My Skills Compass

Nicola Di Marco 🔥🙏 — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 07:47:56 +0000

Inspired by Neri Oxman’s Krebs Cycle of Creativity I designed a map laying out my skills and interests:

Red elements are skills I master and have professional experience with, the blue ones are instead skills I have some experience with and I plan to improve or I am interested in.

The Krebs Cycle of Creativity was designed by Neri Oxman in 2016 for different purposes. I found it a beautifully designed and very flexible tool to measure and to navigate through my interests, to understand what are my strengths and which areas I need to improve in.

How would your map look like? Is any area of your Skills Compas particularly dominant? Which one, on the other hand, requires more of your focus and resources?

What is my ideal Design Process Map?

Nicola Di Marco 🔥🙏 — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 07:44:13 +0000

I’ve been recently asked by clients and recruiters what would be my “ideal design process” or how would I “approach a new project”.

I am the designer behind PieDao, Dexwallet, and Ddai.
I believe that every company, every brand and every project is different. They can simply be at a different stage of development or stakeholders might have a specific goal they aim to achieve.
So I often found myself replying “it depends”, which naturally doesn’t sound like such a thoughtful answer.
Enough said, here’s the map.

Looking for support improving an existing product or designing a new one? Ping me on!

My Bio
I am a full-Stack Designer with 10+ years of experience making B2C / B2B innovative products for startups, advertising agencies and media outlets. Member of the InVision Design Leadership Forum and Conensys alumni. I am 35 years old Italian, happily married and based in Berlin since 2015. When I am not working you will find me practicing yoga, cooking pasta or riding my motorbike. I read a lot.

Portfolio

Social Networks

• I Worked on FinTech, blockchain, online democracy, talents recruiting in emerging markets, e-commerce and Android / iOS apps
• Built and led small and medium-sized teams and collaborated with C-level stakeholders
• Past clients and employers: DexLab, SumUp, Amorelie, Liquid Democracy, Everjobs @rocket Internet, Diesel, Discovery Channel, Emergency, Liu.Jo, Missoni, Sky Arte, Unipol, Vileda, Vodafone, Volotea, Warner Bros, Wecrosstheline
Workflow & Tools
• Contribute on the Product Roadmap, Strategy and Features Backlog
• User Research & Testing (personas, card sorting, usability testing)
• Collecting competitors insights, visual references, and market analysis
• Custom tracking and reporting, trend/search keywords analysis (Google Suite), heat-maps
• Define strategies and prepare assets for A/B testing (Dynamic Yield)
• Define relevant KPIs for the project (acquisition, conversion/retention, execution velocity, etc)
• Define personal and team goals (experienced with agile & custom setup teams)
• Communication tools (Jira, Slack, Trello, Taiga)
• Design Software for style guidelines, UI Kits and prototypes (Framer X / Sketch / Invision / Adobe XD)
• Write clean HTML & CSS and keep project files synchronized with GitHub issues
• Familiar with the advantages and limitations of React/React Native framework as well as the different interaction patterns on iOS/Android/Web
• Led design sprints, workshops, and an official Behance portfolio review

Are you in need of a web3 or a fintech app? We at Dexlab.io have developed several mobile and web apps including an Dexwallet.io, Dexpay.me, Defitracker.io, Ddai.dexwallet.io and just recently launched PieDAO, the asset allocation DAO for decentralized market-weighted portfolio allocations. We’ve also helped, among others, Fulcrum.finance, Idle.finance and Outlet Finance, designing smart-contracts, automation tools and other features for their products.

Extra. I thought it might be helpful using some quotes to give a better context.

What is a “process”?
A process may be defined as “a series of steps, actions, or operations used in making something or bringing about a desired result: a manufacturing process” [1]. Similarly, a design process can be defined as a sequence of creative problem finding, analyzing, and solving steps used by the designer to develop an appropriate design solution for the given client, which is an organizational framework used by designers during the process of product design.

What Is Product Design?
Product design is the process of identifying a market opportunity, clearly defining the problem, developing a proper solution for that problem and validating the solution with real users.
Tree basic questions
When thinking about products or features, designers should understand the business objectives and be able to answer the following questions first:

What problem are we solving?
Who has this problem?
What do we want to achieve? Looking for support improving an existing product or designing a new one? Ping me on!

DEV Community: Nicola Di Marco 🔥🙏

My Skills Compass

What is my ideal Design Process Map?