What led you into design?
Actually, it was kind of by chance. I was finishing high school. In Brazil, you have this pressure to apply for college and choose a career very early in your life. I always loved drawing and I saw myself choosing between Fine Arts and Design and ended up choosing Design, although I knew almost nothing about the discipline and the course, a completely blind shot.
No regrets at all, I had lucked out being able to study in one of the best Design colleges in Brazil and liking the course so much. Since then, my passion for drawing decreased and my passion for getting crazy with any new project increased proportionally.
What does a typical day look like?
My typical day is very common. Waking up around 7:30, feeding my two cats, changing clothes, taking the metro and heading to the office with my wife - we take the same metro and go to work at the same time. At 9:00, I'm already in my desk reading emails, planning my day and taking a look at the several Slack channels I'm in. I'm sort of a freak Slack channel person, I like to know what's going on in several teams, even if I'm not part of their projects. Usually, the day starts with some meetings (stand-ups, plannings, syncs). I also always block at least one hour to be hands-on to the projects during the morning. Then lunch, work again, a few more meetings, and then I head back home around 18:00. My routine changes a bit on Mondays and Wednesdays when I train Brazilian jiu-jitsu after work.
I like to cook, so I make dinner almost every night. It's my time to relax and relieve my head, chopping some onions and having dinner with my wife. Before going to sleep, I play with my cats, watch some movies, read something, work on side projects...
If it's a hard week at work I plan my next day, but avoid checking anything work related– it's my sacred time to chill.
What’s your workstation setup?
Where do you go to get inspired?
It depends… Working-wise, I try to reach what I believe makes sense to the project. If I'm in a more investigative step, I try to research similar solutions, competitors, benchmarking. I read a lot, so I have a long list of articles and books saved in my Drive and in my Medium so in this case, I opt for more technical/theoretical reads. If it's an ideation moment, I look at apps, services, physical products, magazines, editorials, try to bring ideas from movies, art, anything I like.
It's hard to point out specific things, places, and sites where I go to get inspiration, so I'm going to be a bit more romantic on this topic.
I believe that inspiration is a daily exercise and goes beyond any screen or pattern. It comes from the good moments you have with your friends and family, good conversations, people you just met, people you already know, people you admire, people you dislike, museums, comic books, movies, music, videos, or podcasts. Being an agglomerate of experiences, to me, inspiration is always about learning something new, even the tiniest of things, every day.
What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?
Inside - This game is so beautiful and the plot is so engaging in so many levels… I really love it!
NuBank - They simply made it. If you want inspiration about how to solve several fronts of your business and gather them in only one place, this is the app! Sorry, but I have to give a compliment in Portuguese to these people: Parabéns ao time de design, engenharia e produto!
https://youtu.be/tbK9yak1s6o
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
My last projects are the ones that make me the most proud, only because I can avoid mistakes made on the previous projects hahaha.
But I'm going to highlight 3:
Notiluca (my former sunglasses brand)
I have a special love for Notiluca. I had the opportunity to create my own brand: thinking about the whole business aspect by crafting the product, passing through the brand concept and identity, and expanding the business itself. I ran everything that was related to the brand language, products, campaigns, partner stores, own stores, eCommerce, brand promotion as well as fashion weeks and events. Very tiring and stressful, but a lot of fun as well.
Vinil Edition Promo Video:
Memed
Memed is a Brazilian healthtech startup with the objective to help doctors make prescriptions quickly and safely by helping them make the best treatment choices. In Brazil, more than 70% of treatment issues are caused by handwritten prescriptions, due to the miscomprehension about how the patient needs to conduct the treatment, misreading from the pharmaceutic to point the indicated medicine when a patient goes to a pharmacy or even the low knowledge on the part of the doctors about the best-indicated medicines to the diagnosis.
I worked on the digital prescription flow: creating the bridge between the best way to present and send the prescription to the patient, creating the process for how they buy the right medicine, and how they conduct the treatment correctly. Together with the CPO, Marcel Ribeiro, we created a chatbot attached to the digital prescription, which assists patients in purchasing the prescribed medications straight from their phone. It was a huge privilege to have worked for Memed, being part of the Brazilian health system transformation, and helping the people. The platform is free, by the way!
Klarna card backed payments
What I enjoy most about this project is the complex context of the US and UK markets. It's an end-to-end project where I had the opportunity to create the whole user journey– from the moment a user starts their purchase, creating the post-purchase experience in the Klarna app, improving our communications relationship, and until they finally pay for their purchase. Pay Later in 3 or 4 payments was Klarna's first card backed product and was a completely new payment method that was never experimented before. It isn't only about visual and interactions, but it is also about how to cope with challenges such as new types of customers, shopping behaviors, competitors, and huge markets. The volume of learning is massive and we see huge room for exploration on this path.
More about Pay later in 3 or 4.
What design challenges do you face at your company?
I think I have two main ones. First, at Klarna, we are still in the process of building a solid and mature design culture. Since I joined one and a half years ago, we are more than double the number of designers here. Due to the fast pace and growth Klarna has, the main challenge we face is promoting the design in order to help the teams, leaders, and company follow the best practices. Overall, changing their perception about design and its value inside the Klarna processes.
The second is the complexity to understand and adapt our products to several markets that Klarna is expanding into. Learning about the users, their shopping behaviors, and keeping up with the legal and compliance requirements are daily processes. We always try to be consistent when it comes to our payment methods, but coherency is what we aim for, and shifting your mindset every time in order to find the best solution for each problem, or find the best payment method to a specific country, can be very overwhelming. But it's a lot of fun learning and seeing how shopping behaviors can be so distinct even inside the same country.
What music do you listen to while designing?
Any advice for ambitious designers?
There are so many things I would love to be told when I started... I'm going to try and be short here.
Designers go through this pretentious and arrogant phase. Every time you think you have a huge understanding about anything, just stop and rethink. What makes us good designers (and I believe it works for anything in our lives) is not what we achieved, how good we are in a specific area, or the positions that we have, but the humility to understand how much we don't know, and how much can be learned. How can we be less "stupid" every day?
Last but not least, family always comes first, as well as your private life, friends, and your happiness. Don't sacrifice yourself for something that you are feel isn't worthy, if you believe that it's worth it, try to find a balance because time passes and doesn't come back.
Anything you want to promote or plug?
At Klarna we are hiring, looking worldwide for great and experienced Product Designers to join our design team. If you are interested, just use this link to apply with a referral.
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