SnapTag is an iOS app I created for my company DREI Solutions working with a freelance iOS developer. "Snap. Tag. Remember." This visual reminder and to-do list app is designed to help users tag photos and screenshots they take for reference – but later forget about anyways. To refine the initial concept into a design that addresses people's existing pain points, I conducted a user survey to identify different categories of content and current workarounds. A WhatsApp-based diary study helped provide more qualitative data on the moments in which people take or retrieve these "snaps." I defined the product design, detailing user flows with wireframes and initial iOS screen designs, complete with logo and color palette in Figma for the first version to quickly get user feedback. Then I hired a freelance designer for a refined UI refresh.

I partnered with the team of This One to define and iterate on the functionality of their domain-specific recommender system. Starting with the domain of movie recommendations, we conducted Design Sprints resulting in concepts and wireframes that showcase innovative potential solutions. Based on user interviews and a set of user tests, I derived data-driven Ideal Customer Profiles and supporting Personas. By conducting think-aloud studies of competing products, I also identified categories and severity of pain points in the existing user experience. These UX deliverables informed the prioritization of the product roadmap, driving continuous improvement.

— Martin Gould, CEO at This One.

During my time at Spotify, I primarily worked on projects called "Mountain Bets" – special projects that explored the feasibility of emerging technologies, such as voice assistants, speech synthesis, and reinforcement learning, within a business context. I led and participated in numerous activities that are also crucial to the success of early-stage startups and any company in need of user interfaces for novel technology. This included rapid prototyping, efficient user evaluation, design iterations, synthesizing published work, and tailoring communication to various members of multidisciplinary teams. For each project, I quickly picked up new skills as they were needed, so I also crafted design specs for developers, defined the tone of voice for voice assistants, and coded simple prototypes in Python and JavaScript.

Several of the projects were launched publicly as products. Press Announcement for Hey Spotify, Car Thing, AI DJ.

As part of the founding team, I took on various responsibilities such as on anything to help the startup succeed: from designing a logo and a website to showcasing our technologies' competitive advantages. In addition to conducting literature review and market research, engaged in creating and illustrating use cases that highlighted our technologies' unique capabilities and 3D-modeling prototypes for camera mounts. Leveraging my computer science allowed me to tightly work with the machine learning researchers and engineers to understand the limitations and novel advantages of the technologies and communicate the competitive edge efficiently in the use cases and demo scenarios.

At Microsoft Research, I conducted the initial user research for a cutting-edge telecommunication technology called Holoportation that captures the 3D scene in real-time and visualizes it in Augmented or Virtual Reality. This involved comprehending the research prototypes' capabilities and limitations to enable seamless user testing and generate reliable data for subsequent research. I closely collaborated with machine learning researchers and engineers to effectively orchestrate the study setup involving the various technologies.

While at Google, I learned and applied best practices and a diverse array of user research and iterative design methodologies for different stages of product maturity. I conducted semi-structured interviews to gather initial requirements for early product ideas as well as traditional usability techniques ranging from think-aloud walkthroughs supported by eye-tracking technology to in-app survey designs for more developed products. Working with multidisciplinary stakeholders I created various formats of research communication to drive product improvements.