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René Manikofski René Manikofski
René Manikofski

About me

Last 12 years

Start-ups, incubators & e-commerce companies

Resume (PDF)
Portfolio (PDF)
LinkedIn profile

REICH ONLINE SOLUTIONS | member of CALIDA GROUP

Director Customer Experience Center
Nov. 2022 – present

FTI Group

Head of Design & UX
Jun. 2021– Oct. 2022 (1 year 5 months) – in total 4 years , 8 months

Leading and owning the global product design strategy and roadmap of all FTI owned platforms, operating in two regions across the globe. Line manage UX and design team to create solutions based on UX analytics, customer feedback, and remote testing.

  • Set up and manage the UX Design team, made up of 12 experts and 2 Team Manager with core skills in UX design and research; also visual design, prototyping, and service design
  • Managing the modular design system and best practice UX-UI pattern of the new white-label internet booking engine
  • Created FTI’s first Digital UX Design Language to ensure consistency across products
Team Manager UX
Sep. 2019 – May 2021 (1 year 9 months)
Senior UX / UI Designer
Mar. 2018 – Aug. 2019 (1 year 6 months)

MYTOYS GROUP

UX / UI Designer
Jun 2015 – Mar 2018 (2 years 10 months)

As the Lead UX Designer, I brought user-centric design and business needs together with strategic insights to create solutions, products, and services for the multishop concept of Germany’s leading online retailer of kids’ toys, adult shoes, and furniture.

Project A Ventures

UX / UI Designer
Jan 2012 – Jun 2015 (3 years 6 months)

As the Lead UX Designer, I devised, wire-framed, and validated the design solutions to prepare for the development of successful startups like Wine in Black, Saatchi Online, Contorion, Tirendo, and many others.

Rocket Internet

UX / UI Designer
Oct 2010 – Dec 2011 (1 year 3 months)

Part of UX and UI team to create designs, in close collaboration with the product team and founders, for startups within Rocket Internet’s portfolio.

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My UX Design Approach

This is the process Google uses for all of their products and Stanford teaches in their product design courses. It’s scalable from a few weeks for massive projects to just a few days for designing new features.

  • Understand
    01
    What are the user, what are they needs, what is the context, competitor review, strategy.
  • Diverge
    02
    Envision your ideas, delevop lot of solutions with the team, ideate.
  • Decide
    03
    Choose the best idea by team voting, storyboard the idea(s) together.
  • Prototype
    04
    Build something quick and dirty to show to users, focus on the idea and usability don't make it beautiful.
  • Validate
    05
    Show the prototype to real users outside the company. Learn form the users feedback and what doesn't work.
  • Design
    06
    Design the prototype to the UI with the companies styleguide and handover to the developers.

Tools of choice

Methods and tools i use in my daily work. I always try to incorporate new methods into my work.

Methods

Design Systems, Design Thinking, Agile working, Scribbles, Information Architecture, User Flow, Prototyping, Click Dummy, User Tests, Remote User Tests, Customer / User Journey Maps, Best Practice, UX Audits, Empathy Mapping

Tools

Sketch, Figma, Principle, InVision & Craft, Zeplin, Miro, Mural, Overflow, Balsamiq Mockup, FreeMind, HTML, CSS, Sublime Text, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator

Teamwork

The best teamwork begins as early as the idea phase, since this is where the paths are laid. Its all about the Team that creates excellent ideas and great products.

Teamwork
100%
UX Leadership
100%
UX Strategy & Planning
100%
User Interface Design
100%
Wireframing & Prototyping
100%
UX Audits
100%
Stakeholder Management
95%
Design Thinking
90%
Agile Working
90%
User Flows
90%
Information Architecture
90%

Little bit more about me

It’s very important for me to have beside the daily work a balance with my hobbies.

Basketball

For me, sport is having fun in a team and sharing my experience with younger players. Basketball & Streetball have been part of my life for more than 25 years. Since 1993 I have been a big Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan fan.

Travelling

Travelling is one of the most beautiful experiences. To experience new countries, new cultures, the people, the food is what travelling means to me. Travel changes perspective and perception.

Food

Like travelling, I love to eat. Both can be perfectly combined. As Mark Wiens says in his Travel VLOG “I travel for food” – I feel exactly the same. I also love to cook myself, always trying out new things.

© 2023 René Manikofski – Made with love in Berlin – Germany – Impressum