Olá! I’m Cristina, a designer by qualification and kind human by nature, who cares deeply about people’s stories.
Pragmatic, curious and strategic, I approach problems with an adaptive and iterative process, to transform ideas into pixels.
Highlights
Case Study
Re-thinking onboarding practices to strengthen consumer transparency in privacy ethics
2024
On-going —
Local.Foundation
Speaking & Writing
Tech-teams from a product designers pov
2024
Community Building Event —
Geek Sessions
Case Study
Elevating UI design proposal to delight Flight’s 6M+ global community of music enthusiasts
2023 —
Tutteo Limited
Case Study
Boosting user-engagement by +20% and enhancing confidence for new and first-time users
2022/2023 —
Tutteo Limited
Certification
Emotional Design & Design Psychology
2022 —
EDIT.
Certification
UX Design Foundationsmore text here
2021 —
EDIT.
Case Study
Streamlining PI digital certification search across Germanys 74 chambers of Industry and Commerce (IHKs)
2020/2021 —
AI Coaching GmbH for DIHK
Case Study
Designed an ML-driven digital health coach to support sales professionals’ mental health and career growth
2020 —
AI Coaching GmbH
Certification
UX is smart. UX is kind. Ux is emotion.
2019
Annual Conference —
Faro DEVDay’19 by Turbine Kreuzberg
Speaking
UX Design & Empathy (series of lectures on navigating the transition between graduating and the job market)
Speaking & Writing
Why devs and designers work better together.
2019
Community Building Event—
Geek Girls Portugal at Tubrine Kreuzberg
Case Study
Leading the design and PM for an accelerating educational database, enabling professional educators
2018 —
Evodeck Software for AI Coaching GmbH
Internship Program
UX & Web Design extended summer internship
2015 —
Opera Software ASA (Oslo Headquarters)
Trainee Program
Web Design & FE Development program
2014 —
Studio Netting (Oslo)
Education
BA Degree in Communication Design.
2011/2014 —
Universidade do Algarve
Growth, clarity, empathy, integrity and collaborative synergy.
Are part of my values, both as a designer and human being.
Growth mindset
Inspired by growth and humanity, what ties it together, is a love for learning and passion for understanding people and their stories.
Mindful leadership
Collaborative Methodology
My methodology is adaptive and cross-collaborative. I believe great products are built upon the fluidity between design, research and engineering.
Experience
I studied Communication Design, where I gained a comprehensive understanding of design across various fields, including graphic, editorial, and digital, which evolved into front-end development, web design and UX, with a particular focus on product design for the past +6 years. Since then, I’ve embraced a generalist role, working on PoCs, MVPs, and SaaS products, collaborating closely with cross-functional teams, and contributing to every aspect—from research to QA—for both web and native mobile apps.
Throughout my 10-year journey, I’ve had the opportunity to work freelance, in-house, at startups, and at established public companies. These experiences span a range of industries and multidisciplinary environments. My curiosity, cross-collaborative nature and adaptability allow me to blend insights and cognitive psychology to transform business opportunities into meaningful user-centric experiences. Additionally, I’m driven by practicing ethical approaches, which are the human-factor that makes projects both exciting and fulfilling for me.
Voluntarily co-founding
Platform dedicated to fostering strong and vibrant communities by tackling the growing problem of loneliness within the community building industry.
- Re-thinking design UX patterns, language and principles to improve privacy, ethics & consumer transparency experiences with good usability and best practices
- Researching and collaborating on PoC, and defining product vision
Senior Product Designer
- Conducted growth experiments and designed an interactive tutorial for the onboarding experience on the basics of music notation composition inputs, generating +20% user-retention for first-time users session duration
- Initiated dedicated redesign proposals for out-dated features such as the user profile and mobile apps login authentication onboarding flows, with a focus of improving design language and principles with industry usability best practices
- End-to-end design and ideation of UX improvements and new features cross-platform for +5M music lovers
- Launched the Android app from 0 to 1 with the lead android engineer
- Incorporated dark mode into both iOS and Android design systems
- Helped maintain, improve and create design system components shared with the entire design and development teams
- Created a new designated Notion space for the design team, improving the views for stakeholders, by including databases for each designer’s profile and responsibilities, meeting notes and design review templates, trimester objectives and business goals, monthly planning and roadmap calendar, and a design ticket requests board to better manage priorities and measure the need of the requests
Product Designer
- Helped innovate the search of digital certifications offered by the 74 chambers of Industry and Commerce (IHKs) with a SaaS B2C platform and a B2B back-office system to help manage all the certified offers
- Designed a SaaS B2C ML digital health coach-bot, developed to help sales professionals tackle mental health struggles and professional growth
- Led the design efforts for all PoC, MVP projects and end-to-end solutions, from desk and user research, ideation, concept development, usability testing, wire-framing, prototyping, and QA
- Associate PM, building the management processes under an Agile Scrum methodology and Kanban which improved the teams communication and created clear roadmap visions for all projects and service proposals
- Contributed to the concept development of structured and logical architecture ML systems in close collaboration with the engineering team
- Built design systems from 0 to 1 and performed QA reviews together with engineering
UI/UX Designer
- Associate PM and lead designer of an accelerating education-based database MVP solution, enabling shared trainings for professional educators
- Designed an stock inventory, user management and invoicing back-office CMS, used in +350k car maintenance service shops for Pitstop Wawi
- Played a significant role in the rebrand of Evodeck’s visual identity, to help improve the companies social media marketing strategy and branding purpose, and full redesign of the companies website
- Closely collaborated with engineers, PO’s, clients and stakeholders within an Agile Scrum and Kanban environment to ensure QA between design and engineering
Web Designer
- Built the companies service websites using a CMS and Front-end development capabilities (HTML CSS, JavaScript) that grew to +1k users in the first month, actively purchasing services through the websites forms, and growing the business’s profitability in over €500M through the season
- Full design and development of individual websites for the companies service selection (boat charters and water sports activities)
- Encompassed a generalist role, from website design to front-end implementation, traffic analysis with Google Analytics, SEO strategy and implementation, social media management and posting, and video editing
Junior Web Designer
Branding agency focused on luxury services
- Wayfinding system for Quinta do Lago’s infrastructures (one of Europe’s most prestigious luxury resorts and residential developments, generating significant economic impact of several hundred million euros)
- Design of Ombria Resort web page and graphical elements. Ombria Resort is a sumptuous and secluded resort that will feature the first Viceroy Hotel in Europe. View case-study here.
- Designed web pages and digital projects
- Front-end development of landing pages and email signatures and newsletters using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Created information architecture of way-finding systems
Junior Web Designer
Based in the second largest city in the Algarve, Critérios Criativos was a 360º service design agency
- Generalist approach design within digital platform services
- Designed brand visuals for digital spaces
- Developed the front-end of landing pages for hotel business’s (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
- Created interaction and user-experience solutions for client services
Intern Designer
Opera Software is a Norwegian company known for developing the Opera web browser, which boasts +350M active users worldwide and is renowned for its innovative features, speed, and data-saving capabilities.
- Designed user-experiences and interfaces in collaboration with the internal IT and Design & Marketing departments
- Improved my skills in front-end markup languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) when designing and developing the new Opera Intranet management system and automatic Opera Badge system for visitors within the Internal IT department
- Worked closely together and autonomously with the Marketing department on designing speed dial icons and brochures, building campaigns for Opera Mini and browser features, and assisting on the new Opera Rebrand
Design Trainee Program
An all-girl digital studio in Oslo’s alternative and vibrant neighbourhood Grünerløkka
- Learned the very basics of front-end development markup languages (HTML, CSS, jQuery, JavaScript, XML and PHP)
- Helped setup client service websites using WordPress as an internal CMS in the main server
- Performed small front-end iterations within client serviced projects
- Designed banners and concept mock-ups to use in client webpages
Kind words shared about me
— 2024
Katarzyna Muras | UX Designer and Researcher | Mentee at ADPList.org
— 2024
Gabriel Patrocínio | UI/UX Designer at AssetFlow| Mentee at ADPList.org
Cristina sparks joy whenever she talks about product design and how it can be used to better everyone’s lives, and is a big inspiration for me, as a software engineer, on the importance of delivering the best possible products that not only will be good, but that will matter. We’ve collaborated in the past through Geek Sessions, and her sense of commitment to community is just as strong as her good practices and hard work.
— 2023
Penélope Gonçalves | Software Engineer | Event Organizer at Geek Sessions | Tech and Team Lead at ContentServ | Currently working together as co-founders at Local.Foundation
Cristina is a committed employee with a very high sense of responsibility. A team player, works well under structure leadership/project management and is able to recognise improvements from her side and to suggest fixers to team’ problems. Wish I had the chance of working together again and I would definitely recommend her.
— 2023
Vanessa Nascimento | Team Lead at Evodeck Software | Currently working together as co-founders at Local.Foundation
To this day the best designer I’ve ever worked with. Every developer knows how painful it can be to work with designers. I’ve never had a single problem with Cristina as we worked closely together to figure out the best solutions for our users but also to our developers. 10/10 would work with again.
— 2023
Gustavo Jordão | Software Engineer | Team Collaborator at Evodeck Software | Current Engineering Lead at Rydes
I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with Cristina for a few years and since we parted ways to explore new challenges I really miss her as a really good professional that she is in a team.
Cristina is a team player always open to discuss, brainstorm with her teammates. Her close connection and work with the development team makes everyones work flow very smoothly and very easily. Besides being a great communicator, in her work she is very well organised and perfectionist which makes her work very defined and reliable, even from the most important to the smallest details. I learned a lot with her, and also a word and a concept which I will never forget – consistency. These learnings have guided me throughout my professional career making me implement the best practices and giving me a better understanding on how important her work is to achieve a good product. I still hope that one day our paths will cross and we can work together again because good professionals like Cristina are really hard to find and there is no doubt that Cristina is a highly valuable member to have on the team.
— 2023
Kelly Mestre | Software Engineer | Team Collaborator at Evodeck Software
Currently open for
Cristina Tulcidas — 024©