ŠKODA AUTO UX & Digital Design organisation

My role: Lead, and later Head of UX & Digital Design
Platform: Web, Mobile, In-car HMI
Industry: Automotive
Period: Sep 2018-Nov 2021
Contract: Full-time employment

ŠKODA AUTO started a digital transformation several years ago and it was further accelerated by the Strategy 2025, and the newest Next Level ŠKODA Strategy 2030.

I was hired in 2018 to help establish a modern UX practice and turn the strategic goals into reality. First, I analysed the as-is state and then I gradually started testing and implementing new ways of working within the HMI (in-car) department. Later, I joined the umbrella UX team which within a year, I had the privilege to become the Head of.

Overall, my role was pivotal in increasing the organisational UX maturity, breaking internal silos, connecting disjointed teams, adopting agile and user-centred practices and mindsets, and getting the necessary finances and approvals. I also worked intensively with my team to create an efficient and collaborative UX & Design culture. Furthermore, I mentored, coached and helped find career direction for multiple people on my team.

Within the complex environment of a multi-national and multi-brand Volkswagen Group, I was responsible for the overarching ŠKODA AUTO’s UX & Digital Design strategy, leadership and management. Our successes were recognised beyond ŠKODA and I was a key contributor and consultant to many VW Group-wide UX initiatives.

ŠKODA AUTO Flow digital design system

My role: Project UX&UI director on the ŠKODA AUTO’s side
Platform: Web, Mobile, In-car HMI
Industry: Automotive
Period: Nov 2019-Nov 2021
Contract: Full-time employment

ŠKODA AUTO’s digital offering needed a strong and systematic design foundation that would connect disjointed products as well as teams.

I selected and hired the core Flow team, created the right environment and got stakeholder buy-in as well as the budget to consolidate ŠKODA AUTO’s digital landscape. This was a mammoth task since dozens of stakeholders from multiple departments and business units with varying goals and expectations had to be included. I also reviewed and directed the creation of the system itself.

The Flow design system now provides designers and engineers with digital product principles and guidelines. It spans multiple platforms and its library comprises more than 1,000 different styles and components. It has sped up the workflow for designers and engineers when developing or redesigning a digital product and brought significant business benefits. Furthermore, our approach became a blueprint for the entire VW Group.

Flow was awarded the Red Dot Award 2021 in the Brands & Communication Design category.

ŠKODA AUTO MyŠKODA mobile app vision

My role: Project UX&UI director on the ŠKODA AUTO’s side
Platform: Mobile
Industry: Automotive
Period: Nov 2020-Nov 2021
Contract: Full-time employment

eMobility is the key strategic topic for the whole automotive industry. We asked ourselves, how might we support the usage of an electric vehicle so that users feel empowered, supported and in control?

Together with my predecessor, we got the buy-in from the key stakeholders to create a new vision of a vehicle-accompanying mobile app.

I reshuffled internal teams and hired extra team members with the right skills. I gave the team the freedom to experiment and required them to validate with prospect users frequently. I provided feedback, direction, and guidance in both user research and design activities.

The result – the MyŠKODA app vision – is a smartphone app that connects people and vehicles to the ŠKODA AUTO digital ecosystem. Delivered with intuitive UI and written in clear language, users can, for example, remotely control mechanical aspects of the vehicle, view diagnostic data, and offer vehicle sharing via multiple accounts.

The MyŠKODA app vision was awarded the Red Dot Award 2021 Best of the Best in the Design Concept category.

BBC iPlayer high-performance team

My role: UX & Design Lead
Platform: Web
Industry: News, Education, Entertainment, Public sector
Period: Sep 2017-Aug 2018
Contract: Full-time employment

BBC iPlayer needed to transform as a product to be able to deliver on its mission “to develop the best place to discover and watch BBC TV for the benefit of UK licence fee payers.”

I joined a fast-paced product team working on the browsing and discovery iPlayer experience on the web. The team already worked very well. At the same time, there was room for improvement in the ways of working and collaborating with the rest of the product team. I started integrating UX & Design into all team routines and practices which brought the team closer together and further sped up the team’s velocity and decreased the number of misunderstandings and rework. 

The product owner and I were also keen to improve our discovery process and make the team more hypothesis- and insight-driven. Together with our delivery and engineering leads, we established new pipelines for A/B and multivariate testing and dramatically increased the number of experiments the team was conducting. We also established continuous qualitative research. These steps led to significant improvements in our KPIs. The team was also widely regarded as one of the high-performance teams within the organisation.

BBC iPlayer AWS migration and optimisation

My role: UX & Design Lead
Platform: Web
Industry: News, Education, Entertainment, Public sector
Period: Sep 2017-Aug 2018
Contract: Full-time employment

BBC iPlayer had aggressive targets to migrate the iPlayer website from a proprietary solution onto AWS (Amazon Web Services) on time to ensure stability, scalability and maintainability of the service.

I was a part of a fast-paced product team working on the browsing and discovery iPlayer experience on the web. The migration presented an opportunity to improve the user experience and branding of the service. Moreover, this was also a great project for our trainee and junior level designers to experiment and learn–I spent a lot of time mentoring them to make sure they were progressing and stayed motivated which I enjoyed very much.

Together with the team, we redesigned multiple templates and categories and found solutions which were easier to develop and maintain while improving the user experience and brand perception. The whole process was insight-driven and we were frequently reviewing many data and feedback streams to ensure the new versions of the service performed better than the legacy ones.

We delivered on time and at the same time, we improved the product and the team culture.

Which? CELL design system

My role: Project Lead, UX Designer
Platform: Web, mobile
Industry: Publishing, Non-profit
Period: Sep 2015-Sep 2016
Contract: Full-time employment

Not having a single design point of reference made it hard for Which?, the UK consumer association, to keep their products concise. It also hampered design and development speed, as well as overarching scalability and maintainability.

I initiated the creation of a multi-disciplinary team of UX designers, UI designers and front-end developers. At first, I co-led with one colleague but later was assigned the sole responsibility for leading the project. I excited others for the project and got the buy-in and support from the management to bring the design system alive. I established collaborative ways of working to develop the system and was one of the key contributors myself.

We delivered CELL – Component & Experience Language Library, which facilitated more cooperation between design and engineering, created one source of truth, saved design and development time, and made Which?’s products and services more coherent and easier to use.

Which? Money – the foundation for a new proposition in the financial space

My role: Project UX Lead
Platform: Web
Industry: Publishing, Non-profit, Consumer advice, Finance
Period: Feb 2016-Jul 2016
Contract: Full-time employment

Which? Money is part of the independent consumer organisation and gets over 10M visits every year. However, obsolete design and suboptimal user experience hampered Which? Money website performance.

I involved editors, senior stakeholders, designers and developers and I guided the project to rigorously follow the user-centred design process. I started off with an in-dept desk, trend and competitive research, which helped us to set the vision and the initial outlines of the revamped service. I continued with information architecture and information design. Every step of the journey was validated with the end-users. Later, we worked closely with a visual design lead to find a new visual language for Which? Money.

Resolving key pain points and redesigning the service in a user-centred way resulted in a very positive response from customers, we also saw a significant decrease in the top task completion times and a significant increase in direct path success. Together with engineering, we created easier to implement and maintain templates which would allow for further evolution of the service.