CV
Born in Tartu, Estonia 11.11.1977 Living in Tartu, Estonia, EU +372 55 629 652 vildikas@gmail.com
Skills
UX design
My main everyday skill. I design mostly websites and web-based apps. 10+ years of experience, and emphasis on usability and design systems makes me a quite a competent designer. Adding trendy visual design level is secondary in my thinking: make the thing work and usable at first, and then "beautify", if needed! Usually it is needed, though ;) My main tool is Figma, but have been trying out Framer, Plasmic, Pinegrow web-builders to get closer to the final outcome.
UX research
I have the overview of different methods and know when and what to use. I have conducted many analytics researches (Google Analytics, Hotjar) and a few small-scale moderated usability tests. Also, interviews with business owners about their needs, pain ponts etc. are quite common.
Branding
I have created dozens of logos accompanied by a simple styleguide. There have been also a few chances to work on bigger branding systems – a comprehensive visual system fixed in a brand guide book including applications for different mediums.
Graphic design
Anything for print and digital media. Let's make things look great! Includes short appearances in illustration, package design and motion graphics episodes.
Book design
And now, something completely different. Books are great! Occasionally, I design culture-related books to balance the ephemeral and shortlasting feeling of digital design. Releasing my creative side, fine-tuning typogaphy and dealing with real materials offers a nice change to the rather quick-paced commercial-driven digital web-design. By the way, there's usability and UX in the book-design also – the book as such is very user-centered object, and readers should access the content without friction.
Do I write code?
On a professional level, "no". But I know what are (or that there are) HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Vue, Bootstrap, Tailwind, CMS, static sites, Git, Node, PHP, databases, compiling etc. And I have handcoded exactly one static website myself – just to learn and get a glimpse of the dev side. Found out that endless bug-hunting and solving browser-compatibility issues is not for me.
