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About me

With 20+ years experience in both UX/UI design and front-end development, I bring a unique blend of visual craft and technical skill to a team. I have experience with B2B SaaS, heavy back-office projects, consumer facing websites and mobile apps, and can own end-to-end product design.

Research

I believe a deep understanding of the users and their needs we aim to solve, is absolutely crucial for the success of any digital product. Anyone who has ever experienced the painful and costly results of a process based heavily on assumptions and “expert knowledge”, resulting in poor user adoption, usability and market-fit, knows why these steps matter so much.

I use design frameworks such as User-centered Design and Design Thinking, to mitigate this risk, and make sure everyone is working on and solving the right problems, while balancing user needs and business requirements.

As a designer, I feel responsible for every detail of a products life-cycle, from usability, accessibility, interactions and performance, to composition, layout and typography.

I use various methods and tools to move low-fidelity designs to the final UI, depending on the complexity of the project, but always strive to design effective, easy-to-use and high-quality products.

UX & UI design

As a designer, I feel responsible for every detail of a products life-cycle, from usability, accessibility, interactions and performance, to composition, layout and typography.

I use various methods and tools to move low-fidelity designs to the final UI, depending on the complexity of the project, but always strive to design effective, easy-to-use and high-quality products.

When designing, I constantly try to incorporate my knowledge about front-end development, and try to minimize the challenges the developers will face when implementing the design. I work closely with developers throughout the process, to further understand possibilities and limitations and make sure designs are feasible, both from a front- and back-end perspective.

Hand-over

I have extensive experience delivering design hand-over to developers, either as specs directly in the design files, or as comprehensive tasks or user-stories, sharing context about user journeys, design intention.

Collaboration

I am a team player by heart and love working with talented colleagues, who push me to perform my best. I take great pride in what I do and make an effort to influence and inspire colleagues and people around me. Due to my contractor background and my time in start-ups, I feel comfortable covering various roles, responsibility areas and executing autonomously with little oversight.

Tool box

  • Figma, Tokens Studio - Admittedly, I do most of my work in Figma. but I have been around long enough to recognize that every tool, no matter how much we love it (Photoshop, Flash, Affinity Designer, Sketch, Abstract, XD, etc.), has an expiry date.
  • Notion, Google Docs, Things - structuring things, checklists
  • Visual Studio Code - for HTML, CSS and JS
  • Github, DevOps, BitBucket
  • Google slides, Keynote
  • Slack, Discord, Teams

Gotchas

  • Experience planning and building professional scale design systems, including design token setup as a shared single-source of truth, between designers and devs.
  • Experience designing for web accessibility compliance (WCAG 2.1).

Work

  1. Design Lead - Zublime

    Jan 2023 → April 2024

    Responsibilities

    • Update and improve UX/UI for existing partner platform.
    • Streamline existing design system and systematize color palettes, spacing, typography and components.
    • Introduce design token system in Token Studio to sync design decisions between Figma and front-end apps.
    • Extensive UX work for new AI sales assistant including navigation principles
    • Rebrand, design and build new company website

  2. Design System Contractor - Coloplast

    February 2022 → July 2023

    Responsibilities

    • partake in defining the initial vision and setting direction for the project
    • identifying common UI components and elements across all Coloplast's sites
    • setting up the entire design system architecture in Figma and building all UI components in Figma
    • defining and setting up the design token system in Token Studio to sync design decisions with the front-end
    • defining and setting up principles and systems for color theming, typography, spacing, elevation etc.
    • documentation for components usage, technical specification and general design system onboarding
    • gathering feedback from UX/UI designers and stakeholders

  3. Freelance Product Designer - Semler

    June 2020 → February 2022

    Primary responsibilities:

    • introduce Figma and implement a design system- and component-based approach into the existing design/development cycle
    • build design systems for 6 VAG car brands and Semler to ensure design consistency with existing projects and the brands corporate identities
    • all new UX/UI design projects across all brands

    Some of the projects I designed:

    • ŠKODA used cars
    • Private leasing sites for Audi, Volkswagen, SEAT, ŠKODA
    • Service- & repair plans for Audi, Volkswagen, SEAT, ŠKODA
    • Volkswagen GO site - re-designing the new long term rental pages
    • ŠKODA partner map V2 - rethinking the mobile experience and re-implementing the front-end
    • Volkswagen accessories - redesigning existing accessory page
    • ŠKODA finance calculator
    • SEAT Hola - long term rental
    • ŠKODA All Inclusive site
    • Porsche Taycan prebooking campaign
    • ŠKODA accessories - redesigning existing accessory page

  4. Senior Product Designer - Connected Cars

    Jan 2021 → March 2020

    Connected Cars hired me to take ownership of everything design (except their mobile applications) and redesign their POC of a car workshop product, to a full-fledged production grade web application.

    I worked as the lead designer on the following projects:

    • planning and designing Connected Cars Workshop
    • planning and designing Connected Cars Fleet
    • identifying existing end-user workflows through interviews, and iterating over UI solutions with the end-users
    • coming up with an overall design style and vibe for Connected Cars visual identity
    • writing detailed technical hand-over specifications for the front-end developers to ensure consistency between the design prototypes and the final product
    • designing and implementing Connected Cars public website including illustrations (see frontpage for examples )
    • doing basic QA including bug-reporting for features before and after going live

  5. Partner & investor - Windward project

    Jan 2020 → Now

    For big parts of 2021 I lived and worked on a tiny island called Mayreau in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with my friend and business partner Kamran, on an eco-resort project called Windward Project.

    In short (which is not possible), we have taken the first steps of creating a totally off-grid eco-resort using solar power, desalination for drinking water, eco-friendly custom-made prefab bungalows, community programs and a lot more!

Work-life balance

I am a firm believer in letting people choose where they are most productive - to some extent even when they work. I don’t fit into many of societies boxes, and I don’t expect everyone else to do so either. When possible, I prefer a hybrid work model, combining remote and on-site work. I think getting together physically as a team is super important, but I also know how busy people are, especially those with kids, and I prefer a happy well-balanced team, over 5 day forced office attendance.

During the past 12 years I have travelled extensively and had the privilege of living in multiple countries and cities (San Francisco Bay Area, Chiang Mai and St. Vincent), while working remotely for my Danish clients. I learned valuable lessons about remote work, before it became more or less mandatory for everyone during the pandemic in 2020, and has made me confident working from wherever I am, knowing I can keep my productivity and motivation high for long periods of time.

Besides being a design nerd, I’m a devoted work-out nut, hiker, adventure seeker, dedicated kite-surfer, enjoy listening to audiobooks, and value the simple pleasures of life.

Clients

Languages

Born and raised in Denmark, my native tongue is Danish, but I have lived in the Bay Area and speak and write English fluently - with a Californian accent - take it or leave it 😬

Growing up surrounded with our Scandinavian and German neighbors, I understand most Swedish and Norwegian and some German. Occationally I attempt to improve my Spanish.

Agents

Contact

Daniel Aakjær Sørensen
Plantevej 23, 4. th.
2870 Dyssegård
E-mail: test
Mobile: +45 25 33 75 48

Get in touch

Whether you have ideas for a project or just feedback, feel free to send me an e-mail.