Hi, my name is Dmitrii Lagunov. I became interested in computers as soon as they appeared in my country during the 1990s. By high school, I had three hobbies: computer science, music, and the computer layout of the school newspaper. By the time I graduated, my interest in computer design was growing.

Shortly after graduating, I found a job at a well-known advertising agency in the city, where the director encouraged the creativity of the design team. Having just begun to understand the basics of design, I was fascinated by the opportunity to work on commercial projects. You realize that you can use good design to help the company communicate its benefits to the public and make more money.

After a few years, having gained experience in a variety of interesting projects, I decided to start my design studio. I wanted to have more influence on the final result and take more responsibility for the decisions I made. After several years of fruitful work, the studio had regular clients and the staff was filled not only with designers but also with web developers and a project manager. We focused on the development of corporate websites and graphic design.

At the moment, I'm most interested in interfaces and user interaction. It is interesting to study the user experience and improve the interaction with the site or application. It is very inspiring to realize that even small changes can have a positive impact on the customer's business and that we can help them achieve more.

I believe that good design rests on three pillars: simplicity, clarity (intuitiveness), and accessibility in the broadest sense. The designer's job is to find solutions that help the company achieve its goals while making the product comfortable to use.

Conciseness is, I think, the most appropriate word. To convey what is needed to the user, using minimal expressive properties.

In the beginning, I always try to find out and understand what problem we are solving. After discussing business tasks, we can always lay a solid foundation for our design solutions. Then I analyze how such a task has been solved before, try to identify successful patterns and apply concepts to my solution based on the specifics of the business. After that, it can be useful to take a step back and look at your decision from a bird's eye perspective. Sometimes it helps to understand that your current solution may affect adjacent tasks and business processes.

Oh, there's so much going on! Often they are not even directly related to design: they can be people, a trip to nature, a walk with the family through the city, old photos, or movies.

It is very interesting to watch the development of neural networks and artificial intelligence and try to apply it in your daily work. I think that such a development can bring about a very strong leap in the productivity of designers.

What to hide? It's very pleasant and exciting. The win tells us about the community's recognition of our level and contribution to the design industry. Of course, I'm not going to stop and plan to submit other works.

Encontech B.V. is a spin-off of the University of Twente, founded in 2005. Their focus is on externally heated engines and chemical compression reactors. And their experience and engineering skills in converting thermal energy into mechanical energy are truly amazing. The previous version of the site had been in place for almost 15 years and it was time to tell the company's story in a new, modern visual language.

I think the most difficult thing was to talk about complex scientific things in simple language. The company is committed to creating machines that convert one type of energy into another, and it was important for us to find an appropriate visual solution that is synonymous with energy conversion. I think we succeeded.

I think it's too early to talk about any kind of influence. But now I plan to participate in various competitions with new projects.

Augmented reality, which lets you superimpose digital content in the real world. Artificial intelligence can help you analyze data, automate customer service, and perform routine tasks. I think web-based applications, are similar to software but are not downloaded from the web and installed on your device or computer.

Decades of isolation meant that when the opportunity arose, all areas of life and business began to develop extremely widely, including design. We had to learn everything quickly because we were in a position to catch up. But it also led to the creation of a very large and strong IT community.

First, services and platforms will accumulate more and more data about us and our preferences and will be able to be more targeted. On the other hand, we may become more dependent on these platforms and services and it will be difficult to change them because you will not take your data with you. Second, technologies will evolve and new ways of interacting with content will emerge. Third, there will be a rethinking of how we search and receive information as such; search AI will learn from our data, tastes, and queries and select information more and more accurately.

Doing and not being afraid to make mistakes, because mistakes help us see the bigger picture.

Maybe NNG – they have collected a lot of in-depth research that you can rely on in your work and when choosing a particular solution. Well, probably YouTube, but it's more difficult to filter the quality of content here, although there are more and more channels where a beginner can learn knowledge or watch an analysis of successful and not-so-good solutions.

Entrepreneurs and visionaries are people who can see opportunities where most others pass by. They can be passionate about their ideas, build a team of like-minded people around them, and deliver value to consumers. These are people with active lifestyles and high energy. There's always something to learn from them.