Ringae Nuek
Designer
Location
San Francisco, CA, United States
Toptal Member Since
September 15, 2017
Ringae is a hands-on design lead who’s shipped products at startups and large corporations for 15+ years. She's helped various clients—including Google, the BBC, and Samsung—to identify problems and create coherent design solutions. After launching a mobile banking iOS app, Ringae is looking to do more of what she loves to do: create consumer-facing product designs informed by an understanding of the user and the core business strategy.
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Work Experience
2017 - PRESENT
Design Consultant (Design Strategy, UX, Research Lead)
Topology Eyewear
- Oversaw the product design and user research at Topology, taking them from an early MVP to a solid, consumer-friendly iOS app.
- Led one-on-one interviews with users and customers to understand user needs and attitudes towards the product. Interviews have ranged from in-person, remote, and in-event during sales pop-ups.
- Managed the content strategy work focused on creating material to build trust in-app.
- Ran a one-week intensive Google Design Sprint with senior leadership focused on redesigning the marketing website to improve conversion.
- Initiated several experiments aimed at improving conversion including changes to the pricing structure and order process.
Technologies: Principle, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, MURAL, Flinto, Sketch
2016 - 2017
Head of Design
Varo Money
- Led design across product and marketing and took Varo from early concept development through to launch in June 2017. The work output included a customer experience map, empathy maps, user flows and interactive prototypes as well as high-fidelity screen designs.
- Designed a financial-coach chatbot and integrated it into the app. This was a multi-layered challenge that involved creating personality through tone of voice and iconography, as well as the more functional design of the conversational user interface itself. Unlike most chatbots, we had the additional challenge of integrating ours into an app with a standard GUI.
- Ran codesign workshops with users to understand their needs. These sessions uncovered users' desire for a solution that "just shows me a number" and helps them achieve financial freedom with as little work as possible. This work directly informed the design sprint and final dashboard designs that were the key to making Varo relevant to its customers.
- Ran a Google Ventures-style weeklong design sprint with C-level stakeholders. This was an intensive week that required a lot of preparation and adaptability. The sprint resulted in the current dashboard design.
- Built-up the design team, hiring two designers as well as contractors; also managed the team.
- Was brought on again in 2019 to lead UX for yet-to-be-released mobile apps.
Technologies: Adobe Illustrator, Zeplin, Flinto, Sketch, iOS
2015 - 2016
Design Consultant (UX Lead)
Motif Investing
- Led the UX efforts in a full-scale redesign of Motif's native iOS and Android apps.
- Mapped the end-to-end customer experience, identifying key user types and design opportunities.
- Created detailed wireframes, user flows, and prototypes while working closely with engineers to ensure that the app remained true to the design intent. Designed carefully considered transitions and used 3D space to create a meaningful map and movement through the app.
- Ran remote-user testing sessions with Flinto prototypes to inform my designs.
- Created a design that supports a complex set of user permissions, ensuring that the right users saw the right things and were able to gracefully onramp onto the higher level user state.
Technologies: Zeplin, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, InVision, Flinto, Sketch, Android, iOS
2014 - 2014
User Research Consultant (Research Lead)
Cibo
- Ran user research for Google, Cibo's client. Google hired us to redesign the tools Google AdWords moderators use to moderate ad content.
- Remotely shadowed moderators in different countries, having them speak out loud as they worked, explaining their processes, thoughts, and methods.
- Ran one-on-one interviews with different levels of moderators and their managers to understand workflow, user needs, and constraints.
- Created a detailed design document recommending an approach in creating a new user workflow and set of tools.
Technologies: OmniGraffle
2014 - 2014
User Experience Design Lead
Awoke
- Led the UX design for a healthcare startup creating a platform to enable remote communication between doctors and patients. My involvement spanned concept development through to launch with a pilot partner.
- Developed the UX model that informed the platform's overall structure and approach, across channels. A key part of the solution was to focus on context and use that to determine what to present to the user. The details of the solutions were very different for the occasional patient than they were for the doctor, an expert user, but the core principles and focus on context remained.
- Designed user flows and micro-interactions for the patient iOS app and provider web app. The app design supported spatial thinking, presenting information in logical layers and within a coherent 3D space.
Technologies: OmniGraffle, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, iOS
2011 - 2011
Design Consultant (UX Lead)
Betfair
- Redesigned Betfair’s highly transactional iPhone app and mobile web apps—significantly increasing the volume of bets placed via mobile. improving the users' access to different markets, and streamlining the betting process.
Technologies: OmniGraffle, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, iOS
2007 - 2009
Design Consultant (UX Lead)
BBC
- Led the UX team on a number of key projects for over a period of years.
- Redesigned the navigation across the mobile iPhone-optimized iPlayer to support better mobile behaviors and constraints. Made the content immediately more available and more visible; bookmarking and browsing features were adapted to better support "save it for tonight" browsing behavior.
- Developed a proposal to redesign the search on BBC.co.uk/mobile to better support context, time, and location. This was an almost entirely self-directed project: I wrote the brief, determined scope, timeline, and deliverables and managed the relationship with stakeholders. I presented the solutions to various heads of department and circulated the proposal widely.
- Completely redesigned the BBC’s moderation system, a web app used to review thousands of pieces of user-submitted content every day. Ran contextual interviews that significantly informed design choices. The streamlined redesign significantly reduced moderation costs.
Technologies: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, OmniGraffle, Axure
2007 - 2007
Design Consultant (Senior UX)
Samsung
- Led and managed the design strategy and nuts-and-bolts details of a "blue sky" proposal presented to Samsung HQ for a new, simpler European mobile platform that was phone-agnostic in its approach.
- Created user scenarios detailing key interactions and design choices. This design integrated siloed content areas, exploited mobile-optimized searches, and used tags to organize content.
- Prototyped solutions in Flash to explore design concepts and demonstrate my design approach.
- Developed a user interaction guidelines document, detailing the screen construction, global interaction properties, a user awareness model, screen types, and elements.
Technologies: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Flash, OmniGraffle
2006 - 2007
Design Consultant (UX Lead)
Nokia
- Led the UX strand of concept development work on all of Nokia’s live category phones.
- Managed and was responsible for the UX work done to layer the "finger touch" onto the 5800 XPressMusic, Nokia‘s first full-touch (stylus) phone.
- Worked closely with internal ergonomics and R&D teams to turn initial concepts into reality.
Technologies: Flash, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
2006 - 2006
Design Consultant (Senior UX)
Motorola
- Worked as a key member of a team developing a new mobile phone framework for Motorola’s low-end devices.
- Designed use cases and screen types supporting the framework’s core principles.
- Prioritized essential user goals and ease-of-use, providing wizard-style paths and screens that dispensed with option menus..
Technologies: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Education
2002 - 2002
Master's Degree with Distinction in Interaction Design
Domus Academy - Milan, Italy
1994 - 1998
Bachelor's Degree Cum Laude in International Relations
Tufts University - Medford, MA, USA
Experience
UX Design - 15 yearsDesign Research - 12 yearsDesign Strategy - 10 yearsProduct Design - 10 yearsWorkshop Facilitation - 8 yearsPrototyping - 8 yearsLocation
