Olá︎, I’m Cristina Tulcidas, Product UX Designer ❊
and Co-founder at Local.Foundation ✸

     Currently available for new opportunities

Crafting conscious experiences that help people. Previously helped startups launch SaaS B2C and B2B products across Web, iOS and Android apps, maintain Design System efforts and lead a small team of junior devs. As an advocate of cross-collaboration, I wrote an article about why devs and designers work better together at the beginning of my career that has reached +1k reads.

2024   🎤   Speaker

Tech teams from a designer’s pov

Jan 12  The key to building successful products in a team that thrives in doing so, is determined by the seamless cross-collaboration between designers and developers within well organised and structured management within tech teams.
@GeekSessions

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2022   🎓   Certification

Emotional Design & Design Psychology

A Workshop focused on the emotional psychology behind user experiences (creation of content, websites, application and interactions), and the assessment of emotion, motivation, cognition and behaviour.

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2020   💼   Project

Improved performance on the search of digital certifications offered by the German Chamber of Commerce

Led the end-to-end design of an innovative AI chatbot search interface solution to create a single source and unified platform for all nationwide and non-nationwide digital certifications offered by the German Chamber of Commerce (DIHK).

More info

Role

Project Management + End-to-end Visual Design + QA

Focus

Roadmap Planning
Information architecture
User Flow Mapping
Visual Design
Interaction Design
Design System
Model Generation

2018   🎤   Speaker

Why devs and designers work better together

Nov 23  Opening session for the first Geek Girls Portugal in the Faro region.
@GeekGirlsPortugal

2023   💼   Project

Proposal to improve Flat.io’s out-dated interface

Proposed a new solution to improve the visual interface for Flat’s iOS and Android mobile experiences, which looked out-dated and was no longer efficient in driving product consistency with the most recent feature improvements, affecting user retention.

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Strategy Focus

Connection ✸ Increase usability and enable familiar UX patterns for better system status information, facilitation of interactive journey and a more organic driven experience.

Structure ✱ Offer a more consistent navigation, integrated with latest brand & product updates.

Role

Product Strategy + End-to-end Visual Design

Focus

Visual Design
Usability Heuristics
User Experience
Design System

2021   🎓   Certification

UX Design Foundations

This certification delves into the knowledge on UX fundamentals, User-centered Design, Ideation, Architecture Information, Prototype and Usability Testing. Studying how to analyze different and potential user behaviours, helping to develop scenarios and workflows tasks, far beyond research, prototypes, wireframes and others.

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2019   🎤   Speaker

UX is smart. UX is kind. UX is emotion.

May 25  Introducing UX Design into the Tech industry of the Algarve region, which was still seen by many as a form of Art without rationale, rules and guidelines.
@Faro DEVDay by Turbine Kreuberg

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2018   💼   Project

Managed a small team of junior developers, and led the end-to-end design of a educational digital management platform

An accelerating education vision-based platform database that focuses on enabling shared trainings for professional educators.

More info

Role

Project Management + Team Lead + End-to-end Visual Design

Focus

Roadmap Planning
Client Operations Management
Team Leadership and Management
Information architecture
Visual Design
User Experience

2023   💼   Project

Increased user-engagement (+20%) and instilled greater confidence for beginner and first-time users

Designed a new onboarding experience in collaboration with the CxO manager, to simplify and drive better comprehension and engagement, delivering a guided interactive tutorial on the basics of inputting notes for musical notation composition.

More info

Strategy Focus

Growth ❊ Enable foundational support and guidance for music notation composition beginner-friendly customers and first-time users.

Role

Competitive Analysis Research + Onboarding Best Practices Research + End-to-end Visual Design

Focus

Visual Design
Interaction Design
User Experience
Customer Journey
Usability Testing
Design Systems

2020   💼   Project

Participated in the product strategy definition and led the end-to-end design for AI Coaching’s digital health coaching solution

End-to-end design of a ML health coach bot, designed to help sales professionals further develop themselves through practical digital training and live coaching sessions.

More info

Role

Product Strategy + Project Management + User Interviews Prep + End-to-end Visual Design + QA

Focus

Roadmap Planning
Information architecture
Persona Building
User Flow Mapping
Customer Journey
Visual Design
Interaction Design
Usability Testing
Design System

2019   🎤   Speaker

Back to school

Mar 22  Back to school is a series of lectures from professionals of the Communication Design (BA) Degree, who return to the University to share their experience from transition between studies to the job market.
@UAlg, University of Algarve

collaboration

Designer by qualification, human by choice ✱
What ties it together, is a love for learning and passion for understanding people and their stories ✿

I am inspired by growth and humanity, emotional intelligence, mental health and love. As a life-long learner and advocate of inclusivity, diversity, equality and connection, I am always humbled by the wisdom and kindness of others.

Efficient communication and collaboration is imperative to productive and fulfilling relationships in a workplace. And Product Design is a team sport that requires collaborative, in-depth conversations with PMs, Engineers, Researchers, Marketing Strategists, CX and Stakeholders to help translate business into experiences.

Here is what some of the people I’ve had the pleasure to collaborate with have to say about working with me.

People science is the practice of examining how people think, feel, behave and learn — it should be embedded into everything we do.

Vanessa Nascimento
Team Lead @EvodeckDigital and Co-founder @Local.Foundation

Co-founder @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.

Gustavo Jordão
Team Collaborator @EvodeckDigital

Engineering Lead @Rydes

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.

Kelly Mestre
Team Collaborator @EvodeckDigital and @AICaoching

Software Engineer @AI Coaching
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.

Penélope Gonçalves
Event Organizer @GeekSessions

Co-founder @Local.Foundation and Tech & Team Lead @Contentserv
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.
Cristina Tulcidas — 024©