Scud Kotonog

Designed and built a responsive website that lets you discover tips from my article on cat care in a fun and interactive way. Learnt AI-coding and 3D, polished copywriting, and image-generation skills in the process. See More

Work History

Founding product designer

Make-A-Wish IrelandFreelancerNov 2024 - Mar 2025 • 5 mosWorked for a non-profit organization that grants wishes to terminally ill children. • Turned the traditional paper-based process into a digital one. This should triple the speed of wish-granting • Designed child-friendly iOS/iPad apps with accessibility in mind • AI-generated charming character based on the company mascot and 3d icons illustrations

Senior product designer

PleoFull-time EmployeeSep 2022 - Apr 2024 • 1 yr 8 mosNotable projects: • Designed and launched Budgets, the top-performing feature, driving 43% more paid plan upgrades than any other. • Developed the spending policies and approvals concept, leading strategic collaboration across 10 product teams. Accessibility and design system ambassador: Partnered with the Design system team to optimize a design process for all designers. • Improved product accessibility by removing unreadable font sizes from the design system. • Created an accessibility guide and checklist for designers, engineers, and QA. • Started and pushed forward the design system for mobile platforms. • Updated and crafted components for web and mobile, as well as missing icons variants. • Initiated and completed a traineeship in the Design system team, helping to speed up the component management. Content and guidelines: Worked closely with the content designer to improve product communication and consistency. • Drove the creation of content guidelines for buttons, links, and error states. • Led an email revamp — removed duplicates and refreshed the style. • Created modular email templates with guidelines and design system components. • Wrote a company-wide 'How to test Pleo' guide, which reduced the time spent searching for credentials. A bit more: • Mentored 2 designers. • Designed a CO2 emissions counter as a hackathon project. • Introduced a handover process for engineers that other designers adopted. • Started a Slack channel with 1 daily post (meme + cute animal) to boost people's mood, named the best channel by the followers.

Founding product designer

EvristicaContract EmployeeSep 2021 - Sep 2022 • 1 yr 1 moDesigned for a startup developing a Miro-like decision-making tool for businesses. • Used fast prototyping to validate product direction with stakeholders and optimize the user journey. • Decreased time to market by implementing a design system.

Senior product designer

Yandex MapsFull-time EmployeeFeb 2016 - May 2021 • 5 yrs 4 mosWithin the Yandex Maps design team, I collaborated on core product functionality while independently leading design for products like Yandex Metro, Maps API, Map Constructor, and internal editor tools for satellite imagery and subway schemes. I covered the full design process — from early data analysis and audience research to final designs for mobile and responsive web. Transport and Maps: • Reduced maintenance cost by merging 2 similar products (Transport into Maps). • Migrated 80% of users to Maps product, enabling the shutdown of Yandex Transport. • Boosted annual revenue by 10% following the merger. • Improved public transport usability, confirmed by UX research, retention data, and feature usage analysis. • Increased daily audience for transport use case by 6x. • After the merger, Yandex Maps became the #1 recommended app on Google Play and the App Store. Other projects: • Launched a dark theme for Yandex Metro, featured on the App Store. • Raised the Yandex metro app rating from 3.2 to 4.8 while methodically working through users’ pain points. • Grew the key metric (traffic to Yandex Maps via API) by 20%. • Introduced accessibility data in places' cards, making Maps more inclusive. • Maintained the Maps design system and created the design system for Yandex Metro. And some more: • Helped to mentor 3 design interns. Yandex successfully employed all of them. • Reviewed students' work at the Yandex product design school. • Published articles on AR in the internal company blog. • Supported an AR hackathon, creating a best practices guide and an introduction to AR/VR. • Gave team presentations, from UX basics to fun deep dives on topics like water bears.

Education

Yandex Design school

Product Design2015

Valeria Kurmak

Digital Accessibility Course2023

Nick St. Pierre

Midjourney for Creatives2024

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