Paula Barcante
Designer
Location
Victoria, BC, Canada
Toptal Member Since
February 26, 2020
Paula is an award-winning UX/UI designer, advisor, and illustrator with more than six years of hands-on experience in making complex interfaces delightful and user friendly. She has made a significant impact in large corporations, such as Amazon, Zillow, Google, as well as startups. Her mission is to create efficient, beautiful, innovative, and high-quality experiences for the greater good of society.
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Work Experience
2021 - PRESENT
Product Design Lead
Dropbox
- Designed a brand new experience for Dropbox Pro services that involved transferring and receiving files from others.
- Headed a team of designers to execute a new product vision that allowed customers to add branding to their shared work.
- Led design workshops, sprints, and brainstorming sessions to create a vision for the company's future.
Technologies: Figma, UX Design, Mobile UI, Information Architecture (IA), Illustration
2019 - PRESENT
Co-founder
Joyster
- Created a mental health journal and tracker app (native Android and iPhone).
- Designed the iOS and Android app experience from scratch.
- Led entire design strategy, planning, and visuals as the Co-founder and lead designer of Joyster.
- Led the full design life cycle: doc writing, discovery, design sprints, prototyping, user research, illustrations, low and high fidelity wireframes, UI visual development, asset production, QA, and delivery.
- Won a Silver Design Award from A' Design Award and Competition, the world's largest, most prestigious and influential design competition.
Technologies: Flutter, Figma, Sketch, InVision
2019 - 2021
Senior Product Designer
- Designed a brand new experience that allowed users to filter and limit toxic replies to their tweets.
- Led design workshops, brainstorms, and sprints to define a new way to protect oneself from harassment.
- Created a brand identity for the design team, including values, brand language, shared patterns, and work execution.
Technologies: Figma
2018 - 2020
Senior Product Designer
Zillow Group
- Led multiple concurrent projects in the personalization and AI space (from scratch) through the full design life cycle: doc writing, discovery, design sprints, wireframing, prototyping, user research, UI visual development, asset production, QA, and delivery.
- Collaborated with designers, researchers, engineers, marketing teams, data analysts, and product managers while communicating design decisions with the CEO, senior leaders, and partner teams.
- Designed the iOS and Android app experience, including the map (search) redesign, iPad experience redesign, and home detail page.
- Created a brand new personalized dashboard experience that allows home renters, buyers, and sellers to keep track of their process and receive AI recommendations.
- Designed the first-ever self-tour experience where home shoppers can book and tour a home by themselves using their mobile phones.
- Redesigned the home detail page experience from scratch to be cross-platform (mobile web, web, & apps) and reflect a new brand and better user experience.
- Created a map-first home shopping experience that allows home shoppers to personalize their home shopping criteria and receive recommendations using AI on the map itself.
- Interviewed and recruited talented designers to grow the design team.
Technologies: Figma, InVision, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Sketch 3
2018 - 2019
Design Lead
Sagecoins
- Executed a complete design from scratch through documentation, wireframes, fluid grids, visual assets, design framework, design guides, and final pixel-level specifications.
- Created the brand identity, illustrations, logo, style guide, and research plan.
- Worked closely with the developer to make sure design implementation was accurate and fair.
- Collaborated with the CEO regularly to give advise on business, hiring, and design implementation.
Technologies: InVision, Sketch
2016 - 2018
UX Designer II
Amazon
- Led entire design strategy, planning, and visuals as the lead designer of Kindle Direct Publishing and Amazon Charts.
- Managed and ran design sprints with a team of engineers and product managers to create a self-publishing manga product. The results were then implemented, tested, and shipped.
- Spearheaded multiple projects through the full design cycle, including defining use cases, site maps, user flows, competitive analysis, UX wireframing, prototyping, UX research, UI visual development, asset production, and shipment of product.
- Presented and reviewed designs to stakeholders and VP-level leadership on a monthly basis.
Technologies: Apple Keynote, InVision, Sketch
2015 - 2016
Lead Visual Designer
Ayiba Magazine
- Served as the lead designer at Ayiba Magazine and was in charge of all design-related work for the first-ever print issue, released in January 2016.
- Managed and mentored a designer in charge of three issues.
Technologies: Adobe InDesign
2015 - 2016
Design Lead
Medella Health
- Designed the visual brand across various media including identities, websites, documents, pitch decks, Flash, and marketing collateral working directly with the founder.
- Created sitemaps, interaction design, and pixel-finished screens for the user dashboard and mobile app.
- Collaborated closely with the CEO of the product to establish a consistent vision across the platform.
- User-tested the product with potential clients across Canada using an InVision prototype.
Technologies: InVision, Sketch
2014 - 2015
UX Design Intern
Amazon
- Created a mobile-first experience for indie authors on Amazon to understand and identify sales trends, reader’s behavior, and best marketing practices (2015).
- Interviewed six authors and presented major findings to the team and stakeholders (2015, indie author platform).
- Incorporated UX research findings into information architecture, storyboards, and all design decisions (2015, indie author platform).
- Designed multiple medium-fidelity mockups using Sketch 3, which then led to a final medium-fidelity prototype that I tested with six authors (2015, indie author platform).
- Designed a high-fidelity prototype of the first-ever Unified Author Experience (2015, indie author platform).
- Made all design decisions based on major findings found throughout UX research (2015, indie author platform).
- Designed and developed a working prototype highlighting data visualization performance and recommendations for the new Campaign Manager dashboard using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (2014).
- Wrote a press release, completed a competitive and design audit, scheduled and ran weekly meetings with managers and PMs (2014, Campaign Manager).
- Delivered a styled guide for visual analytics, and ran my own usability test with seven different advertisers (2014, Campaign Manager).
Technologies: CSS, HTML, Axure, Sketch
2013 - 2013
Graphic Design Intern
NICHE Magazine
- Worked very closely with the creative director to develop client-based assignments. Most projects were focused on the production of the magazine's layout and advertisement design for clients.
- Designed and wrote my own four-page spread, which was published in the Fall 2013 issue on page 89.
Technologies: Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Education
2011 - 2016
Bachelor's Degree with Honors in Global Business and Digital Arts
University of Waterloo - Waterloo, ON, Canada
Certifications
APRIL 2020 - PRESENT
Certificate of Excellence | Silver Award
A'Design Award and Competition
