Alla Hrinina
Lead Product Designer
Strategic design that drives growth.
Selected work
[2025 -2026]
Order the POS-terminal
Redesigning the onboarding experience.
Alla Hrinina
Lead Product Designer
Interim Design Leadership
Full time
Based in United Kingdom
Designing experiences
that solve real problems.
01
How do you approach leading a design chapter and raising design standards?
I build design organisations from the ground up — not just hiring people, but creating the infrastructure that makes great work repeatable. At Raiffeisen Bank Ukraine, I scaled a design chapter from 3 to 28 designers across 21 product tribes, introduced competency matrices, structured PDPs, quality gates, and design principles that brought our rework rate down to 4.9% — well below the 5–10% industry benchmark. For me, raising standards means building systems that make quality the default, not the exception.
02
What does your discovery and hypothesis-driven design process look like in practice?
I introduced a full discovery framework at Raiffeisen Bank — covering stakeholder mapping and interviews, customer journey mapping, service blueprinting, Jobs To Be Done, value proposition design, UX testing with SUM metrics, and benchmark testing against competitors. Every hypothesis has a defined success criterion and a validation method before development begins. Discovery is not a phase for me — it is a continuous discipline that runs alongside delivery and informs every major design decision.
03
How do you balance strategic design thinking with hands-on delivery?
My role is 90% concept, direction, and chapter development — which mirrors exactly what this role requires. I own the product vision and target design concept across all product directions, set the quality bar, and make approval and block decisions on key design solutions. But I stay close to the work — running co-design sessions, reviewing every major flow, and being the bridge between user needs, business goals, and technical constraints. Strategy without craft is just a slide deck.
04
How do you work with product managers, developers, and analysts as a design leader?
Design does not drive product by sitting in a separate lane — it drives product by being embedded in the decision-making process before the decisions are made. I introduced co-design workshops at Raiffeisen Bank that brought PMs, developers, and analysts into early research and ideation. The result was not just better solutions — it was faster alignment, fewer late-stage revisions, and a shared sense of ownership over outcomes. When the people building the product have shaped the problem definition together, the gap between design and delivery almost disappears.
05
How do you handle the approval and block process for key design decisions?
I treat the approval and block process as a quality infrastructure, not a bureaucratic checkpoint. At Raiffeisen Bank Ukraine, we ran two types of review gates: CX/UX Review — where teams presented research insights, user flows, and design solutions before development; and Platform Review — where implemented solutions were checked against visual accuracy, interaction consistency, and accessibility standards before release. The value of these gates was not the reviews themselves — it was the expectation they created upstream. Teams stopped producing inconsistent work because they knew exactly what standard they were being held to.
Recent articels
If you're looking for someone who has been in the room where the hard decisions are made, let's talk.
