Yana Carstens, Designer in Austin, TX, United States
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Yana Carstens

Verified Expert  in Design

Designer

Location
Austin, TX, United States
Toptal Member Since
February 3, 2020

Yana is a product design strategist and designer with over 10 years of experience designing products customers love. She has helped startup, midsized, and enterprise companies in edtech, fintech, and eCommerce industries create high-impact minimum lovable products and reimagine existing experiences, increasing user adoption, retention, and overall satisfaction. Yana is driven by excellence and a collaborative approach and has diverse experience in mobile, web, and SaaS platform design.

User Experience (UX)UX StrategyMobile UISaaS DesignInformation Architecture (IA)User Interface (UI)UX DesignUser FlowsWeb UXLogo DesignApp UIProduct DesignResponsive Web Design (RWD)UI DesignWebsite Redesign

Portfolio

Work Experience

Director of Product Design, Mobile Apps

2018 - 2019
Synchrony Financial
  • Led and scaled a team of product designers across six product platforms.
  • Empowered, mentored, and coached designers and agile teams on design methodologies.
  • Integrated design practices within the organization resulting in increased product quality and design integration across product lines.
  • Facilitated design strategy workshops.
  • Redesigned highest returning platform.
Technologies: Mobile Apps, Design Sprints, Design Leadership, InVision Studio, Figma, Sketch, Adobe, iWatch, iOS, Android

Product Design Practice Lead

2015 - 2018
Table XI
  • Promoted best practices in user research, product strategy, and design execution with clients in dominantly engineering environments.
  • Promoted and experimented with design and development integration on diverse projects.
  • Coached and mentored aspiring researchers and designers.
  • Created clarity of business, user, and product goals, and drove team alignment on product vision through design workshop facilitation.
  • Created meaningful and positive experiences for clients serving various industries, and user needs through product strategy, user research, user experience, and interface design for software, mobile, and emerging technologies.
Technologies: Prototyping, Mobile Apps, Design Sprints, Design Leadership, Whiteboarding, Adobe Suite, Sketch, InVision

Principal Experience Designer

2014 - 2015
Lextech Global
  • Defined design offerings to more effectively meet enterprise client needs.
  • Partnered with cross-functional teams that included engineering, project strategy, marketing, and sales to drive successful design delivery for our clients.
  • Led product strategy through planning and facilitating discovery workshops.
  • Produced high-quality outputs for software, mobile and enterprise products through product ideation, design, and testing for enterprise and customer-facing applications.
  • Managed workload allocation for staff designers.
Technologies: Prototyping, Design Leadership, Adobe Suite, InVision

Senior User Experience Designer

2013 - 2014
The Nerdery
  • Analyzed and created an understanding of business requirements for mobile, software, and enterprise applications.
  • Set strategic and creative design vision for web platforms, native applications, and emerging technologies.
  • Planned and facilitated discovery workshops.
  • Led design and execution with multi-disciplinary teams that included research, marketing, sales, and engineering through delivery and guidance on site-maps, wireframes, user flows, and production assets.
  • Crafted digital user experiences through research, UX, and UI design that were delivered on time and under budget.
Technologies: Prototyping, Adobe Suite

Senior Mobile UI Designer

2011 - 2013
Walgreens
  • Designed the user interface for the iOS and Android native phone Walgreens apps.
  • Designed the user interface for the iOS and Android native tablet Walgreens Photo and Pharmacy apps.
Technologies: Azure, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
2008 - 2011

Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Design

Kendall College of Art & Design - Grand Rapids, MI, USA

JANUARY 2018 - PRESENT

Storytelling

IDEO

MAY 2015 - PRESENT

Lean UX & Agile

Nielsen Norman Group

Collaboration That Works

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