Currently leading design at Ruby Labs · ZenDocs

Vision-led.Data-backed.

I'm Luka, a Product Design Lead with 8+ years across gaming, AI, healthcare, edtech and SaaS. I own design direction and sign-off across every product surface, govern the design system, and ground each major decision in the numbers.

Selected work Résumé (PDF)

Shipped outcomes, sourced in the case studies

~16%net revenue lift · Nordeus ~40%faster time-to-insight · Smile AI 14 surfacesone design system · ZenDocs 1 to 5design team scaled · ELIAS 4 ~35%less front-end rework · Aligni 2 daysfaster onboarding · LearnUpon ~30%enrollment lift · LearnUpon +12%conversion lift · Seven Bridges/Velsera ~16%net revenue lift · Nordeus ~40%faster time-to-insight · Smile AI 14 surfacesone design system · ZenDocs 1 to 5design team scaled · ELIAS 4 ~35%less front-end rework · Aligni 2 daysfaster onboarding · LearnUpon ~30%enrollment lift · LearnUpon +12%conversion lift · Seven Bridges/Velsera

Experience

Roles, and what changed because of them.

The person behind the numbers.

I'm Luka, based in Novi Sad. I run design the way these case studies read: data before pixels, systems before screens, and an honest retrospective after every ship. As a lead I direct a team of two UX engineers who build my design work in code, hold direction and sign-off across every surface, keep the design system governed, and make the approved decision the cheapest one for everyone else to reproduce.

A note on the dates below: between 2023 and 2025 I ran parallel contract engagements alongside my anchor full-time roles, so some ranges overlap. Every role is labeled with its type.

Ruby Labs · ZenDocs

UX / Design Lead

Full-timeJul 2026 - PresentAI & SaaS

Team leadership Design direction & sign-off AI design system AI product funnels

Lead design across all ZenDocs surfaces and a team of two UX engineers who build my design work in code; I direct their design output and hold sign-off.
Driving the full product redesign: 14 surfaces on one codified system, with the editor and dashboard architected to absorb future features without rework.
Designing the UX funnels for the AI feature line: Transcriber, AI Humanizer, PDF Translator, Summarizer, Ask AI, and the roadmap behind them, on one shared archetype.
Built and manage the design-system-as-AI-skill infrastructure used org-wide, grounded in a data-before-pixels practice on Mixpanel funnels and attribution.

2UX engineers, directed and signed off Org-wideDesign system as an AI skill

Read the AI-skill case study Read the ZenDocs case study

Nordeus

Senior UX Designer, Growth & Monetization

Full-timeSep 2024 - Jun 2026Gaming

Monetization A/B experimentation Pricing psychology ARPU

Designed end-to-end monetization surfaces contributing to a ~16% net revenue lift.
Led A/B experimentation on monetization touchpoints, improving conversion.
Applied pricing psychology to reduce purchase friction and support higher ARPU.

~16%Net revenue lift ↑ ARPULower purchase friction

Read the Bundesliga Gallery case study

Smile AI

Senior Product Designer

ContractNov 2023 - Jun 2025AI

Pharma dashboards Strategic tools Competitor benchmarking

Designing Pharma E-Commerce Dashboards: Translating massive sets of European online pharmacy market data into intuitive, scannable dashboards so pharmaceutical executives can easily track KPIs like online revenue, product visibility, and market growth.
Building Interactive Strategic Tools: Crafting frictionless user flows for interactive business case tools, such as the Digital Shelf Opportunity Scanner and Executive ROI Builder, allowing users to input data and instantly receive actionable strategies and financial models.
Creating Advanced Competitor Benchmarking Workflows: Designing complex analytical interfaces that allow brands to compare their digital performance against competitors in real time, requiring deep information architecture to manage varying metrics across different sales channels like Amazon and direct e-pharmacies.

~40%Faster time-to-insight ~20%Feature adoption

LearnUpon

Senior Product Designer

ContractNov 2023 - Mar 2024Edtech

Learning paths Engagement surfaces Completion

Designed a unified course and learning-path page, lifting course completion ~15%.
Designed engagement surfaces that lifted enrolment ~30%.

~15%Course completion ~30%Enrolment

Read the learning paths case study

Seven Bridges/Velsera

Senior Product Designer

Full-timeMar 2022 - Nov 2023Biotech & healthcare

Bioinformatics Lab dashboards Cloud platforms Clinical UX

Architecting Bioinformatic Workflows: Designing clinical-grade user interfaces that translate raw genomic datasets, complex algorithms, and cloud computing infrastructure into accessible, end-to-end workflows for healthcare researchers and lab personnel.
Designing Lab Intelligence Dashboards: Creating rich data visualization experiences, such as the FastFinder platform, that display real-time lab insights, sample flow orchestration, and QC metrics to streamline clinical diagnostics and reduce turnaround times.
Unifying Cloud Collaboration Ecosystems: Building modular, secure, and compliant cloud-based environments that connect diverse scientific teams, enabling seamless data sharing and collaborative research to accelerate new treatments and biomarker discovery.

Clinical-gradeWorkflow UX CloudCollaboration ecosystems

Read the Seven Bridges case study

Elias Software

Senior Product Designer

ContractApr 2021 - Mar 2022Audio · Pro tools

Node editor IA & core flows Design system Deep research

Owned end-to-end product design for ELIAS 4, a node-based, real-time adaptive audio engine for games.
Grounded the product in deep research; defined the IA and core flows, and established the design system.
Work that secured funding and scaled to a dedicated 5-person on-site design team.

FundingSecured on the design work 1 to 5Design team scaled

Read the ELIAS 4 case study

Aligni

Product Designer

ContractFeb 2020 - Apr 2021Manufacturing · PLM / MRP

Design system Stakeholder collaboration Complex workflow UX User testing

Built the platform's first formal design system: 50+ reusable primitives, documented tokens, and a five-phase design-to-development workflow.
Ran daily design sessions with the principal stakeholder, translating deep PLM and MRP domain expertise into flows for the platform's most complex user needs.
Took new features from brainstorm to ship, validating each with user testing; front-end rework dropped ~35% once components replaced one-off builds.

50+Reusable primitives ~35%Less front-end rework

Read the Aligni case study

Superawesome

Product Designer, Design Systems

Full-time2018 - Feb 2020Distributed team

Design systems Design tokens Coded components Engineering partnership

Built foundational design systems (100+ components) across concurrent studio projects alongside active feature design.
Defined token architecture and guidelines, partnering with engineering to ship reusable coded components.
Cut design-to-development handoff time by ~25% across distributed teams by optimizing delivery workflows.

100+Core components ~25%Faster handoff

How I work

Three things I bring to a design org.

Not a process deck, just the operating habits behind the outcomes above.

Strategic Impact & Growth

Every major initiative starts by mapping user behavior directly to business outcomes. I partner with product leadership to define hypotheses, using funnel analysis and attribution data to ensure design decisions drive measurable impact. Design doesn't just serve the user; it drives the business forward.

Product Strategy · Growth & Retention · Hypothesis-driven · Business Impact

Scalable Design Operations

I build design architecture that accelerates product development. By establishing clear operational workflows and an actively owned single source of truth, I remove friction between design and engineering. Handoff stops being a negotiation, enabling cross-functional teams to scale complex UI ecosystems coherently.

DesignOps · System Architecture · Engineering Alignment · Quality Enablement

Next-Gen Design Infrastructure

I treat design systems as living, generative tools rather than static libraries. By encoding our visual language into an AI skill deployed org-wide, I shifted our process from manual documentation to high-leverage execution. This empowers teams to generate compliant assets instantly, creating infrastructure that compounds in value.

AI Tooling · Org-wide Enablement · Generative Workflows · Future-proof Craft

Capabilities

Skills & tools.

Eight years of range, pointed at lead-level responsibility.

Skills

Design Direction & Sign-off
Design System Governance
Design Ops & Handoff
Mentoring
Cross-functional Alignment
Decision Frameworks
Data-Dense Workflow UX
AI-Augmented Design
Growth & Monetization

Tools

Figma
AI Tools
Adobe Suite
Miro
Mixpanel

Let's talk about the work.

Open to design leadership conversations: direction, systems, and growth surfaces that have to move a number.

lukadesuuu@gmail.com Download résumé

www.lukasolaja.com lukadesuuu@gmail.com

This site is its own case study: designed and built in code with AI tooling, directed end to end, on the same design system I govern. No frameworks, no trackers, fully local. Press ⌘K to ask it anything.

Selected work

Case studies, and the numbers behind them.

Featured case study

Top Eleven × Bundesliga: a collectible gallery that lifted player LTV

A digital sticker album that turned an IP partnership into a long-tail meta-game for managers worldwide. Earn-first economy, album-first mental model, shipped stable to 100% of devices on day one.

↑ ARPU +DAU on Gallery tab 18 clubs Nordeus

Read the case study

Bundesliga Gallery lobby screen from Top Eleven

ZenDocs homepage with the uploader as hero

Docs · SaaS · Teardown to redesign

ZenDocs: from full-funnel teardown to a 14-surface redesign on one system

Read the case study

Audio · Pro tools · Game middleware

ELIAS 4: designing a node-based adaptive audio engine that composers can actually use

Read the case study

Aligni Inventory Outlook forecast timeline

Manufacturing · PLM / MRP

Aligni: right-sizing PLM and MRP for teams too big for spreadsheets, too small for ERP

Read the case study

Learning platform path-first home surface

Edtech · B2B SaaS · NDA

Make a course catalog feel like a path: milestone-based learning that lifted completion

Read the case study

Diagram of the Seven Bridges platform architecture

Genomics · Clinical SaaS · NDA

Seven Bridges: designing for petabytes, clinical-grade interfaces on genomic data

Read the case study

ZenDocs home generated on the encoded design system

Design infrastructure · AI

The design system that ships itself: one encoded source of truth for people and AI tooling

Read the case study