Selin Sargut
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Toptal member since February 22, 2021
Selin is an experience service design consultant with 12 years of experience across financial services, retail, telecommunications, and government. She combines research, UX strategy, service design, and digital product design to help organizations turn customer needs and business goals into meaningful experiences, including AI-enabled products and services.
Experience
- UX Design - 12 years
- User Flows - 10 years
- User Research - 9 years
- UX Direction - 7 years
- Mobile UI Design - 7 years
- Design Thinking - 6 years
- Service Design - 6 years
- Brand Identity - 4 years
Portfolio
A More Guided Home-finance Journey
API Banking: A Unified, Goal-oriented API Banking Platform
A Complete UX Transformation of a Banking Platform
Work Experience
Experience and Service Design Lead
Apostrophy
- Led service design and UX strategy across finance, retail, real estate, and tourism sectors. Defined experience roadmaps, service blueprints, and interaction models for complex services and products.
- Developed an experience strategy for the UAE's primary bank, FAB. Led design thinking workshops, crafted a design system, information architecture, and many products for Global Transaction Banking and SME's. Led the entire design track for web and mobile.
- Led the strategic redesign process of the customer portal experience for DIFC, the leading international financial hub in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Designed the portal to act as a single point of contact for end-to-end client servicing.
- Developed a CX roadmap and concept designs for the Public Investment Fund's (PIF) CoBuilder, driving growth in new sectors. Through stakeholder interviews and workshops, I shaped the service design blueprint and proof of concepts, aligned with Vision 2030.
- Led service design for Al Futtaim Group's Blue rewards program, driving customer-focused innovation. Through user research, I identified opportunities to enhance experiences and CX strategy, contributing to the mobile app's flows and overall design.
UX Design Lead
IBM iX
- Worked with one of the world's largest beverage companies to redesign their order management system on Salesforce. Did user research to identify needs and created solutions for mobile and tablet platforms to enhance engagement with dealers/sellers.
- Created UX design guidelines and a design system for a bank, integrating a library of design assets, patterns, and business rules, streamlining the process for the client and facilitating the creation of consistent products and digital experiences.
- Conducted in-depth user research to identify key pain points and performed global market research to uncover best practices for a service design project for a client in the retail sector.
- Designed an innovative shopping experience that combines both physical and digital touchpoints and an ecosystem that mobile commerce supported by disruptive digital services in the store. I also did hands-on UX production for various platforms.
- Aligned with the agile development teams in a bank and assisted in the technical discussions to achieve our desired design outcome: up-and-running applications.
- Collaborated with the clients and various teams to deliver real business value, define and communicate the product vision, and ensure that the design specifications were implemented.
Senior UX Designer
IBM iX
- Worked with an award-winning telecommunication service provider in the UAE—combining their business objectives with customer insights and creating customer journeys, flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes both for the web and mobile.
- Gained expertise in the fast-growing fintech industry and worked to shape a flawless experience of digital payment services such as money transfer, utility bill payments, and acceptance at the point-of-sale.
- Took full ownership of the UX design, oversaw the delivery, and created the IA and user flows with the visual designers and developers to make it real.
- Conducted user testing along with the team and validated the experience journey end-to-end.
- Designed a cloud-based data storage solution and created a vision for the digital experience of the product and held in-depth persona studies, information architecture, and benchmarking.
- Designed and delivered for five different platforms—blending the business strategy, design, and technology and focusing on designing products and services.
- Co-created with our customers to create lean design solutions, MVP, and better experiences through design thinking, research, and data insights.
Senior UI/UX Designer (Consultant)
Migros
- Created user stories and CX journey maps for eCommerce personas based on the data gathered in a user survey and by insights from the marketing team.
- Contributed hands-on to the design and production of optimizing the UI/UX of the external and internal apps such as HR portals, inventory tracking, content management systems, intranet sites, proprietary enterprise software, websites, or mobile apps.
- Worked both with the IT team and 3rd parties in Migros as an experience design process owner. I briefed the agencies according to the customer experience journeys.
UI/UX Designer | UX Researcher
Intel
- Worked with a multidisciplinary team (including working directly with developers) to create the next generation of intelligent systems including the Smart Education Project and many IoT projects.
- Designed visual concepts, mockups, user-interface component specifications, and visual data presentations; I focused on creating functional and appealing user experiences.
- Co-authored a US patent on an automotive system (Patents.google.com/patent/US10112505B2/en).
- Conducted user research, created the experience design process, and developed the visual concept.
Education
Master's Degree in Brand Strategy
Sabanci University - Istanbul, Turkey
Bachelor's Degree in Visual Design
Sabanci University - Istanbul, Turkey
Certifications
Certificate in User Experience Design
Nielsen Norman Group
Scrum Master Certified
Scrum, Inc.
IBM Banking Industry
IBM
IBM Agile Explorer
IBM
IBM Design Thinking
IBM
UX Heuristics
Intel
Skills
Tools
Sketch, InVision, Adobe CC, MURAL, Wix, Apple Keynote, Marvel App, InVision App, Miro, FigJam, Figma Make, Claude
Platforms
Figma, Web, iOS, Salesforce
Languages
Visual Design Language
Industry Expertise
Marketing, Banking & Finance, Telecommunications
Other
Communication Design, Product Design, Digital Strategy, UX Direction, Omnichannel Customer Journey, User Research, Customer Journey, Design Thinking, User-centered Design (UCD), Personas, Agile, Brand Identity, User Experience (UX), User Flows, Service Design, Information Architecture (IA), Qualitative Research, Usability Heuristics, User Testing, Mobile UX, Web Design, UX Design, UI Design, Branding, User Interface (UI), Mobile UI Design, Websites, Design Leadership, Design Reviews, Rapid Prototyping, User Journey Maps, UX Research, User Personas, User Stories, Web App Design, Wireframing, CX Strategy, UX Leadership, UX Strategy, Design Strategy, B2B, SaaS, Mobile Design, Prototyping, Data Visualization, Enterprise, Web App UX, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), WCAG 2, Quantitative Research, Usability Testing, Customer Experience (CX) Design, AI-powered Product Design, AI Research, AI Design, Product Research, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Business Design, Business Models, eCommerce UX, Fintech, Web Development, Stakeholder Management, Visual Art, Marketing Communications (MarCom), Storytelling, Customer Experience, DesignOps, Analytics, Empathy, Ideation, Product Management, Agile Delivery, Agile Sprints, Scrum Master, Project Planning, Value Creation, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Art Direction, Story Carding, Feature Planning, Interactive Tools, Heuristic Evaluation, Usability, Heuristics, Heuristic Reports, Heuristic Review, Business Process Flow Diagrams, eCommerce UI, Customer Service, Customer Support, Chat Support, User Needs, Digital Payments, Mobile Wallet, Landing Pages, Cloud Drive, Holistic UX Design, Customer Insights, Platform Design, Cloud Storage, App UI, Mobile Apps, App UX, Consumer Banking, App Design, Wix Studio, Claude Design, Claude Code, Midjourney, ChatGPT, Gemini, AI-assisted UX, AI assitant, Desktop Web Design, AI Agents, Mortgages, Online Banking, Website Design, Web UI Design
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring