I'm a product designer who looks at the whole system before the single screen. I'd rather reuse a pattern that already works than add a new one, and when I do add one, I document it so the next person can build on it.
What drives me is the complex problem. I figure out how something should work first, and the polish follows.
Before I design something new, I look at what already exists and ask why it was built that way. If nothing fits, I make a new pattern, make it reusable and write it down. Consistent patterns are a big part of what makes a product feel clean and easy to understand.
See the design system I built from scratchI often work across more than one team, so I make time to get to know the people on each. When they trust you, the hard conversations get easier and the work gets better. On the Jira integration I joined a team that had worked without a designer for a long time and was under pressure to ship. I earned their trust by showing up and adapting fast, without backing down when we disagreed.
Read the Jira storyI like dreaming big, then cutting the idea down to what the first version really needs. Building the whole thing before customers ask for it is how products get bloated. Most of my pushback is about this, or about interactions that would confuse people.
The research that stopped a buildI never wanted to be a developer, so AI is a bit of a dream for me. It builds, I get to think about everything else, and I still understand what's happening underneath. Everything it does, I direct.
My first mockups are vibe-coded, so I can see an idea or start the team conversation the same day. Then I polish the main screen in Figma, and developers can take the interactions straight from the coded version.
At the start of a project I give AI as much context as I can. When something technical comes up later, it explains it in terms of our project.
It reads documentation and Confluence with me, so I know what to dive into first.
The notes I publish and the messages I send. AI can draft, but I always rewrite and clean up.
In my free time I build my own tools with AI. Each one taught me something I bring back to work.
A gallery for my pottery with Google login, user and photo management, hosted on Firebase. It taught me product discipline: you have to decide exactly what you need and how it should work, or it blows up. It also showed me why product managers and designers clash so often. Product thinking and UX thinking pull in different directions.
Blog post comingI'm a food nerd with too many ingredients in my pantry. This app helps me learn new recipes from what I already have, without hours of research. Still a work in progress, and the project that taught me most about deciding what a product should even be.
Blog post comingPulls data in from APIs, MCP and imported reports, parses it and turns it into charts. A crash course in data input and visualisation.
Blog post comingMy favourite project so far. A local photo library, backups, shared folders, deduplication, Jellyfin for media and Paperless for documents, all running in Docker.
Blog post coming"I really value Anja's collaboration and approach towards the engineers in the team. She creates a very positive environment and is close to the engineers in every initiative they are working on."
"What stands out most is how she balances giving and asking for input. This creates an open, constructive working dynamic that improves the quality of the work."
"The precision of your designs is even more helpful now that we can point AI to it, and we have a high confidence level in the generated styling."
I found UX half by accident and half on purpose. I'm very glad I did.
I wanted to be a photo retoucher, so I taught myself Photoshop. I was also the kid who tried every program on the computer and figured out how to make it do things faster.
I took up photography and spent hours editing in Lightroom. Then I got my first Mac and learned how macOS differed from Windows. Once I wanted to tinker more, I put Windows on it too, which taught me about partitions, file systems, drivers and how all the pieces fit together.
I studied multimedia production at IAM, shot concerts and music videos, and learned to run a camera on live shows and edit video.
Camera work on Slovenia's biggest TV station, on shows like MasterChef Slovenia and Slovenia's Got Talent. Watching a live show run like clockwork was fascinating. But I wanted more ownership and real problems to solve.
I taught myself graphic design and got my first design job: UI and After Effects animations for casino games, the screens above the machines and trade fair stands. Reading about design online, I found UX.
My first UX job, on ERP software, both new products and a big legacy one. These were exactly the problems I wanted to work on.
Product designer. Integrations with tools like Jira and Signavio, dashboards, customer research and everyday UI. I was also one of the Design System Champions.
Food is my longest obsession. I cook from cuisines all over the world, which is also half the reason I travel. I've been to almost every continent, with a soft spot for Southeast Asia and Mexico, and the camera always comes with me.
Also: plants, very slow Japanese, and two cats who supervise everything.
Since January, there's pottery. I make bowls because I eat a lot of noodles, and tall glasses because I'm a drinks goblin and refilling is a chore. It's a lot like design: you need the craft to know how clay, glazes and firing behave, and the eye to make the result look good.
I've always been a crafty person, and this is the one thing that reliably gets me into flow. The people I've met there are a big part of why I keep going back, and it's become one of my favourite times of the week.
Hiring for a product design role, or working on a tricky B2B problem? Email is the fastest way to reach me.