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Open to permanent UX Lead roles
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Case study 05Career Proof · 2013–20218 years

From the interface to
a shared direction.

The roles changed. The throughline did not: sorting out complexity, making quality visible, and setting teams up so they can move forward together.

ChallengeAgency pace, brand worlds, platforms, and growing responsibility.
My roleArt Director → Senior Art Director → Team Lead
Key contributionDesigned products, built systems, developed teams. Later I helped build the Experience Design area together with the Head of Design and helped hire eight colleagues.
Outcome & evidenceA durable development instead of a collection of job titles.Documented roles, observed impact

Measured means the figure comes from a documented survey inside the project. Observed means the change was visible in everyday work but was not formally captured.

Career overview with roles, interface work, and team development
Figure 05 — context, system, and impact

01 — The Context

A career is more interesting once you can see the throughline.

From DDB and Volkswagen through thjnk, UDG, and Elbkind to Atos: the products became more complex, the responsibility greater, and design increasingly a question of shared decisions.

The development:First build strong interfaces. Then connect systems. Finally bring teams and stakeholders onto one direction.

The throughline:Not volume, but clarity. Not protecting my own design, but the quality of the shared decision.

02 — The Impact

More responsibility. Less need to do everything myself.

~12creatives and concept people in a shared team lead
10+years of product and UX work
6roles between agency and enterprise

This case study is not a single project. It shows how visual execution turned into strategic UX leadership, and why I would rather strengthen systems and teams today than only deliver screens. Important for context: in those years I did not hold the title UX Lead. The title came later. The working pattern was visible earlier.

Much from these years is under NDA or simply no longer public. I am glad to talk concretely about individual roles, responsibilities, and decisions.

Schematic overview of the career stations.
The stations at a glance

03 — The Approach

With every role the lever changed.

01

DDB · Volkswagen

Learned to think in systems: brand quality has to work consistently across many touchpoints.

02

thjnk · UDG · Elbkind

Connected platforms, early UX leadership, and team responsibility.

03

Atos · Eviden

Owned enterprise products and UX quality in complex delivery. I co-built the Experience Design area and carried the hiring together with the Head of Design.

“At some point the most important screen is no longer the one you design yourself. It is the one the team designs without you.”The shift from design to leadership

04 — Key Learnings

What stayed from this work.

Craft still matters.

Leadership without a feel for execution turns abstract fast. I want to hold both together.

Responsibility means letting go.

A strong team needs direction and trust, not constant correction loops.

Working on a similarly complex product?

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