The Start
At the end of my studies at the Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana, product design came into focus. At the time, I've been working as a part-time writer and a marketer creating mobile marketing campaigns for local companies. In hindsight having the experience and understanding of the various business stakeholder groups helps when getting the needed support for implementing design solutions or improvements in the product design and development process.
The Highlights (for now)
One of the highlights has been working with Welltok Inc., an established SaaS company in the US healthcare market. With the various teams at Welltok, we've covered the complete design process from research activities, prototyping, and testing, presenting the solutions to clients such as IBM, and measuring the results of our actions. We also worked with techniques of behavioral design. Another noteworthy highlight is Smarp, a successful and fast-growing startup in the employee experience market. At Smarp, we've been able to work with companies such as Amazon, Google, or Salesforce.
Apart from working with B2B SaaS companies, one of the highlights has been working with the Google News Initiative in creating Audiosume. The product reads out the latest news headlines to the person that can use it while completing daily tasks.
In the summer of 2021, I've joined Toptal.
The Latest
Recently, my focus has increasingly been on establishing a design process at startups or improving the existing product and design development processes within large organizations. One of the activities includes implementing a measurement framework. Using a specific set of tools that collect qualitative and quantitative data provides insights into usefulness, usage, satisfaction, and usability for a new feature or a feature update. It also answers the question about the effect a specific feature has on essential business-related metrics.
Other activities include implementing a design system, including accessibility, and helping set up the design direction a product needs to meet peoples' expectations. One example is using design to increase trust with people who use a product in the healthcare industry.