I work with clients, stakeholders, fellow designers, and developers to create thoughtful, simple products.
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About
History
Skills
Hiya, I'm Agustin.
pronounced: aa·guh·steen
I am passionate about product design, working to create experiences at the intersection of research, design, and development through communication and collaboration.
Professional Background
With a background in visual design, front-end development, and team leadership I excel at closely collaborating with cross-functional teams comprised of product stakeholders, marketers, designers, and developers. I design, manage, and lead teams that define and develop thoughtful experiences based on insight and strategy necessary for viable solutions.
I am able to apply product centric design thinking to identify opportunities, plan product roadmaps, and identify problematic features early, while executing product design activities like research, feature definition, scoping, wire framing, rapid prototyping, design, and support and collaboration through the development phase.
Skills
Design Leadership
Product Design
User Interface Design (UI)
Wireframing
Rapid Prototyping
Research
Testing
Data Analytics
Client Collaboration & Management
Information Architecture
Content Strategy
Requirement Gathering
Experience Documentation
Photography
Illustration
Branding
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Example Projects
Product Design
Design Leadership
Project One
myUL
Overview
myUL is a full-service client portal enabling Underwriters Laboratories' clients full visibility into quotes, orders and projects. From project details and tasks to timelines and due dates, myUL makes it easy for clients to view and manage their product certification and testing.
I supported this project from its infancy as a business case, winning the bid to support research and product design, ultimately training and handing off its maintenance to an internal team.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Product Testing
User Story Writing
Product Roadmap
Project Duration
6 Years
Outcomes
I collaborated with UL to define, design, and develop their first modern customer portal, which matured from beta to production in 2019 and continues to evolve.
The customer portal supports a large majority of their client segment seeking certification, inspection, and testing of their products, components, workflows, and factories. It supports safety and certifications activities throughout a product lifecycle, from initial certification, maintenance of the certification, and product end-of-life.
Post Mortem
Product thinking was not inherent to UL's culture. Using data, research, and testing was not always effective with product owners who placed business needs over customer needs.
Stakeholder education of the product design process and its impact may have laid a stronger foundation for tighter collaboration between the product design team and stakeholders.
Building trust did happen over time, but UL's "develop first, refine later" mentality led to technological pigeonholes that were difficult to overcome when trying to innovate.
Project Two
The Photographic Journal
Overview
The Photographic Journal is a passion project exploring the creative process through publication of long-form interviews with established and emerging photographers in addition to short-form photo essays.
Role
Founder
Team Lead
Lead Product Designer
Editorial Director
Interviewer
Project Duration
11 Years
Outcomes
For the past 10 years the team has continued to learn about our audience through surveys, heat mapping, analytics, and word of mouth. This data has been used to steer editorial and technological decisions. The website has been redesigned three times to better adapt to new devices, improve readability and accessibility, as well as improve content delivery efforts through adaptive load and content delivery networks.
Post Mortem
This passion project has taught us to better understand our audience and continue driving to highlight both established and emerging artists. It also taught me personally to grow and cultivate a team around me that I trusted to make their own editorial decisions.
We're currently under development of enhancing the browsing experience, using filtering and search tools to provide a broader view of the work published over the past 11 years.
Project Three
Bestee
Overview
Have your ever opened a dating app around your friends? Whether they're single or married, there's always a desire to get involved in someone's dating life.
We collaborated with the Bestee team to support the definition of their business plan, product research, product roadmap, visual design, and interaction concepts. Through a series of discovery sessions, primary and secondary research, and visual design exploration our team quickly put together targeted solutions that enabled Bestee to formalize their business plan and seek initial funding.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Project Management
Requirements Gathering
Data Analyst
Project Duration
6 Weeks
Outcomes
While Bestee was a short project by design, the small team was able to quickly identify key product differentiators and beging to provide a roadmap for a MVP that supported exploration of investment opportunities.
Post Mortem
This project sorely needed a defined roadmap and feature-set to understand its road to market and investment for development of an MVP. While our team was effective in its tasks, we were unable to remain strategic, and were in-turn too reactive to the clients needs.
The product team instead should have been driving the product based on deeper customer data and insights, instead of just looking at the existing marketplace. The main driver for scrappy strategy was based on the client's budget.
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A Bit More About Me
Passions Inform Professional Pursuits
Product design, along with design thinking, is directly linked with empathy, collaboration, and creativity. My creative outlets add depth to my professional development, providing an avenue to become well-rounded designer, manager, and approachable human being.
Illustrations
These sample illustrations were created in support of various clients, marketing efforts and products.
Branding
My ability to create and define brand through messaging, color, illustration, typography, and system design enables a deeper understanding of product design and branding support through various touchpoints.
Photography
I've taken portraits for as long as I can remember, diving headfirst through film photography, Polaroids, and later digital photography. I’m driven by photography’s facility for creating connections, highlighting individual personalities, and its ability for form and color. Drawing a connection and empathy with a broad set of people aids in research and product definition.
Music
My love of music has pushed me to better understand the theory behind songwriting, music production, and DJing. I've played the guitar since the age of twelve, exploring blues, rock, funk, and jazz.
Along the way I've connected with other musicians, creating long-lasting friendships with deep-seated bonds. I've found that music helps with out-of-the-box thinking, pattern recognition, and free association when brainstorming.