I'm Mercedes Oliva. Staff Designer and Design System Lead.
Originally from Argentina 🇦🇷, studied Visual Communication Design. Based in Barcelona 🇪🇸.
I like working with a team, and I like working alone when I need to think something through. I'm curious by nature, a researcher in life and in work 🕵️♀️, always asking one more question. I love solving problems; that's honestly what gets me up in the morning.
I'm usually the one breaking the ice in a meeting. And yes, I run on coffee ☕️, chocolate 🍫, and dulce de leche ice cream 🍦.
Eighteen years in, that curiosity turned into a focus: growth, strategy, and the systems that let teams move fast without falling apart.
A few highlights of my work with different companies:
Product
Ship
ARR
Growth
Active
Pilots
Pearl faced an impossible choice: launch Voice (AI clinical assistant) to capture market or redesign a legacy platform. We did both in parallel.
Shipped Voice in 1 month. Used its patterns to build a Design System rooted in clinical UX clarity. Applied that system to redesign the entire platform.
Result: Pearl grew 67% MoM, with 7+ now in active pilots and rollout — it was the strategy that made both ship simultaneously.
What I owned
Voice product strategy & design · Design System architecture (0→1) · Platform redesign strategy · Launch execution · Mentorship & team scaling
The trade-off
Bitpanda faced a classic scale problem: three products (Academy, Broker, Enterprise) needed to ship independently, without fragmenting the brand or slowing down.
I redesigned Academy as the acquisition funnel — learning → curiosity → app download — and built the design system underneath it so three teams could ship that funnel without waiting on each other.
Academy users converted 40% more into the app, and reached first trade 3x faster than direct signups. Cycles dropped from 6 weeks to 2, with zero quality loss.
What I owned
Acquisition funnel strategy · Design System architecture (0→1) · Cross-product collaboration · Team enablement (3 teams shipping in parallel)
The trade-off
Three products racing to ship, one brand that couldn't fragment. Without a shared system, the funnel would've broken the moment a second team touched it.
15+ markets, 15+ sets of regulatory and cultural rules — the kind of fragmentation that usually stalls every launch. I built principles, not components — flexible enough for regional teams to adapt locally without central sign-off.
Time-to-core-workflow dropped from 6 steps to 3. Onboarding shipped 35% faster per market. And because teams weren't waiting on design, purchase and retention moved: +18% purchase growth, +20% 30-day retention.
What I owned
Multi-market Design System architecture · Workflow & onboarding redesign · Executive strategy · Cross-functional partnership (Product, Eng, regional teams)
The trade-off
A design team can be the fastest thing in the room or the reason everyone waits. 15+ markets made that choice for us — so we built for speed.
App installs
+1000%
App logins
x5
Click-through rate
x3
Receipt emails were treated as transactional noise — email optimization, not a growth lever.
I redesigned the receipt as the mobile entry point instead, coordinating 9 teams on strategy, content and a layout built to scale.
Result: +1000% app installs, 5x logins, 3x click-through — millions of daily receipts turned into an acquisition channel.
What I owned
Receipt redesign as growth channel · Mobile-first strategy · Cross-team coordination (9 teams) · A/B testing & experimentation
The trade-off
Millions of receipts sent daily, and none of them working. Ignoring that inbox meant leaving the biggest acquisition channel on the table.
Coverage
Warehouse operators had zero digital experience. Processes were manual, slow, error-prone — and MercadoLibre needed to expand into new countries without rebuilding the system each time.
I designed from the floor, not the spec — shadowing operators before drawing a single screen
Result: 3x higher order volume with the same headcount, scaling to 5 countries with localized-but-consistent workflows.
What I owned
WMS design · Research-backed architecture · Multi-device system (handheld + desktop) · Regional scaling (5 countries)
The trade-off
Confusing software doesn't just slow one warehouse down — it caps how many countries the business can expand into.
Beyond the Projects
Words from colleagues
I have been fortunate enough to work with
Mercedes has been a key player on our team in Checkout, she’s an amazing visual designer and advocate for user needs. Her ability to generate new ideas and execute handoffs quickly made our team a powerhouse this year! She can plug and play anywhere in PayPal, quickly assessing the needs and problems at hand, she’s been an amazing partner and anyone she works with would also agree!
Laura Martinez
Sr. Design Manager @ PayPal
Contact
Send me your thoughts, ideas, or questions. I’ll be in touch within a day :)