My name is Valentyna, I’ve been working in UI/UX design for many years and now I am Head of Design at Zgraya. I have an abandoned education in psychology and art school, and a lot of self-education. I did a huge number of courses in UI, UX, front end, art direction and so on. I like to choose what to learn by myself and reject the stuff that just clogs your memory.

Imperfection of this world.

My favourite is UI design. I like its universality because you can use it with any new technology and possibilities in any direction, from 3D modelling to AI, and this is amazing, not being stuck with just one thing or style.

Its functionality. Design is good when it solves a problem or task in a way that is as simple and convenient to the user as possible. If your design does not carry any functions, it’s either art or garbage.

The visual style varies from project to project, because first of all I work with the needs of the client and their target audience. If we speak of design style as an approach, I would define it as a UX approach, because the final goal is to create something that will satisfy our user and make their life easier, even if that means to save them 10 minutes.

I think that for most UI/UX designers the main steps of the design process will be the same, it’s a kind of a formula that’s hard to depart from. Analysis –> research –> moodboard –> hundreds of edits –> design. And it’s quite possible that more than one cycle will be needed.

Everywhere. From Bosch to the position of players on a football field. We should take inspiration from the surrounding world, from the streets, from similar professions and other completely different things, this gives one an additional or different point of view.

I don’t like trends, in fact, the way trends are used nowadays. In most cases, they make all projects so similar that at least the individuality and recognizability is lost, and in the worst cases the brand positioning suffers too.

It means a world, really. It means that we do things right. It means that our designs are able to reach out to people out there while delivering the results to our clients. It means that we have a crazy good team. And getting this international approval actually drives us to create evermore.

Arkade games is a single-brand eCommerce website that aims to present and to sell to the world a grand gaming invention — Arkade Blaster. It’s a gaming controller that connects to your mobile device and its motion detectors and allows you to have a unique immersive 3D gaming experience. The product itself was so cool that we decided to go all out and came up with an interactive 3D centerpiece that is surrounded by all the traditional elements and styling of the gaming world.

For me personally, the hardest thing was to get a feel for the gaming vibe, because I’m not a gamer and my maximum is to play bubbles on the phone. But, luckily, we worked on the project as a team and now I’m a more developed character. Speaking of the team in general, the hardest thing was to optimize the 3D model to improve website performance. WebGL is a pretty demanding technology, and the rules of modern web and progressive users aren’t prepared to wait 10 seconds for anything to load on the web, but we managed to pull it off.

Solving problems with methods that are not expected. Turning ideas into reality. The ability to dream, to be disappointed in your ideas and after all this to realize that this was the path to something better.

It’s simple — fresh, bold creativity and a lot of very skilled people in pretty much every field, combined with great prices.

Could I have predicted 10 years ago that I would be able to control my kettle from an app on my mobile phone? Of course not. No matter what we predict now, things can go in a completely different direction as soon as some new technology comes along.

Look carefully. Don't do creativity for creativity’s sake and design for design’s sake, solve the problems your customers have — this is the key to successful products.

Nowadays there is an incredible number of all kinds of resources online and offline, both free and paid, in any format — text, video, audio. Most of them let you improve yourself and take away something new. The main thing is desire and self-organization. Just do it.

Design and coffee are overrated.

Every day I meet people that inspire me in one way or another. The main thing is to want to be inspired and you’ll see how many interesting people are around you and how a random phrase can push you towards something completely new for you.

I haven’t found my key to success yet, but in order to achieve something you need to not stay in one place. It’s very trendy these days to talk about visualization of your goals as a way to success, but this doesn’t work until you get up from the sofa and do something.