Anya Nikulina

Sr. User Interaction Designer with extensive experience in production cycle management, who has 10+ years of success in creating and fulfilling effective interfaces for complex enterprise and consumer web applications, and has a proven expertise in human factors, goal -centered design principles, and usability methods.  

Specialties

  • Interaction design, usage patterns and entity relationships, usability requirements analysis, product requirements and specifications
  • Web-based applications, workflow enterprise applications, Social web applications, including Facebook apps
  • Use of experiment-driven design principles for web-based consumer applications. Very comfortable with Agile/Scrum methodology.
  • Very familiar with the concepts of user acquisition and conversion and the  levels of social participation involved in the success of the product ,  viral loops and communication tools.
  • Additional tools used: Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager.

Experience

Product Designer at Kroogi.com

Your-Net-Works (San Francisco, CA)
January 2007 – March 2010

  • Led the initial launch of both Kroogi.com and Kroogi Downloads for Facebook –alternative online music distribution tools.
  • Works with visual designers, development team and QA to coordinate and organize further effort for site optimization and improvement:
    • Develops product specifications and prioritizes them according to the business goals and necessities,
    • Develops interaction models, works with UI designers on look and feel for both products
    • Communicates product needs to the development team, overlooks the production quality and schedule.
  • Responsible for initiating, implementing, and using experiment-driven design approach in the design and development cycle.

User Interface Designer at Pure Digital

Contract position in San Francisco, CA
August 2007 – January 2008

  • Contributed to the development of the design specifications for Flip Video Camera desktop application.
  • Was a lead designer on Flip DVD product – an online video DVD generation and printing application

User Interaction Design Lead at Naviscent

Contract position in San Francisco, CA
February 2007 – August 2007

  • Project:  redesign for the online store of the leading professional software company
  • Project planning and management responsibilities for the assigned projects
  • Responsible for requirements gathering process and all customer interactions
  • Informational and User Interaction design for assigned project, using goal-centered and rapid iteration approach
  • Developed User Interaction specifications
  • Oversaw and coordinated prototype creation and visual design for the projects

Usability Analyst at Lawson Software

Full-time position in San Francisco, CA
2004 – 2007

  • Full responsibility for all User Experience design activities for the products developed by Mobile Applications group. Main usability contact for Business Analysts, Product Managers, and development team.
  • Planned and conducted product design sessions, delivered User Interaction specifications, created flowcharts, low and high fidelity prototypes.
  • Leaded usability requirements gathering activities. Introduced Goal-Centered© design methodology during design phase for Lawson Point of Use product. Use of that approach resulted in improved communication with customers and members of internal teams by shifting the focus to the users, their processes, and needs.

Lead User Interaction Designer at Remend

Full-time position in San Francisco, CA
2001 – 2004 

  • Full responsibility for the design of the user interfaces, including requirement analysis and task definition, informational flow and functionality design, low and high fidelity prototyping, icon design.
  • Contributed to creation of the functional documentation for the development team.

UI Designer at Citadon

Full-time position in San Francisco, CA
1999 – 2001 

  • Conversion of functional requirements into conceptual prototypes.
  • Participation in designing and conducting usability studies.

Education:

1997 – 1999
San Francisco State University, College of Extended Learning, Certificate in Internet Technology and Design

1993 – 1997 
Urals State University, Department of Art History and Culturology (Yekaterinburg, Russia) Bachelors Degree in History of Art