What led you into design?
I remember when I was a child, I used to draw a lot with my 2 brothers. My mother told me that I was a very creative person quite often. I created a lot of cartoons stories including scenes and dialogues. I've always been a person who pays attention to the details everywhere. My cousin always told the family that whenever I got a brand new pair of jeans and I looked very happy with it, she said, "This is a typical pair of jeans, it doesn't have anything special." And I showed her that the sewing patterns were different than other jeans, and nobody had noticed that before. For me, it was a really cool detail and the reason I bought them.
I decided to study Graphic Design after school, and at the same time, I had my own design studio with a friend where we created a lot of websites while learning HTML and CSS from scratch (cries in Adobe Flash memories). It was a really good experience ,and I discovered my preference and interest with digital things there. After a couple of years as a professional designer, I realized that I really enjoy creating digital products that many people can use and solve different kinds of problems.
What does a typical day look like?
I take the famous double-decker bus every day, and I listen to a podcast or music during my commute. When I get into the office, I always start with a coffee and some snacks, and after that, I usually check Slack and emails, and soon afterwards, I participate during the standup with my team. When I'm back at my desktop, I prioritize my to-do list and check if anyone needs my help. Usually, I do the most boring tasks in the morning and focus on something that demands more creativity after lunch.
I think I have typical weeks rather than days, so depending on the day of the week, I have a meeting that could be a Design critique, Design system weekly, Refinement, Retro, Planning, Interviews, User testing sessions or a full Design sprint week :)
What’s your workstation setup?
Where do you go to get inspired?
I get inspired on websites like Dribbble, Behance, Medium, and Twitter design. I also get inspired by using a lot of apps. I always download several apps just to check how others are doing, and if they have good or bad UX. Traveling around the world and meeting people from different cultures inspires me a lot, too.
What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?
After a long time, I'm back to using Duolingo. I was surprised by the new design, and I think they are creating a really enjoyable product. It's easy to use for everyone, and very helpful for millions of users. I want to make a special mention to Notion, which helps me to organise my life in a better way.
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
Probably the typical answer from a designer, being that we are never proud of a certain piece of work that we created after a short period of time, and I'm not the exception. I think we are always learning and growing as designers.
I feel quite proud of the work we are doing in Monese, but can't say this is only about me, because we have a strong and talented team. I'm pretty proud of an app that I created with my previous company, Sysgarage, since it has been functioning really well in the real world and I designed the whole app.
I have some case studies of things that I worked in Monese in this link.
What design challenges do you face at your company?
We are working very hard to improve the user experience at Tymit, we have tons of feedback from our users and we are listening to all of them in order to solve their problems and give them a better experience. Building a live billing cycle of a credit card is really complex and there are multiple ways to do it. We are facing this challenge as a company, and we involve the whole team during the process.
What music do you listen to whilst designing?
Any advice for ambitious designers?
My advice for the designers could be a list of things that I learned during my 10 years as a professional designer:
- Stay curious. Be as autodidactic as possible, you can learn about tools and design methodologies online and for free.
- English is a must (when I was working remotely for 2 years, I watched English classes on Youtube on my TV almost every day). I keep learning at work every day.
- Take notes of the ideas that come to your mind.
- Learn from your work fellows.
- Think in all the user cases, not only the happy path.
- Ask for feedback, share early and collaborate with the team.
- Listen and talk to the users.
- Tools are tools, use your creativity and do user tests early.
- Design for the business, driven by user-centred decisions.
- Data always helps to improve the design and you can be more secure of your decisions.
- We always make mistakes, take them as part of the process to improve.
- Work close to devs, product owners and QA. Make them involved in the design process.
Anything you want to promote or plug?
Latinxs who design (Latinos design community by Pablo Stanley)
Sysgarage (If you need a team to build your startup, they are the best)
