André Sequeira
Founder
AboutDesign decides
who gets in.
Every product decides who can understand it, trust it and use it. Mistaek makes that decision on purpose, with the people it affects.
Why the name Yes, the spelling is
Yes, the spelling is
on purpose.
Mistaek started as an answer to perfectionism. Most people show the finished result and hide how they got there, so everything looks like it went to plan. The name came out of long walks and more voice memos than we like to admit. We chose it because it named the thing we were most afraid of, and it came with a simple deal: show the process, mistakes included.
That habit turned out to matter even more in our clients' work. In a product, the costly mistakes are the ones nobody sees. A small change in week three, another in week five, and a year later the product says something different from the deck. Nobody decided that. Nobody noticed either.
So the studio runs on one rule: make mistakes visible early, and put a name on them. When someone breaks a decision, you can see who did it and why. When we don't know something, we say so.
A mistake you can see is a mistake you can fix.
How we work
Five values we don't bend.
001 Inclusive by default
Accessibility is checked from the first day of every program. If it doesn't work for the people who usually get left out, it isn't finished.
002 Clarity over complexity
If an idea needs jargon to make sense, it isn't clear yet. We write for an eighth-grade reader and see what survives.
003 Question before designing
Every program opens with workshops with your team, your users and your buyers. Nothing gets designed until the problem has a name. We have walked away from work when a client wanted us to execute without asking why.
004 Courage over comfort
We tell you when the brief is solving the wrong problem. We would rather be right than agreeable.
005 No access, no engagement
We don't guess on behalf of the people your technology is for. If we can't talk to your users, buyers and operators, we decline the work. We also decline work we don't want our name on, however well we could do it. We don't work with companies directly connected to war or the military. When defence is one part of a wider business, we talk it through before we say yes.
What changes
Every program ends with decisions your team can check without calling us.
Two tools make that happen, Root Key and Standing Decisions, and both programs use them.
Who you'd work with Meet the people
Meet the people
doing the work.
You meet both of us on day one. Ana leads the research at the start: the audits and the interviews with your users and buyers. André leads the systems and architecture toward the end. Everything in between, we do together.
The Team
André grew up in Setúbal wanting to be a palaeontologist, then a car designer, then someone who made things for the web. He spent years as a front-end developer before coming back to design. The code side never left: it tells him when "not possible" means "don't want to." Years later, he realised he had misread his first hero. Alan Grant never went looking for dinosaurs. He studied the history of life. So André studies first, and justifies every choice he makes.
Ana Rocha
Co-Founder
Ana is based in Setúbal and spends most of her time untangling complex, process-heavy products most people would rather avoid. At Mistaek she leads the audits and user interviews, which is why the studio can promise to talk to the people your product is for. Off the clock, the same stubbornness looks different: a house that never gets as tidy as her clients' products, a ceramics habit she'll happily talk your ear off about, and trips back to the Alentejo whenever the pace needs resetting. Once something's started, she finishes it, headaches and all.