Joshua Galinato

Tell us a little bit about yourself

I was the founding designer to a Swedish SaaS company known as Orbi, an event management platform with over 250,000 users across Europe. Even though my title said ‘Lead UX Designer’, I would find myself designing the digital products as well as the marketing assets (landing pages, sales assets and etc…).

As we grew, I was able to focus on my original title of ‘Lead UX Designer’. Working closely with our dev team, I did it all. Created design systems, designed wireframes, and built prototypes that I would test with our users.

After 4 years, we realised that we needed someone to own the entire customer journey. From initial engagement to onboarding to staying as a loyal customer, we needed someone to own this.

I’m currently the Customer Experience Manager, where I ensure every touch point of the customer journey is up to standard. I sit closely with leadership and help shape the product roadmap. Ironically, I’m working closely with our marketing assets again, this time with a more strategic view across marketing and tech to ensure a smooth customer experience end to end.

What are the first questions you ask at the beginning of every project?

Every week I sit down with the CEO, COO, and Tech Lead. Between us, we have a general idea of the needs of the company. In this meeting we go through every issue one-by-one and access if we need to either take immediate action, plan it into the roadmap, or archive the item.

We try to be strict in our decision making and prioritise the important tasks. Since we’re a small team we’re often asking ourselves:

1. By working on this task, will it help us with growth or revenue goals?
2. Should we prioritise this?
3. Do we have a team available to work on this?

Based on these answers, we’re either planning it into the roadmap or archiving it. Majority of the times, we say ‘no’ and archive it right away. It’s important we do this to ensure we stay focused on our company goals.

What are the first things you do when you start a new project?

Creating an event on our platform is one of the most important and used features. Since we highlighted that users were struggling with it, we decided that it was crucial to improve the user experience.

I would start off by investigating all the issues with our current event form. Looking into the analytics, the error logs, going through the flows myself. Documenting everything as I go.

I would then book a workshop with multiple members across the company, Sales, Tech, Marketing, Leadership. By including such variety it allows us to ensure when we’re solving the problem, we’re doing so across all aspects of the company.

I would then present my findings and facilitate the workshop to help us come up with ideas in order to solve the problem. Then it’s a matter of cutting through the noise and prioritisng the few ideas that would make a difference.

What does your moodboarding process look like? Where do you source inspiration?

Investigating our issues, exploring our competitors and generally scouring the internet seeing how other brands solve for the problems I’m trying to solve.

What’s your favourite part of the design process? Why?

Testing our prototypes with our users. It’s where we get the feedback we need. I can learn so much by listening and watching how they interact with the product.

Are there any parts of your process that go against received wisdom? Or common steps that you skip? Why?

Nothing comes to mind.

Is there anything else you suspect is unique/unusual about your practice?

None that I can think of.

If you’re collaborating with anyone (copywriters, illustrators, developers, etc): when do you bring them in? How do you handle project management?

Immediately. They should all be present in the workshop.

What’s been the most impactful change you’ve made to your process? Where did you hear about that?

With the rise of AI agents, I’ve noticed that I’ve been spending less time on Figma and more time building prototypes with code. Since I taught myself how to code, I’m quite comfortable building a working prototype and using AI to assist me on anything that I find too complicated.

Allowing users to test on a working prototype, you get to test different aspects and gather feedback that you wouldn’t be able to account for with a limited Figma prototype.

Plus, it allows for everyone on the team to be on the same page, as often at times a Figma prototype leaves things open to interpretation. In this case, the working prototypes demonstrates how the product will interact.

What bits of the process are non-negotiables for you?

Testing with users.

How do you organise design files?

Since I’m diving right into the code, the purpose of the design files are mostly for documentation. It’s mostly a whiteboard documenting my findings, the decisions made in our workshop as well as a few rough sketches of the solution.

What does design hand-off look like for you?

Handover is pretty simple. I demo the prototype and give access to the repository. By then, the prototype would have been heavily tested and gone through several iterations.

The devs will go through my comments in the code, implement the business logic and tigthen things up that I may have missed.

Handover doesn’t mean that I disappear and it’s up to them to figure things out. We’re still in constant communication and I’m always checking on the progress of the product.

What elements of the process create speed bumps or challenges? How do you get out of these ruts?

After testing with many of our users, I generally find that I’ll receive feedback that contridicts each other. Every user is different and have their own biases. Deciding on what action to take is often the most difficult part.

However, since I’ve held many user testing sessions and understand the business needs, I generally have a good idea to what direction to move towards. I just have to be okay with the decision I make.

How do you make decisions?

Usertesting. This is why it’s important for the prototype to be as interactive and as close to the product as can be. By seeing how the user interacts, I’m able to understand if we’re solving the problem or not.

Where can people find out more about you, keep up-to-date with what you’re doing or give you money?

My personal site is at galina.to

I wanted to increase my skills as well as my network, so I built Path To Design on the side. It’s a directory of designers, how they made it into the industry, along with the tools they used to help them design.