Ivan Vasilev

2021 →

Product designer & founder at Presentum. Built a peer-to-peer platform that helps designers prepare for job interviews and improve their careers.

London
2018-20

Product design director at Scentbird (YC alumni). Launched a mobile app and redesigned a fragrance recommender system to improve retention.

New York
2012-18

Design director at Alfa-bank. In six years, I have built one of the top-5 most renowned design departments in Russian Big Tech. We were among the first corporations to open-source and implement a design system on an industrial scale.

Moscow

Resume

Presentum
Since 2021
London, England
presentum.io
Peer-to-peer reviews platform
Product designer, founder

I have built a peer-to-peer platform that helps product designers practice past work presentations with peers and improve their careers.

  • Full cycle product development: research, prototypinig and MVPs, testing monetization strategies and shipping the first version of a product.
  • Conducted over 80 user interviews and launched 3 MVPs to shape the product to its current form
  • In the first six months, over 500 designers used the platform to improve their careers and practice portfolio presentations
  • Built the product from the ground up (Python/Django/DRF and Javascript/Next/React)
Scentbird
2018-2020
New York, USA
scentbird.com
YC-backed fragrance subscription startup with over 300K subscribers
Director of digital product design
  • Delivered a new product recommendations system, resulting in a 50% increase in user engagement and improved lifetime value
  • Redesigned the information architecture, reducing shipping issues by 37% and improving the success rate of core user stories by 20%
  • Gathered data and improved machine learning models to optimize the product recommendations
  • Oversaw the full life cycle of the native mobile app, including launching on the app store and improving UX compared to the website
  • Managed the Retention product team, including transitioning the team to a Scrum methodology and improving predictable feature shipping
The Russian Design Cup
2017-2018
Moscow, Russia
An open annual competition for experienced and aspiring designers organized by Mail.Ru Group.
Jury member

The Russian Design Cup contest attracted 1467 participants in 2017. We provided feedback and rated hundreds of submitted works in four rounds along with four other distinguished design managers.

Alfa-bank
2012-2018
Moscow, Russia
alfabank.ru
15M+ retail and 400K+ corporate customers
Head of design
  • Built and managed a team of 30+ product designers, recognized as one of the top 5 design teams in Russia
  • Led the redesign of Alfa-Bank's online and mobile banking app
  • Developed and open-sourced an industrial-grade design system, the first of its kind in the Russian fintech community
  • Optimized hiring and onboarding processes, reducing time to hire from 30 to 8 days

Events

Scientific hiring
April 21, 2022
Online from London, England
HeyGrowth Summit 2022

Online conference about product growth and design. I shared findings from the research about hiring product designers at a scale. Fun fact: this was the most upvoted talk in the product design section.

Preparing for a product design interview
November 8, 2020
Online from London, England
Design Line Boost—2

900+ online attendees. Educational event held by Design Line, Sergei Krasotin and Alexander Kovalsky.

Digital Product Design: Role, Goal, Method
April 28, 2018
Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Design Prosmotr: Season 10
Ivan Vasilev at Design Prosmotr: Season 10

~500 attendees. One of the most popular regular design conferences in Russia.

Digital Product Design: Role, Goal, Method
March 31, 2018
Novosibirsk, Russia
Codefest 2018
Ivan Vasilev at Codefest 2018

2042 attendees. The biggest tech conference in Siberia, Russia.

Digital Product Design: Role, Goal, Method
March 24, 2018
Perm, Russia
Design Weekend Perm 2018
Ivan Vasilev at Design Weekend Perm 2018

~300 attendees. Fundraising, lecture on product design.

Designer 2022
October 20, 2017
Sochi, Russia
The 19th World Festival of Youth And Students

20 000 people from 180 countries. This is an international festival with top speakers. I prepared a special speech on the future of the design profession (hence 2022).

Common Mistakes in Digital Product Design
September 30, 2017
Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia
Design Weekend NN 2017

~1500 attendees. Fundraising for an event and a lecture on digital product design.

Design Systems
September 27, 2017
Moscow, Russia
UX-Sreda

~120 attendees. The regular event hosted by Mail.Ru, usually focused on one specific design topic (this one was on Design Systems).

Design Systems
June 3, 2017
Moscow, Russia
Dribbble Meet-Up 2017
Ivan Vasilev at Dribbble Meet-Up 2017

The Moscow chapter of Dribbble meetup took place for the 6th time in June 2017. The event is hosted in the headquarters of Mail.Ru, one of the top 5 internet companies in Russia, and brings together the Russian Design community. 1000+ attendees and 10000 online viewers.

Design Team and 10 Product Design Principles
May 27, 2017
Kazan, Russia
Design Weekend Kazan 2017

~1000+ attendees. Fundraising, lecture on product design.

Habrahabr Open Studio
May 12, 2017
Skolkovo, Russia
RIT++
Ivan Vasilev at RIT++

One of the biggest tech conferences in Russia, accompanied by a special online feed organized by Habr, the biggest tech community in Russia. Habr invited me for an interview and as a moderator. At the peak moment, there were a whopping 10000 online viewers.

Design Team and 10 Product Design Principles
April 22, 2017
Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia
Strelka Lektorij
Ivan Vasilev at Strelka Lektorij
Design Team and 10 Product Design Principles
April 1, 2017
Novosibirsk, Russia
Codefest 2017
Ivan Vasilev at Codefest 2017

1782 attendees. The biggest tech conference in Siberia, Russia

German culture in Saint Petersburg
October 15, 1997
Hamburg, Germany
Kunsthalle
Ivan Vasilev at Kunsthalle

This is my first public speech. My first speech in English and abroad. The story behind this picture: I used to study the History of Arts in St. Petersburg State Hermitage. I took part in a student exchange program between the Hermitage and Kunsthalle (Hamburg). As a part of this program, a dozen selected students who participated in scientific work were invited to talk about it in Germany. Luckily, someone (I believe, Nikita Kanukov) took a picture of me talking in public in 1997.

Contacts

Ivan Vasilev, rockbee@rockbee.com

Book a call

Current location: London, UK

Social media

Helping designers improve their careers

I have created a peer-to-peer review platform where designers prepare for job interviews.

Presentum connects you to peers, sends calendar invitations, automates video recording, and gives you the power to write feedback as if you were a hiring manager. It has a guide on hiring processes, tools to describe projects for portfolio and presentation for job interviews, and booking peers to practice.

Hundreds of designers have participated since 2022.

Visit Presentum.

Scientific hiring

How 16 hiring managers reviewed 243 designer resumes to choose whom to invite for a job interview.

I gathered the applications of 243 real designers actively looking for a job and enlisted the help of 16 hiring managers from product companies who agreed to rate the applications as suitable for an interview. The results showed that only 3% of applications received unanimous approval from all hiring managers, while just 8% were most likely to receive an invite for an interview. The study also found that it takes less than one minute for a hiring manager to decide about an application and portfolio. The most accurate hiring manager had an accuracy rate of 84%, while the least accurate had a rate of 62%.

  • Research
  • Product design
  • Data analysis
  • Machine learning
Read more