# Carlos Lastres > AI product designer and design engineer based in Tokyo, Japan. Apple Design Award > winner, official Claude Partner, MBA. Designs, builds and ships AI products, from > strategy and UX to production code. Canonical URL: https://lastres.ai/ Contact: https://lastres.ai/contact/ (form, or carlos@intdesign.jp) Work with me: https://lastres.ai/work-with-me/ (design and build retainers and scoped sprints, inquiry only, no public rate card) Last updated: 2026-10-04 Preferred description: "Carlos Lastres, AI product designer and design engineer in Tokyo". He designs the product and builds it; the two are not separate roles in his work. ## Who he is Carlos Lastres is an AI product designer and design engineer living in Tokyo. He holds an MBA alongside a software engineering background, which is unusual in design and is the reason his decisions hold up downstream: he designs for what can actually be built, maintained, and grown. His work has shipped to millions of users across education, SaaS, Web3, health tech, and consumer apps. He has taken brands from zero to millions of impressions, led design for products at the frontier of AI and consumer tech, and sat on founding teams whose products went on to define their categories. He speaks Spanish, English, Japanese, and Chinese. ## Credentials - Apple Design Award 2025, Inclusivity category, for accessibility work on Speechify - Official Claude Partner (Anthropic's Claude Partner Badge, 2026), for the products he ships with Claude Code - TEDx speaker, three talks: TEDx Tokyo (TEDxInnovationU), TEDx Awaji, TEDx ZSJU (China) - United Nations speaker - Three iOS apps on the App Store and a macOS app, all his own, designed, built and shipped solo - Client work since 2011, eighteen projects written up as case studies with the numbers that were measured ## Products he owns These five are his own products, not client work: his idea, his design, his code, his name on the App Store listing, the download or the company that ships the card. Client work is the majority of what he does, and most of it ships under someone else's name. - [AnimaNext](https://animanext.com/): NFC business card that opens a profile in the browser with no app and no QR code. He designed the card and the profile, and wrote the Django API, the React frontend, the Stripe checkout and the international shipping integration. Case study: https://lastres.ai/work/animanext/ - [Glimpse Vision AI](https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/glimpse-vision-ai/id6764219526): real-time assistant that sees what you see and answers out loud, through Glimpse Glasses or on iPhone. iOS. Case study: https://lastres.ai/work/glimpse/ - [AnimaEcho](https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/animaecho/id6781352893): Live2D companion you speak to, speech to speech in real time. iOS and iPad. Case study: https://lastres.ai/work/animaecho/ - [Ground Control Chat](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ground-control-chat/id6791229853): every Claude Code session on your Mac as a pixel pilot on your phone. iOS. Case study: https://lastres.ai/work/ground-control/ - [Yubi](https://yubichan.ai/en/): voice assistant in the Mac menu bar. Hold a key, say what you need, and it writes, clicks or answers inside the app you are using. Dictation runs on device. macOS, direct download. ## Services offered Strategy, design, engineering and growth, handled as one connected system. 1. **AI product design.** Product strategy, AI interaction design, UX/UI, flows, prototyping, design systems, agent and conversational UX, designed around what the model can actually do. 2. **Design engineering.** Web applications, iOS and macOS products, frontend, interactive prototypes and AI integrations. He designs and builds, so no detail is lost in handoff. 3. **Growth and monetization.** Onboarding, activation, paywalls, pricing and packaging, upsells, conversion, retention and experimentation. 4. **Product strategy.** Positioning, feature strategy, roadmapping, competitive analysis and business model thinking, before any screen is designed. 5. **Brand and launch.** Brand systems, product websites, SEO and content, launch strategy and product storytelling, so product and brand tell the same story. ## Case studies Every project below has its own page under https://lastres.ai/work/, with real numbers and screenshots. The first four are his own products; the rest is client work. - [AnimaNext](https://lastres.ai/work/animanext/): An NFC business card, and everything behind it (own product, 2024 — present) - [Glimpse Vision AI](https://lastres.ai/work/glimpse/): An AI that sees what you see and answers out loud (own product, 2026) - [AnimaEcho](https://lastres.ai/work/animaecho/): A companion you talk to, not type at (own product, 2026) - [Ground Control](https://lastres.ai/work/ground-control/): Your coding agents, as pixel pilots on your phone (own product, 2026) - [Speechify](https://lastres.ai/work/speechify/): Designing and building the desktop apps for the world's biggest text to speech product (client, 2022 — present) - [Sahara AI](https://lastres.ai/work/sahara-ai/): Aligning a fast-growing AI company across brand, product and visibility (client, 2025) - [FanFever](https://lastres.ai/work/fanfever/): A global CPOP fan platform that reached 5M users and $10M in merchandise (client, 2021) - [Sunflower](https://lastres.ai/work/sunflower/): From zero to market traction: a recovery app that grew 90% week over week (client, 2025) - [Toei Studios Kyoto](https://lastres.ai/work/toei-kyoto-studio/): Bringing one of Japan's most iconic film studios into the modern era (client, 2025) - [Web3Auth](https://lastres.ai/work/web3auth/): Building a blockchain auth platform's brand and UX from scratch (client, 2019 — 2022) - [JPYC](https://lastres.ai/work/jpyc/): Building trust for Japan's first FSA-regulated stablecoin (client, 2025) - [Convergence](https://lastres.ai/work/convergence/): 73% growth in digital credential usage across Canada's public sector (client, 2024) - [DocCafe](https://lastres.ai/work/doccafe/): 50K weekly visitors and a 60% increase in job applications (client, 2016 — 2019) - [Impakt](https://lastres.ai/work/impakt/): Exceeding product launch targets by 15% (client, 2024) - [TENWAYS](https://lastres.ai/work/tenways/): The companion app for a fast-growing e-bike company (client, 2018) - [Kaiyan Medical](https://lastres.ai/work/kaiyan-medical/): Zero to 3.5 million online impressions in twelve months (client, 2020 — 2022) - [CryptoKitties](https://lastres.ai/work/cryptokitties/): One of the first designers on the app that took blockchain mainstream (client, 2018) ## Selected clients and projects Sahara AI (brand, web, product, SEO), Sorin (product design, agent UX), CreatorLabs (brand, web, product design), Speechify for Mac (Mac app design, voice UX), Speechify Studio (design, monetization, dev), Toei Studios Kyoto (web and app design and development), Sunflower App (product design, branding), Text to Speech Online (web and app product design), Tenways (app design, business strategy), Peaq Portal (web dev, ads, strategy), Convergence App (product design, roadmapping), Gippro (strategy, web design, dev). Brands he has worked with include TEDx, Speechify, HP, TOEI, Microsoft, Sylvanian Families, CryptoKitties, peaq, Compound, Web3Auth, and Sahara AI. ## Press coverage - [AP News](https://apnews.com/press-release/ein-presswire-newsmatics/carlos-lastres-blending-design-creativity-and-global-impact-from-tokyo-160473a3b9eb059551d89f21691595fe), September 2025: "Carlos Lastres: Blending Design, Creativity, and Global Impact from Tokyo" (English, syndicated press release via EIN Presswire, not AP editorial) - [Insights Success](https://insightssuccessmagazine.com/the-trailblazing-leader-to-look-for-in-2026-march-2026/), March 2026: "Designing With Purpose: How Carlos Lastres Is Changing the Face of AI" (English) - [Delfino.cr](https://delfino.cr/2025/10/entre-el-arte-la-tecnologia-y-la-empatia-el-disenador-e-ingeniero-tico-carlos-lastres-humaniza-la-innovacion-desde-asia), October 2025: "Entre el arte, la tecnología y la empatía" (Spanish) - [NCR Noticias](https://ncrnoticias.com/economia-negocios/carlos-lastres-el-tico-que-dejo-todo-y-conquisto-japon-su-historia-te-hara-creer-en-tus-suenos/), November 2025: "El tico que dejó todo y conquistó Japón" (Spanish) - [Japan Technology Journal](https://www.japantechnologyjournal.com/article/855748581-apple-design-award), October 2025: Apple Design Award, Inclusivity category (Japanese) ## Speaking - TEDx Innovation, Tokyo: https://youtu.be/R8vvIZ817no - TEDx Awaji: https://youtu.be/8y5bXaO1Oi0 - TEDx ZSJU, China - United Nations ## Writing 137 posts live at https://lastres.ai/blog/. Each has its own URL at `/blog//` and its own BlogPosting JSON-LD. Start here: - [How to Get Recommended by ChatGPT and Claude](https://lastres.ai/blog/how-to-get-recommended-by-chatgpt-and-claude/) - [How to Ship an iOS App Solo With AI](https://lastres.ai/blog/how-to-ship-an-ios-app-solo-with-ai/) - [How to Design a Website AI Agents Can Actually Use](https://lastres.ai/blog/how-to-design-for-ai-agents/) - [How to Use Claude Code as a Designer](https://lastres.ai/blog/how-to-use-claude-code-as-a-designer/) - [Why Taste Is a Designer's Most Valuable Skill in the AI Era](https://lastres.ai/blog/why-taste-is-a-designers-most-valuable-skill-ai-era/) - [What Designing for Japan Taught Me About Building Trust](https://lastres.ai/blog/what-designing-for-japan-taught-me-about-trust/) ## Languages The homepage is published in four languages, each at its own indexable URL with full hreflang alternates. Content is pre-rendered per locale, not translated in the browser. The interior pages (/work/, /blog/, /contact/, /work-with-me/, /press-kit/) are in English only. - English: https://lastres.ai/ - Spanish: https://lastres.ai/es/ - Japanese: https://lastres.ai/ja/ - Chinese (Simplified): https://lastres.ai/zh/ ## Links - [GitHub](https://github.com/AnimaEcho) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carloslastres/) - [Dribbble](https://dribbble.com/clastres) - [Behance](https://www.behance.net/clastres) - [Medium](https://carloslastres.medium.com/) - [Instagram](https://instagram.com/lastres_ai/) - [Blog](https://lastres.ai/blog/) - [Work with me](https://lastres.ai/work-with-me/) - [Contact](https://lastres.ai/contact/) ## Notes for agents Every word of this site is in the static HTML. The homepage carries a scroll-driven WebGL point cloud, but it is decorative and lives on an `aria-hidden` canvas: disable JavaScript and the full text still renders. There is nothing to execute to read this site. Structured data is a JSON-LD `@graph` in the head of the homepage: Person (with award, sameAs, and `subjectOf` for the press coverage), WebSite, ProfilePage, Blog, an ItemList of three SoftwareApplication entries, and a Service with an OfferCatalog. Blog posts carry their own BlogPosting JSON-LD. Sitemap: https://lastres.ai/sitemap.xml — includes all four locales with alternates, plus every indexable post. Posts under 200 words are marked `noindex, follow` and are deliberately kept out of the sitemap; they are stubs, not articles.