Hey, how are you?
I'm Alin Buda, and I design great digital products.

What I am?

I am many things but above all; I’m an enthusiast.
As a design generalist, I research, audit, learn to understand the business, and help (re)define the product.

With solid requirements, I design journeys, interfaces, content architecture, and interactions.

What do I do?

I’m glad you’ve asked!
I research, audit, experiment and embrace the small victories.
Every single day.

Great products are "invisible".

I advocate for those who can’t be in the room when the design decisions are made. My job is to help the internal team define and articulate the product to allow the consumers to focus on their goals. When coupled with a great business proposition, those goals are reached with little effort, making the product invisible.

Great services become verbs.

Have you ever heard these expressions: “just google it”, “Skype your mum”, or “Zoom my team”? To be used as verbs, services must be visible, easy to use, and consistent. And because needs evolve, my role is to ensure that products and services can adapt, scale and stay relevant.

How do I do it?

All successful projects have something in common: clear goals and solid processes adapted to the context.
My process is rooted in a System Thinking framework that includes Design Thinking.

Understand

Empathise, define.

In this phase, my main goal is to learn as much as possible about the project. Before doing anything, I must understand the product and the problems I must solve. I work to expose the product structure to the internal team and ensure everyone involved talks about the same things. We clarify the vocabulary and the known issues, analyse existing user research and plan.

Explore

Ideate, prototype.

With a plan and a priority for the defined problems, I set up workshops to brainstorm ideas and generate solutions. One by one, these solutions are challenged internally. The winners get prototyped in various ways and challenged again. Where necessary and possible, I design A/B tests so we can learn more about the proposed solutions’ efficacy.

Materialise

Test, measure.

The winning solutions are implemented and monitored for efficiency.
Like all the other phases, this phase requires a shared effort and is a long-term action.
When considering the solution’s impact, I keep an eye on context. Anything that is visible and can influence the user’s behaviour gets documented.