I got into digital product back in 2012, before it was called five different things depending on who you asked. I started out studying design and sitebuilding, with most work at that time being marketing or communication related web experience and brand direction.

I naturally gravitated toward more complex systems, partly because they were more interesting, partly because simple things are rarely simple for long, and around 2016, I moved into web apps and responsive design. Most of my work during this time involved SaaS startups, scaleups, and independent clients, where speed mattered and “we’ll see” was the job description.

By 2019, I started going deeper, studying human-computer interaction, emotional design, and intuitive system design. My role expanded beyond “design” into business thinking, working across multiple touchpoints, growth experimentation, and occasionally translating between market and stakeholders, then stakeholders and engineers. I kept working with multicultural startups and scaleups, mostly on web-based products, with a few exemptions of native mobile and desktop based products.

In 2023, I leaned further into psychology, specifically adoption and engagement related behavioral patterns and learning experiences. I spent a few years in enterprise environment within the design and innovation layer, leading product experience and mentoring newcomers. It was valuable, but for the sake of my sanity, I returned to earlier stage companies, more than ever appreciating their agility and openness to innovation.