DE🤖AI enthusiast
🧱
4 design systems
Binance, Tset, Knauf and now Helles at cplace
🔍
Research that moves plans
71% never saw the dashboard; 80% picked option A
🌍
4 countries, 8 years
Tokyo · Singapore · Vienna · Munich
🚀
Co-founder & CPO
Atmos, a climate-reporting startup — plus 15 web3 hackathon wins

Worked with teams at

cplaceKnaufBinanceTsetGiveryBMWFujifilmKonica MinoltaAtmosETHGlobalcplaceKnaufBinanceTsetGiveryBMWFujifilmKonica MinoltaAtmosETHGlobal

A bit about me

Designer first. Then whatever the product needs.

I’m Sin (short for Absinthe) — a Senior Product Design Engineer and Product Manager in Munich. I work where design systems, product strategy and emerging technology meet, and I’d rather own what ships and what it does to the numbers than hand off a Figma file.

Eight years, four countries: fintech in Singapore, a hiring platform in Tokyo, a design-system rebuild in Vienna, a 100-year-old brand in Munich, a climate-reporting startup co-founded as CPO — and 15 hackathon wins on weekends, because shipping something real in 48 hours keeps my instincts sharp.

📍
Based in Munich
Previously Vienna, Singapore, Tokyo and Boston.
🦜
Four languages
Chinese (native), English (C1), Japanese (B2), German (learning — slowly, with Claude).
🏆
15 hackathon wins
ETHGlobal London, Paris and Brussels among them. Net Zero took 1st for the Celo prize in 2024.
🎮
Game design roots
MSc in Game Science & Design. My first job was designing a citizen-science game.
🧪
Co-founder, Dermis
A handheld optical skin sensor, starting with an MVP for the Mexican market.
🤖
AI-native workflow
I prototype with Claude Code, test with real data, and ship the parts that survive.

What I’m good at

The toolkit, roughly in the order I reach for it.

👩🏻‍💻Product & strategy
  • Product requirement documents people actually read
  • Scrum & agile — certified PSD I, Jira refinement veteran
  • Competitive analysis and market research
  • Roadmapping and prioritisation with engineering
  • Analytics: cohort and funnel reads in Adobe / Google
📐Design
  • Design systems and tokens — Figma to Storybook
  • UX research: interviews, card sorting, usability tests
  • Information architecture and navigation
  • Rapid prototyping, wireframe to clickable code
  • Content design, voice & tone, branding
🤖AI & build
  • Vibe coding with Claude Code — working prototypes, not mockups
  • AI-assisted design workflows for teams
  • Designing AI assistants: trust, uncertainty, error states
  • Front-end fluency: React, Sass, Storybook QA
  • Webflow, WordPress, Algolia for marketing sites
FigmaStorybookClaude CodeVS CodeJiraMiroMazeZeplinWebflowAdobe AnalyticsReactSassPrimeNGMUIContentfulFigmaStorybookClaude CodeVS CodeJiraMiroMazeZeplinWebflowAdobe AnalyticsReactSassPrimeNGMUIContentful

Selected work

Six stories. One habit: owning the outcome.

Design systems, research that changed the plan, and the product decisions in between.

An AI Companion enterprise teams actually pay for — from 1.2% to 22% of customers in eight months

cplace · Enterprise SaaS · AI · 2025 – now

An AI Companion enterprise teams actually pay for — from 1.2% to 22% of customers in eight months
End-to-end UX for cplace’s AI Companion — sixteen tools, one result card — plus the AI-first working mode that cut our design-to-development cycle from two weeks to one.
Read the case study
From five navigation levels to three clicks — and four design systems to one

Knauf Digital · 2023 – 2024

From five navigation levels to three clicks — and four design systems to one
A research-led relaunch of knauf.com for a 100-year-old brand in 12 regions. +78% product-page views in the first month.
Read the case study
From hackathon teammates to co-founders — the climate-reporting startup we built on evenings and weekends

Atmos · Climate-tech startup · Co-founder & CPO · 2024 – 2025

From hackathon teammates to co-founders — the climate-reporting startup we built on evenings and weekends
As CPO I led product planning and design, the project plan and the fundraising story — from research and a high-res prototype to a pre-seed deck climate VCs and CSRD practitioners responded to.
Read the case study
Faster handoffs, fewer QA loops — a two-person design-system rebuild

Tset · 2021 – 2022

Faster handoffs, fewer QA loops — a two-person design-system rebuild
eTsetera 2.0 for a cost-engineering platform used by BMW. Onboarding cut by four days.
Read the case study
One voice, one design system, and a home page people can actually find

Binance · 2020 – 2021

One voice, one design system, and a home page people can actually find
Voice & tone for 25 languages, the first cross-platform design system, and the research behind Binance.US 2.0. +200% web traffic.
Read the case study
From a 0.7% acceptance rate to 20 signed offers a month

Givery · Tokyo · 2019

From a 0.7% acceptance rate to 20 signed offers a month
Leading UX, UI and half the PM work for a hackathon-first hiring platform for Japan’s engineering students.
Read the case study

Contact

Like what you see? 🙌

I like talking about design, psychology, new products and the occasional game. If you’re hiring a Senior or Lead Product Designer who will also own the product decisions — or want a hackathon teammate — let’s catch up.

Email me LinkedIn Resume