I dedicate myself to devising meaningful products, that positively impact people's lives.
MY PATH
Hi, and welcome. My name is Vlad Serban, and I'm a self-taught UX/UI Designer based in Romania. My journey in the creative field started approximately 6 years ago. After a short spell in Marketing & Advertising, I decided that Design is something I want to do for the rest of my life. Having no formal education in Arts or Graphic Design, the first 2 years were kind of a struggle. Lots of small gigs and experiments led me to truly understand what design it is about: being a problem solver and a facilitator. Not only about beautiful colors and typography, but having a "form follows function" mindset, where you have to leave your ego aside and build something for others, not only to feed your self-image.
For almost four years, I gained experience by working in various projects, ranging from branding & visual identity to UI for web and mobile apps. During this time, my curiosity opened a path to programming. I wanted to be the guy that outlines a well-crafted digital experience, but also understands how it is engineered. Thus, I invested almost a year in learning web-development.
Experience
2013 - 2015
Junior Graphic Designer
2015 - 2017
Visual & Web Designer
2017 - onward
UX/UI Designer/Product Developer
WHAT I DO NOW
In 2017, all the experience achieved in the past years pushed me to switch my main focus to a higher purpose. These days, I'm a Co-founder and Product Developer at Stratefy (www.stratefy.io)where I dedicate my time and effort to helping entrepreneurs and early-stage startups validate their business idea before diving headfirst into spending time and money for a product with no market need. What I am good at:
Product & UX Strategy
- Problem framing
- Market & user research
- Ideation & prototyping
- Testing & validation
UI & Visual Design
- Interaction design
- User interface design
- Design systems
Web-development
- Semantic HTML
- CSS (Flexbox, Bootstrap)
- javaScript/jQuery
- Basic PHP
HOW I WORK
I'm your partner
I build all my professional relationships on mutual trust, transparency and respect. I'm not the guy that seeks instant gratification. For me, it's more important to establish a long-term connection, from which I can understand your needs, your past experiences and future goals.
I explore, discover and understand
Research and discovery are the backbone of every great thing that happened to humankind from the beginning of time. It's no different in design. We sit down, enjoy a cup of coffee and discuss the whole idea, getting the ABC’s of the concept. Everybody must understand it, acknowledge it and share the same vision.
I strategize, prototype and test
No product has ever had success, without a well-thought strategy. By setting up the framework for the right experiments, I can help you outline your customer persona, sketch a value proposition and develop a business model. Also, the only way to make sure everything works, as designed, is to test, test and test some more. I prototype and improve design several times before going into production. Furthermore, each important stage in product development will be marked by usability testing.
I keep building, improving and evolving
In today's digital world, a project is never really over. Websites and applications need to be improved based on user-validated research, tracked, analyzed and optimized. This way, you ensure that your product is performing to the best of its ability, fulfilling user's needs and positively impacting their lives.