/ about
I’m Nikita, a product designer. I got into design through building websites for clients, and over time the part I enjoyed most moved from how things look to why they work. Since then I’ve designed products in fintech, SaaS, govtech, edtech and e-commerce, and led design teams of four to five people.
I like finding patterns, in interfaces and outside them. Most of my work is taking a product with a lot of rules and edge cases and making it feel simple to the person using it.
Real projects rarely go in a straight line, so I don’t follow a fixed process. Most of my work still moves through the same four stages, and they often overlap.
I start by talking to users and the business to find out what’s actually broken. Then I narrow that down to the few problems worth solving. I sketch, prototype and test with real users, and change direction when the tests tell me to. Last, I polish the design and stay close to developers until it ships the way it was designed.
Designed a national government labor-market platform. Built a candidate recommendation system that cut hiring time by 30%, and ran usability tests that raised task completion by 15%.
Nov 2022 – Jun 2023
Led a team of 5 designers across 4 parallel projects. Set up design review and handoff processes for the team.
Jul 2020 – Jun 2023
Designed 3 products, from a global bank to a trading platform. Optimized the bank account opening flow, cutting completion time by 25%. Designed the trading platform and its design system from scratch, reaching the target of 20% more trading activity.
Designed an early-stage YC startup that helps founders register companies in the US, taking it from a single landing page to a full-service platform. Designed the online application flow, which cut incomplete applications by 33%.
Jul 2019 – Dec 2019
Led the design team at a software company. Owned hiring, budget and client communication.
Jul 2018 – Dec 2019
Designed 3 B2B products for EU clients, including a license management tool and a SaaS task management dashboard. Redesigned a conference room booking app, raising user satisfaction by 15%.
Taught UI/UX design to 50+ students. 8 of them landed design jobs within six months of finishing the course.
Designed websites and brand identities for clients across industries. Delivered 10+ websites end to end and earned 50+ positive reviews.