Radu Vucea ⭐️

Leading AR/VR Design @ Reality Labs

Mento Design Academy

Our mission is to help young professionals and career-switchers transition faster and smoother to a career in UX, UI, or Product Design by teaching the right skills, the right way.

Founder

MYBENEFITS

Advisor & Investor

FlairMakers

ixperi

Building a Digital Product Design Studio has been a dream of mine for a long time.

In early 2021, I finally decided to give it a go, and I co-founded ixperi with the mission of creating an elite design team that could deliver exceptional quality and impact.

In just three years, completely bootstrapped, my team and I:

→ Grew the studio to 13 stellar Product Designers and Product Managers
→ Built a fantastic culture of learning, development, and excellence through mentorship and coaching
→ Went from $0 to $1M in yearly revenue
→ Designed and delivered for high growth start-ups like Fresha, FlowX and Jellysmack

Co-Founder, Exit in 2023

Actio

Chief Design Officer

VP, Product Design

Fitbit (now part of Google)

In my role of Product Design Manager at Fitbit, I was initially in charge of building from the ground up and leading the whole design team in Bucharest.

In my three years in this role I have:

→ Built the Product Design team in Bucharest, 15 strong, influencing the headcount strategy to bring in key roles such as UX Research and Design Ops.
→ Created an amazing design culture, recognized company-wide, based on transparency, authenticity, trust, and support, which enabled shipping successful products while maintaining a near-zero attrition rate.
→ Established processes and opportunities that enabled team growth, such as reviews, critiques, and knowledge sharing sessions and events such as Learning Friday and Friday Speaker Series.
→ Influenced the company roadmap and strategy to ship the first line of Fitbit products for kids.
→ Shipped several products that had a revenue and company strategy impact, such as Active Zone Minutes and Fitbit Premium, the latter bringing in over 1,000,000 subscribers in under one year.

Product Design Manager

While in my role as a Senior Product Designer at Fitbit I owned the development of the Fitbit App Gallery from the ground up.

Initially meant to support our first smartwatch, the Ionic, with custom content that users could download, it now supports almost a dozen Fitbit smart devices, counts over 12,000 apps, and watch faces, all of which have been downloaded over 245 Million times.

The Fitbit App Gallery also attracted a thriving community of over 1,000 developers, many of them creating a steady stream of income through creating content for Fitbit.

Senior Product Designer

Vector Watch

While in my role at Vector Watch I wore many hats, as any does in a startup.

From redesigning the company's website with a goal to increase sales — to creating marketing assets in partnership with our marketing department to create awareness, no day was the same.

My most significant achievement, however, has been creating the Vector Developer Portal from the ground up, an easy-to-use web-based tool anyone could use to create a custom watch face or app for their Vector Watch.

It was exceptionally received, gathering over 1800 content creators and over 3000 watch faces and apps in just a few months.

Vector Watch was acquired in 2017 by Fitbit, and I went to be a Product Designer and Design Manager for them.

Product Designer

Adobe

In my time at Adobe, I moved from a Graphic Designer role in the marketing department to a Visual Designer role for the same product and, ultimately, for the last two years, to a Product Designer role as part of the innovation team tasked with validating next-generation products for Adobe.

Through a Lean Startup methodology we were validating product ideas and opportunities, at a fast pace, employing user interviews, prototyping and usability testing, working within a cross-functional team of developers, product managers and designers.

The most notable achievement is validating the MVP for what would become Adobe Stock and the Libraries feature inside Photoshop, Illustrator and other five Adobe CC products.

Various

Freelance Digital Designer

I am a Senior Design Executive, Investor, and Advisor who began his career back in 2005. Since then, I had the opportunity to work for startups, design studios, and big brands alike, having built products and design teams from scratch for companies like Adobe and Fitbit.

More recently, I served as Chief Design Officer for Berlin-based start-up Actio. With a drive for entrepreneurship, I founded my own Product Design Studio back in 2020 and grew that to a 7 figure yearly revenue in less than two years, exiting in late 2023. I now serve as an advisor and investor for several tech start-ups across the world.

My happy place is helping other designers grow and create stellar work. Having hired and mentored hundreds of designers to date, I'm currently focused on scaling up my Design Academy, founded three years ago.

Feel free to contact me for the following:
* Public speaking opportunities (panels, podcasts, events, corporate training)
* Advisory roles on Product Design
* Opportunities on the level of Co-Founder or Senior Design Leadership

Make sure to check my recommendations on my profile here if you'd like to know what it's like to work with me.

Hyper Island

Doing my part in giving back to the Hyper Island school of design by helping shape the education of future UX designers. My work consists in consulting on decision-making around curriculum and being an industry leader, where I’m hoping that my professional experience within design can be a great insight for the next generation of people looking to enter the industry.

Steering Committee board member | UX Design program

Facilitating the 3-week Sandbox module for the Content Developer class. My role includes:
+ Planning & designing course content
+ Developing course materials
+ Facilitating lectures and workshops
+ Providing support and mentorship
+ Evaluation & assessment of student output

Industry Leader 

Nordnet Bank AB

+ UI / UX
+ Design System
+ UX Strategy
+ UX Research 
+ Data visualisation
+ Figma / Notion / Miro / Confluence / Jira / Maze 
+ Moderated / unmoderated user testing
+ Data analysis & Data driven design solutions

Werlabs

+ UI / UX
+ Design System
+ Research 
+ Prototyping
+ Figma / Notion / Miro / Dovetail / Jira / Protopie / UserZoom
+ Moderated / unmoderated user testing
+ Data analysis & Data driven design solutions

Amuse

+ UI / UX
+ Design System
+ Research
+ Prototyping 
+ Sketch / Abstract / Wake / InVision / Whimsical

SNASK

+ Branding
+ UI design
+ Storyboarding for video productions
+ Art direction 
+ Analog methods: hand lettering, set design, hand painting, spray paint

Creative Designer

BBC Worldwide

In my time at the BBC I was fortunate enough to work alongside the Licensing and Consumer Products department where I created visuals for licensed merchandise like toys and apparel.
For this I was required to follow style guides and craft my designs within the identity of the brands I worked on: Sherlock, Go Jetters and Doctor Who.

Graphic Designer

Coursera

Volunteer Mentor for the Modern Art & Ideas course certified by Museum of Modern Art New York that is available on the Coursera online learning platform.  
My role as a Mentor was to answer learner questions, engage them in new discussion topics on the forum, and provide valuable feedback to students and staff members.
My goal was to help other learners succeed while building connections with fellow learners and Mentors around the world.
This role also helped me develop my own leadership and communication skills and taught me how to guide students through this amazingly well-constructed MoMA course.

Mentor 

My role as a Student Course Representative was being in charge of hosting workshops and teaching the basics of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to other students on campus while creating awareness of the brand and its services.

Adobe Representative

Creative Luggage

I was in charge of designing and establishing brand identity and awareness for our clients, mainly through campaigns and concept pitches.
Clients included: BMW, Suzuki, Barilla, Mini, Solaris, and many more.

Member of the Association of Swedish Graphic Designers and ADP List design mentor - current Product Designer and design educator.

Worked for a record label company, a world-renowned branding studio, a major British broadcast, a big HealthTech player in the Covid-19 prevention market, and now designing experiences for a Nordic digital investment bank. Isn't life amazingly surprising? ✨

taplio

The Battle

Radu Vucea ⭐️

Teodora Mechea

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