Michael Dorka

Experience

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  Focus

  Jan 1998 - Jan 1998

  Intern

  I started my professional design career as intern in a small and lost advertising agency. Hopefully after three months I left for the "real McCoy".

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  Cayenne Creative

  Jan 1998 - Jan 2000

  Junior Art Director

  As intern and then Junior Art Director I accompanied various clients and pitches.

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  DDB

  Jan 2000 - Jan 2001

  Art Director

  Working on various clients designing print and tv advertising campaigns

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  McCann Worldgroup

  Jan 2001 - Jan 2002

  Art Director

  Responsible Art Director for various international Clientes

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  Vodafone

  Jan 2005 - Jan 2007

  Information Architect

  I worked as a contractor at Vodafone, Duesseldorf in Germany. As Interface Designer I was in charge of Information architecture and UIs for the Vodafone symbian apps.

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  Deutsche Telekom Digital Labs

  Jan 2007 - Mar 2008

  User Experience Research and Design lead

  I worked as an external consultant at Deutsche Telekom Digital Labs (T-LABS), Berlin in Germany. I worked on two different projects: The User Research applying cultural probes and user interviews, Information architecture and User Interfaces for the creation of the cordless landline phone Sinus A201 -which won a IF design award in 2010- in cooperation with D3 design studio. Besides the award the phone was mentioned massively in the german press because of its universal design approach.Within the mentioned time period I analyzed and investigated the user experience of the webstores of t-mobile in the Czech republic, Ukraine and Poland. The gained insights resulted in an significant improvement of sales on the websites Show less

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  R 133

  Mar 2008 - Apr 2009

  Co-founder, User Experience Research and Design

  right after graduating from the University of Technology, Arts, Sciences Cologne I co-founded the start-up R133. We received a scholarship from the Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology in Germany for the creation of the business plan for our venture of creating a RFID payment app. As co-founder I was in charge of benchmark analysis, discovery and evaluation of market readiness and user experience design for the app. For research reasons we left for Tokyo, Japan where we investigated existing technologies and use cases. Also we met with engineers from technology companies as Louvre DNP Museums Lab to exchange experiences in the development of RFID based applications. Show less

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  Mobile Zynco

  Apr 2009 - Feb 2011

  Co-founder, User Experience Research and Design

  Co-Founder and Associate, Mobile Zynco, mobile marketing Mexico City, Mexico, 2009. Michael Dorka is co-founder associate and managing director of Mobile Zynco in Mexico. Mobile Zynco is dedicated to consulting and implementations of mobile marketing services and specialised in mobile phone services.

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  Fnbox

  Apr 2010 - Jul 2010

  User Experience Research and Design Consultant

  The most outstanding projects were my analytical work at FN box on the social networking platform “Sonico” in which I analyzed the platform on aspects of usability and accessibility. “[...] According to Sonico's CEO, Rodrigo Teijeiro, Sonico "managed to offer a useful, safe and fun social network, with real users and a regional scope" (Latin America). He assures that usability is the key of their success.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonico.com

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  Ministerio del Interior

  Jan 2012 - Nov 2015

  User Research and Design lead

  I worked as a contractor for the Ministry of the Interior, Argentina offering my services as Senior UX Design Lead and Senior User Research lead for the project “SUBE”. SUBE is a service based on a prepaid card that allows users to use it to travel on buses, trains, subways, metro buses, trolleybuses and river transport in the province of Buenos Aires. I was in charge of analyzing User Interfaces and User Flows ensuring the best user experience.

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  Despegar.com

  Jan 2015 - Apr 2018

  User Research lead

  I created and led the User Research team User Research Lead at despegar, Buenos Aires. Despegar.com is LATAM’s most important Online Travel Agency. In my daily work I was coordinating the user research backlog with the head of UX and the design lead. Through the use of customer journey maps, benchmark analysis and the use of prototypes during unmoderated user tests I was able to identify unclear circumstances of high user drop rates during the checkouts. Based on Jacob Nielsen’s heuristic checklist we created an extension which allowed even junior designers to examine proper designs under usability aspects. Since I was the one of the first official Design Sprint Master in Argentina certified by Google I was facilitating various design sprints and workshops integrating diverse product teams of the company. The objective was to strengthen teamwork within multi-functional teams through design thinking methods such as "Lightning Talks" and “How Might We” among others. Show less

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  OLX Group

  Mar 2018 - Mar 2019

  Head of User Experience Research and Design

  I was the Head of UX at OLX in Argentina. OLX Group is an online marketplace headquartered in Amsterdam. Out of Argentina I managed an existing team of UX designers and User Researchers in Argentina and India reporting to the CPO. During my time at the company I was responsible for the global product design adoption of a new brand design created by the London based brand agency “design studio”. Being aware of the use of colors, shapes, iconography and typography in the different cultural contexts of the diverse global markets we were successfully launching the new OLX app and websites for all different markets. This design is still in use. Besides the work of the brand adoption I was responsible for the team's work of iterating various app features as a modification of the search input, sorting and filtering result sets. We used customer journey maps and corresponding personas to review current major use cases for searching and offering products on the marketplace app. I left the company before the UX department moved from Argentina to Portugal. Show less

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  Ank

  Mar 2019 - Nov 2020

  Head of UX

  I founded and led the UX design and User Research team as Head of UX at ank, a digital wallet app used in Argentina. During my time at and I reported to the CEO. During a UX team building phase I was dedicated to studying benchmark applications from national and international competitors. Also the CTO and I started from scratch on building processes which allow developers and designers to synchronize with the support of a product team. Once user journeys and use cases were defined I created hundreds of wireframes which we used as a base for discussions with product owners, architects, developer leads and designers to ensure to roll-out the best possible MVP features for our upcoming users in a short time. Regularly we ran moderated user tests to see user reactions on high fidelity prototypes we built first in Adobe XD and then later in Figma. I shared and then presented the insights with internal stakeholders and external investors. Based on our alignments we created a product roadmap. In the meantime I accompanied an external design agency in the brand building and an external marketing agency in the studies of focus groups which all lead to a successful product launch. Show less

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  Lynk.app

  Nov 2020 - Oct 2023

  Senior User Research Lead

  I worked as senior user research lead based on a contract with TFOB on their product called lynk.app. I reported to the head of UX. Lynk is Jamaica’s fastest growing digital wallet. I was responsible for creating and mentoring qualitative- and quantitative research processes within the design team. Once established I was in charge of evangelizing research within the organization. Based on the communication of powerful user research insights to various Product managers, growth managers and business decision makers. I introduced and evangelized the use of the OKR methodology which allowed to align the work of the design and research team with the rest of the company and to track design and research efforts. Last but not least I also created the product innovation process through the use of design sprints. Based on my experience in previous UX design and user research leadership roles I supported the design director in the creation of the design and user research career plan. Show less

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  MDDCS LLC

  Oct 2023 - now

  Contractor User Research, UX Research, UX Design, Product Design

  I am working as a consultant and contractor on senior UX Designer and senior User Researcher roles. Based on my experience and skills I am working hands-on design and research. When needed I am analyzing existing or missing design and user research processes, providing recommendations based on best practices and experience. Mentoring designers and researchers to ensure highest quality of product design and efficiency in the use of research insights. Using OKRs within lean agile processes I help to align the design team to the company's objectives. By defining and using metrics the design output is measured and tracked. Last but not least also ensuring communication of processes and progress between team members and stakeholders Show less