Work done during this project:

• Team management: Definition of UX related roles and tasks for recruitment. UX roles' candidates sifting and interviewing. 
• UX and Product Design Management: UX KPIs definition, measurement methods and tools procured and set. 
• UX and Product Design Management: Lean product and Lean UX design and research methods and workflows definition, implementation and mentoring of the team on them.
• UX and Product Design Management: UX lab requirements, equipment and user's recruitment pipeline and processes procured and set. 
• User and Product Research: In-depth interviews, prototype testing: design perception validation studies and product perceived-value studies, product usability testing facilitation and collaborative sense making facilitation,
• UX and Product Design Management: Training of other members into participating, conducting and facilitating research and sense making sessions.
• Product Management: Customer support team integration to the product and UX team processes. From active listening and team integration, to designing early reporting and analysis tools to structure their communication.
• Product Management: iOS app's product map and backlog ownership, planning and prioritising team's actions.
• Team Management: Tech, product and design teams coordination for iOS app development.
• IXD + Visual Design: Collaborative rapid prototyping, lo-fi/hi-fi prototype design, final product visual and interactive design of the UI, UI QA tasks coordination and delivery.

The Story

On 2015, I was part of the small OLX innovation team. Some small and fast companies had successfully taken an app-only approach, and by doing so, threatening the classifieds traditional strategic model. We were then given the task of developing a mobile app to test the same model-defying approach to captivate young, hip and digital native people (a thing that classic classifieds couldn't do no matter the level of effort they put on it).

The stakes were very high and the results were totally unpredictable for the team (for more about this project you can read this article). I decided to focus my time on proper explorative and validation user research and act as a kind of cultural catalyzer to align everyone in the team towards a more user-centric approach. UX activities and discussions would act as the glue in our team, getting everyone involved and committed with the product hypothesis. By doing so, we gained speed, prevented late news of no-can-do from one perspective or the other and we also eliminated as much friction as possible on the process until getting any measurable results.

The project set a high demand and priority of those tasks to me.
I realized that it would imply letting go a lot of design tasks off my list, so I took the lead of the UX area and quickly booked and hired 2 more UX designers to become a team of 3.

As our product had been very successfully launched and evolved, we finished that year by launching in 15 different countries from west and east Europe, middle east and latin America.
Our product team couldn't grow that fast, so I also took the position of Product Owner in parallel to my UX Lead role. I will be always very thankful to my team and Dominik, our team director, for that great leap of faith they took on letting me do my first product arms being them also under heavy pressure to get a one-shot-kill successful product.
That meant for me learning a lot of things the hard way, specially around the tech side of a digital product. Leaving behind a couple of hiccups though, the results were great for our iOS app. Having taken it as a P.O. with 1 star average review in the app store and leaving it with a solid 4 stars.

During letgo's first year period we reached:

• a successful internal investment after the success of our MVP developed and launched in a 3 months time.
• Letgo emerging markets app grew from idea stage to +2M users, with series B level marketing spend. Launched app in 11 countries from 5 regions, defining product strategy and assisting in positioning and go to market.
• platform chosen by OLX to be group’s global platform for emerging markets and extended (from Android only) to support iOS and mobile-first web users as well.
• success of the business case to take the in house UX team from 1 to 3 persons.
• a steep surge in the iOS downloads and rating (from 1 to 4 stars) in less than 6 months.
• Lean product and user research coaching: More than 150hrs. of exposition to user tests and in-depth interviews for this project (200 hrs. more before the project with the same team) proved a change in mindset of all the team. Some of them trained to conduct usability testing and facilitate wrap-up sessions as well.
• to solidify our team's user-centred and lean culture and scaling it up harmonically as the team grew.
• the customer support team ot be integrated and feeding our product road maps' priorities.
• disrupted the industry and won leadership positions in Czech Republic, Croatia and Slovenia in 18 months, becoming the fastest growing business in OLX group.