Alanna Fischer
I help teams get to clarity when the problem is fog, then ship it. For seven years I've designed for technical users: enterprises at Dune, developers as the founding designer at smlXL (acquired by Dune), and investigators at Chainalysis.
I like starting from the mental model, keeping powerful tools easy to pick up, and building in the codebase myself when it helps.
In my free time I ride horses, make meticulously curated playlists, and go on long walks around the city.
Open to senior and staff roles in developer platforms, data infrastructure, and AI.
Experience
7+ years
2025 to 2026Senior Product Designer
Dune
2023 to 2025Founding Product Designer
smlXL (acquired by Dune)
2021 to 2023Product Designer
Chainalysis
2019 to 2021Product Designer
IBM iX
Show other experienceHide other experience
- 2017 to 2019
Several internships and freelance work
Various employers and clients
Education
2015 to 2019B.S. Information Science
Cornell University
Spring 2018Exchange program
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Work
How I work
Low floor, high ceiling
Make the first step obvious and keep the depth for experts. Sim IDX asked developers to learn two concepts, sim.studio paired a wizard with a code editor where code earned its place, and simAI drafts every step but lets developers edit it.
Structure before features
Chainalysis' community workflows, smlXL's pipeline model, Dune's org layer: each was infrastructure first and interface second, built to hold next year's requirements instead of the loudest request today.
Break hard problems into parts
Fog clears one decision at a time. For Sim IDX, that meant daily sessions on one open question each; for the rebrand, sorting every component into seven buckets before designing anything.
Bring people in early
Legal before the scope sets, engineers into research, a skeptical engineering manager into user testing. Match fidelity to the room: frameworks, then concepts, then workflows, then UI.
Leave the team better set up
At Chainalysis I set up the pipeline from customer success to design and ran research before we had a researcher. At Dune, the rebrand changed how designers work for good: designers kept shipping code, a weekly reviewer rotation took hold, and I started a prototype, review, hand off, polish loop with engineering.
Ship it, then sweat the details
Specs became PRs. I stay with the work through engineering and polish the small things after handoff, so what ships matches what we meant.
Receipts
7 years in, 4 numbers out.
What teammates say
“You can give her a design challenge that is arbitrarily large and significantly underdefined and she will find a path to something we're proud of shipping. She doesn't get stuck.”
Shane Auerbach Product Manager, Lyft (previously lead PM for Sim IDX, Dune)
“The most rigorous designer I have worked with. She zooms out, establishes context, brainstorms, clarifies, and proceeds to a single, optimal solution.”
Joe Ringenberg Staff Designer, Dune
“She didn't just hand designs off, she cared deeply about how things actually came to life in the product and consistently partnered closely with engineering to ensure the final experience matched the intent.”
Garrett Hughes Head of Infrastructure, Phantom (previously Dune)
Let's talk
The deep dives live in conversation. If you're hiring for hard, structural product problems, I'd love to hear about them.