AMA: Ask-Me-Anything

Pia is head of the product design team at Userlane, as well as a career development and mindset coach, accredited by the International Federation of Coaching (ICF). In her work, she puts people to the fore, not pixels. She began her career as a freelance designer in Slovenia, before moving to Germany eight years ago to find her place within in-house design teams. She has worked in dynamic start-up environments in the areas of games, privacy, search and browser-development, and sale/adoption of digital solutions. Pia successfully combines her understanding of working with people with knowledge of product development. She says she's a generalist. Her biggest passion is to help people who want to advance or completely change their careers.

Nina Jurcic is a multi-disciplinary designer and leader of design teams. Her career spans over ten years building apps, brands, B2B platforms, design systems and teams. In her last role at Relayr, she helped establish a design culture and achieved successful cross-functional team collaboration. She has led some of the company's most ambitious projects; helping teams launch more than ten industrial IoT solutions using the design system they created. She positions herself as a coach, a sparing partner and a change agent. She empowers design teams to achieve their strategic goals and supports individual designers in their personal development and community involvement.

She co-creates brands with companies, while thinking with creative teams within companies about how to support their business or strategic goals. It addresses questions such as: why do some people like or develop positive attitudes towards certain brands, while others are indifferent. She reflects on ethics and attitudes towards data, and in particular how to talk to technology companies about sustainability and why it is important for success in tomorrow's world. She holds a Master's degree from Aalto University in Finland and has done further training at Art+Com in Berlin. She currently works as a creative director at Chipolo, working on partnership campaigns for Apple, Google and Secrid, among others.

Damjan currently works as Head of Design at Ardoq. Previously, he was Principal UX Researcher at Cognite, before that Head of Research at Pexip, as well as Director of Research at Cognizant Nordics, Team Leader of Research at Cisco (Webex devices), and Global Head of UX at GVC/Entain. During his time as a user experience researcher, he has travelled the world and worked with people from Finland to Sudan and from Bangalore to Portland. On a mission to change the world for the better, he has helped design for both small start-ups and large companies such as Bwin, Bosch, CNN, Deutsche Bahn and the Mayo Clinic. He says he's been lucky to build, develop and lead teams of designers and researchers, while working with some of the smartest people on the planet. He studied Media Communications in Slovenia and defended his PhD in Computer Science in Slovenia and Finland. As an active member of the IxD, UX and research communities, he regularly shares his insights at various events. He spends as much free time as he has left with students: at universities (Maribor, Lapland, TU Wien) or so-called bootcamps (Brainster).

Experienced user experience designer who firmly believes that the discovery phase is the basis for quality digital products. For almost 7 years she has been designing medical applications and back-end systems at the Slovenian start-up MESI, and for the last few years she has been designing complex systems and business applications. She has worked with companies such as Zavarovalnica Triglav, Krka, Kaldi, Loftware NiceLabel, Nevron and others. As a very active member of the Slovenian UX community, she organizes and manages the Slovenian edition of Global Service Jams and the monthly event SD x UX Drinks.

Aljaž's work includes designing solutions in the areas of IoT and digital twins, infographics and data visualisation, cartography and spatial orientation, and personalised or contextually tailored content. His collaborations with leading companies in the media and technology industries have resulted in numerous business successes, excellent user feedback and professional awards in the fields of design, journalism and statistics. Along the way, he has been involved in the creation of three internationally successful teams. He is constantly dedicated to finding and mentoring young talent, and expanding his knowledge through lectures, workshops and trainings. He has conducted over fifty of them, both at home and abroad.