Product Designer with 8+ years delivering end-to-end digital products across B2C SaaS, e-commerce, and cultural platforms. Led product design through 3 pivots at an early-stage SaaS — combining user-centered design, continuous discovery, and data-driven decision-making. Skilled in design systems, interaction design (IxD), usability testing, and accessibility (WCAG). Apply Design Thinking and creative thinking across the full product lifecycle — from discovery and rapid prototyping to scalable, shipped UI. Experienced collaborating with cross-functional teams — engineering, marketing, and stakeholders — in fast-paced agile environments. Strong in communication, decision-making, and ownership. Continuously integrating AI and emerging tools into design workflow.
Experience
Sole Product Designer at an early-stage B2C SaaS startup, owning product design end-to-end — from discovery and user research to shipped, scalable UI. Worked in a fast-paced agile, Kanban-driven environment with founder, marketing, and engineering to validate product-market fit, meet business objectives and OKRs, and drive growth. Integrated AI-powered tools into design workflow to accelerate prototyping and research synthesis.
- Led product design through 3 pivots (fintech for family offices → research tooling → productivity tool) using qualitative interviews with stakeholders to steer the team away from non-viable segments.
- Created app flows, wireframes, and multi-fidelity prototypes with detailed interaction specs and interaction patterns — aligning cross-functional teams and reducing implementation ambiguity for engineering.
- Drove 14–20% traffic-to-waitlist conversion across 3 marketing website iterations via structured A/B tests on copy, layout, and CTA — tracked performance via Google Analytics and CR/CTR metrics, exceeding typical SaaS benchmarks and demonstrating clear ROI.
- Grew a 2,000+ user waitlist through iterative, data-driven acquisition funnel design (landing → waitlist → Typeform → CRM-tracked qualification), enabling the team to validate demand and prioritise scalable growth.
- Conducted 80+ qualitative user interviews with Swiss finance professionals and knowledge workers; synthesised user feedback and findings into data-driven product decisions and validated solutions aligned with customer needs.
- Applied continuous discovery and rapid prototyping frameworks to validate product decisions early — reducing rework and improving team execution against business objectives.
- Collaborated with founder and marketing to translate research insights into product requirements, roadmap priorities, and business strategy aligned with growth and performance targets.
Led end-to-end redesign of a Ukrainian artist's portfolio into a structured digital archive, applying user-centered design and analytical skills to map real user workflows, reduce friction, and improving performance of a digital product used for gallery and collector outreach and project pitches.
- Led the end-to-end redesign into a structured digital archive, enabling the artist to share project and artwork pages with galleries in 2–3 clicks — improving usability and reducing task friction.
- Co-defined goals, user flows, and interaction patterns with the artist as primary user, mapping her real gallery pitching process to a clear, navigable digital product.
- Applied analytical skills to design information architecture for 150+ artworks and projects, organising content into clear categories to reduce navigation friction and improve user experience.
- Increased average pages per session from 2 to 5 within 6 months of launch — a measurable growth in user engagement driven by structured IA and design principles.
Designed and launched Shopify storefronts and brand identities for DTC e-commerce businesses, collaborating with marketers, content managers, and front-end developers to strengthen online presence and support early sales growth.
- Coordinated up to 4 client e-commerce projects in parallel, aligning branding, website design, and implementation priorities while keeping timelines and scopes under control.
- Structured product catalogs and key content sections to reduce decision friction and support growth — improving how visitors compare options and find relevant products.
- Partnered with front-end developers and edited Liquid-based HTML/CSS theme code to extend Shopify layouts beyond standard templates — applying technical understanding to close gaps between design intent and implementation.
Visual communication and editorial design for Ukrainian contemporary art projects, applying design principles, typography, and style guide thinking to produce consistent, scalable visual solutions.
- Designed gallery wayfinding, rebranding, and event identities for established Ukrainian artists — applying visual design principles, typography, and brand strategy to achieve consistency across print and digital.
- Created editorial layouts for art catalogs and long-form publications — structuring curatorial content into clear, reusable layout patterns aligned with established style guides.
- Standardised artwork data fields and metadata records, ensuring consistent, high-quality information structure across private art collection databases.
Visual system design for a three-floor flagship retail store and recurring weekly fairs featuring 150+ independent brands.
- Contributed to a modular visual system covering window displays, POS, print, and wayfinding — supporting fast rollout of new thematic fairs while maintaining brand consistency across 150+ independent brands.
- Packaged on-brand graphic systems for live and social broadcasts, enabling consistent promotion across in-store screens, social media, and video with no extra design cycles.
Supported interface design production and asset preparation under senior designer supervision.
Projects
Led product and UX design for a browser-integrated desktop application combining web browsing, personal knowledge management, and AI research workflows for knowledge workers.
- Conducted user-centered research with 80+ online information seekers to map tab clutter, information seeking, and note-taking behaviours into clear product requirements.
- Designed end-to-end knowledge capture and retrieval flows that merge browsing, note-taking, and AI summaries into a single digital product, reducing task friction for research-heavy work.
- Defined interaction patterns and information architecture for handling high-volume tab clutter, decreasing cognitive load and improving usability in long research sessions.
- Partnered with the lead developer and engineering team to co-define application architecture, mapping knowledge-base logic and data structures to ensure design feasibility and scalable implementation.
- Ran continuous usability testing cycles on prototypes and live builds, iterating on flows and interaction details to align with business objectives and performance constraints.
End-to-end UX, information architecture, and no-code development for a studio website functioning as a living digital archive of artworks, exhibitions, and publications.
- Ran a multi-year content inventory and audit to consolidate artworks, exhibitions, and articles from drives, cloud storage, and third-party sites into a single structured CMS-backed system.
- Defined entities, taxonomies, and information architecture to reflect relationships between artworks, series, exhibitions, and press, improving navigation and discoverability for galleries and collectors.
- Mapped Maria’s real pitching and storytelling workflows into user flows and page structures so she can share complete project narratives with galleries in a few clicks.
- Created reusable page templates and CMS structures within no-code tooling, enabling the studio to add new works independently while preserving consistency, usability, and accessibility over time.
Website design and no-code development for Garage 33, an inclusive gallery-shelter concept store combining contemporary art and product design.
- Designed and launched a scalable e-commerce website that enabled Garage 33 to commercialise sculptures, prints, and ceramics for an international audience from zero online presence.
- Systematised inventory and cataloguing of diverse art objects, creating unified templates and metadata structures to enrich the digital catalogue and support future scalability.
- Applied usability and visual design principles to present complex art content in a way that supports both discovery and purchase decisions for first-time visitors.
- Collaborated closely with the founders to balance artistic vision, business objectives, and technical constraints within a no-code implementation.
Education
- Graphic and web-design
- Design of industrial products
- Universal design (incl. course project)
- Composition and color science
- Enterprise in design
- Designer’s personal brand
- Practical training in computer-aided design and design technology
Certificates
Publications
Languages
Skills
References
Date: 5 of May, 2020. Karyna joined us very early on in our studio, during our alpha stage, when we were launching the M&U Studio and our Garage33 Gallery-Shelter. Karyna was with us from November 2018 and we work together by now. Karyna's role as the Designer & Researcher is to lead all design initiatives, including design and setup of both of our websites, distribution graphic materials, researches, analysis, and much more. As a startup, it was imperative that all team members be capable of wearing different hats, and M&U and Garage 33 succeeded in this area. With our combined efforts, we were able to successfully launch both of our websites. Karyna helped us to get to where we did, and we would not have been as strong without her capable intuition and resourcefulness. If you have further questions about M&U Studio, Garage 33 Gallery-Shelter or Karyna's role, feel free to contact me at studio@mariakulikovska.net Best Regards, Maria Kulikovska. Artist & Architect, Founder of Garage 33 Gallery-Shelter, M&U Studio, and School of Political Performance.