Laura Vilar Ruiz
Verified Expert in Design
Digital Product Designer
Barcelona, Spain
Toptal member since July 18, 2020
Laura is a versatile product designer and engineer who has helped startups and corporate firms research, advise, ideate, define, and design custom digital experiences and enjoy smooth, successful market launches of their products. She has in-depth expertise in banking and finance, artificial intelligence, and connectivity-based mobile applications. Besides winning a CES award, Laura is an Innovation Awards Honoree for Jacoti Hearing Suite, a cloud-enabled app supporting the hearing impaired.
Portfolio
Mobile Payments Transactional Standalone Module (iOS and Android)
Work Experience
Expert Product Designer Strategist
HelloFresh
- Helped to grow one of HelloFresh's new verticals called Good Chop in terms of retention and acquisition.
- Worked closely with UX researchers, product owners, engineers, other product designers, and UX writers in giving and receiving feedback.
- Generated low-fidelity user flows, diagrams, user journeys, wireframes, and prototypes.
- Designed high-fidelity design solutions using current brand guidelines.
- Ideated and prototyped several variations to help solve a specific problem for the user.
- Worked at a fast pace to quickly launch experiments, measuring and iterating as fast as possible to achieve growth goals.
Senior Product Digital Designer
Freelance
- Assisted a startup with researching, planning, ideating, defining, designing, and delivering a web browser-based product that helped first-league football teams improve their performance. It is a solution that uses AI to detect football patterns in real-time games.
- Redesigned a mobile app for iOS and Android that creates a virtual fence for dogs by using a Bluetooth-based collar with GPS connectivity.
- Proposed and designed web and mobile solutions that reduced friction in obtaining leads for an educational platform to help students find the right university for their careers.
- Helped to redesign a mobile app feature to send and receive money among friends with the goal of improving usability and increasing engagement. Also, I contributed with conceptualizing and defining new features for this service.
Senior UX/UI Designer
Form Energy
- Identified the primary target users and interviewed them to map their processes and tasks into a single document as the main source of truth.
- Interviewed different types of scientists to understand their needs and tasks within the tool.
- Designed new processes within the web application requested by scientists.
- Improved the current design system to allocate new components and add consistency across the product.
- Wireframed and prototyped several complex solutions to gather feedback and iterate for a solid final proposal.
- Collaborated constantly with developers and stakeholders.
Senior Digital Product Designer
Reviewpad (via Toptal)
- Analyzed the developer's and product manager's main pain points with the current product by performing user interviews and informal chats. Also identified potential patterns of use among the users that could help design easier processes of doing things.
- Detailed the experience of both types of users in a customer journey to map needs, tasks, and timing.
- Redesigned the current product including new ways of performing tasks that accommodate better users' needs.
- Added new features to provide more value to developers and managers such as a board view of current code reviews to make it easier when planning the sprint inside a team.
Lead of Design
Bnai Zion Foundation (via Toptal)
- Prototyped in high-fidelity a concept of the product to be tested by real users in two weeks.
- Conceptualized and designed an MVP version of the product (The Joshua Project). A totally responsive web application for the desktop, portrait-tablet, and portrait-mobile.
- Helped to conceptualize and design the first version of the product for The Joshua Network, an online platform for communities of faith to remain connected. A responsive web application with podcast integration which was the main form of content.
Head of Product Design | Co-founder
Apiumhub
- Designed new features for a feedback collection online tool (NPS-based) to increase value.
- Created and designed an ecosystem of online products that allows 3D architects and designers to view 3D scenes in the browser and collaborate and make presentations.
- Built several mobile apps to help kids with hearing loss communicate better using their mobile phones at school, which got a CES Innovation Award Honoree in 2016.
- Designed from scratch a responsive e-learning platform mainly for the LATAM niche.
- Redesigned a web app to easily manage books and share them with others across devices.
Head of UX Design
Semantix
- Designed a responsive contextual dictionary cross-device.
- Prepared, documented, and present all mock-ups, architecture files, and technical information to access the Norman Nielsen Yearly contest.
- Awarded the Best Design Multiplatform Application for Dixio. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/best-application-designs/.
Education
Technical Engineering Degree in Industrial Design
Fachhochschule Düsseldorf - Düsseldorf, Germany
Technical Engineering Degree in Industrial Design
Polytechnic University of Valencia - Spain - Valencia, Spain
Certifications
Business Design
d.MBA
Cryptocurrency Professional Investments Master
Cryptomaster Academy
Business Thinking Intensive Course
Second Wave Dive
Wireframing and Prototyping
Norman Nielsen Group
Information Architecture II
Norman Nielsen Group
Information Architecture I
Norman Nielsen Group
Visual Design for Mobile and Tablet II
Norman Nielsen Group
Visual Design for Mobile and Tablet I
Norman Nielsen Group
Application Usability 1: Page Level Building Blocks for Feature Design
Norman Nielsen Group
Master in Designing and Creating Websites
CEDECO
Skills
Tools
Sketch, InVision, ProtoPie, Figma, Miro, Photoshop CC, Wireframe.cc
Platforms
Android, iOS, Web, WordPress, Ethereum
Languages
CSS, HTML
Industry Expertise
Travel & Leisure, Banking & Finance, Entertainment & Leisure
Other
User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), User Testing, User Interviews, UX Strategy, Prototyping, User Journey Maps, Web Design, UX Design, Information Architecture (IA), Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Business Design, UI Design, Customer Journeys, Stakeholder Interviews, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Automation, Wireframing, Responsive, Mobile UI Design, Analytics, Benchmarking, Responsive Design, Mobile App Design, iOS App Design, Android App Design, Mobile Payments, iOS UI Design, Android UI Design, Responsive Layout, B2C, Lead Generation, Funnel Analysis, Web UX, Web App Design, User Flows, User Research, B2B, SaaS, Interaction Design (IxD), Personas, Responsive Web Apps, Responsive Web Design (RWD), SaaS Design, Software as a Service (SaaS), User Personas, Web App UI, Web App UX, Web Applications, Mobile Design, App UI, Design, Mobile App UI, Communication, User Journeys, Product Design, Interface Design, Touchscreens, UX Research, Web Page Mockups, Websites, Visual Design, Landing Pages, Landing Page Design, Web UI Design, Agile UX, Rapid Prototyping, Web Technologies, User-centered Design (UCD), UI Prototyping, UX Prototyping, Web UI, Product Thinking, Android Design Guidelines, Design Thinking, Design Systems, Product Growth, Machine Learning, Football, Online Banking, User Stories, Dashboard Design, Dashboards, Data Visualization, Object Detection, Ideation Workshops, Immersive Experiences, Design Workshops, B2B Lead Generation, Payment Processing, Stakeholder Management, Logo Design, Data Collection, Design Leadership, Service Design, UX Architecture, Web Architecture, Usability, Web Usability, Blockchain, Web3, DApps, Project Management, App Design, Illustration, Icon Design, Microinteractions, Animation, Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, Experimental Design, A/B Testing, Multivariate Testing, Business Empathy, Business Models, Business Strategy, Business Cases, Business Metrics
Experience
- Product Design - 15 years
- User Experience (UX) - 15 years
- User Interface (UI) - 15 years
- UX Strategy - 15 years
- Web App Design - 15 years
- Mobile Design - 15 years
- User Flows - 15 years
- Web3 - 2 years
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