About me
How it all started
I started creating websites early on in my teens and soon it became my passion. I used to own a few websites and I even sold a couple of them. In those days, I also helped with SEO but as time went by, I focused mainly on design and mostly on websites for foreign startups from dribbble.com. From 2012, apart from designing, I started leading small teams in my job. This helped me to be better understand business outcomes and I began to focus on making websites that sell. An important lesson for me was during our first big project for a large corporation, Coolpad. We failed to get in touch with the project decision makers and the whole project got stuck and failed in the end. I learned how important communication is.
With my company Ents, we were among the first designers who began testing designs as prototypes. This resulted in a successful project for ulovdomov.cz and soon afterwards, we started designing the Kiwi.com webpage (as Ents). Apart from that, we focused on campaign sites for companies like Globus or O2 (via agencies) and on e-shops (my teammate David Simoes from Ents still continues in that role with his Sounds Good Agency). My brother is an owner of proficio.cz (a well-known Czech digital marketing agency), so my knowledge of digital marketing is up to date.
Growing up with Kiwi.com
I spent three years with Kiwi.com and it was a thrilling and precious experience. My journey began in a start-up and ended in a globally-known company. I learned how to work in different-sized teams, how to communicate with management and how to lead a product (Search Homepage).
My work consisted of designing the Search Homepage and I also took care of product management for the Search Homepage. Later, I worked on a whole new Kiwi.com website named the George Project. I also collected data for it and analyzed user behavior. However, a while before the beta was launched, the project was closed/failed, and we decided that such a big project could not just be created between the CEO (Oliver Dlouhý) and the Head of Design (me). That was the moment when Oliver said: “no more revolution, but evolution”. At that time, David Tuč (Head of Design) and Roman Studený joined the team. David scaled the design team and hired UX researchers and designers. It was a great moment for me. I could watch and learn how to lead a design team properly, and I started learning a lot from the approaches of other designers who were more into theory and UX. I had the privilege to consult many things with Andrej Kiripolský who is a great UX researcher. Roman Studený taught me to argue well and he pushed a lot for speed in development and a data-driven approach. As a result, I found myself deeply immersed in A/B tests and learning how to develop a product in large companies. I also enjoyed the entire process of working with data, from getting the data and analyzing user behavior to writing reports and proposals for discussions.
Future
My aspiration is to be a Product Designer — a role that I enjoy. But it is not a very common position in Czechia yet. A Product Designer is a designer who thinks like a Product Owner and is able to both design and validate ideas. (For further reference, it is described nicely in the Jobs section of Facebook).