[juan·rei·na] they - them
I’m a senior UX designer and researcher dedicated to creating impactful, sustainable digital experiences. My work spans life-science, tech, the public sector, retail, fintech, nonprofits and social innovation, where I’ve supported initiatives prioritising equity and human connection. As a trans and non-binary person, I bring an inclusive lens to each project, ensuring everyone deserves a well-designed world. I translate my advocacy into designs that promote empathy, care, and human touch. Driven by my curiosity in tech, art, philosophy, and poetry, I’m committed to using design to spark positive, meaningful change, one challenge at a time.
From an early fascination with technology and the arts, I found my path in industrial design through Gui Bonsiepe’s and Bruno Munari’s insights on design, technology, and interface. While at university, I joined the innovation and research lab ViveLab Bogotá, where I refined my skills in usability testing, document review, and observational research. This groundwork led to a collective presentation at Interaction South America 2015 and inspired my own eye-tracking project, presented at Interaction South America 2016, exploring the relationship between design and user interaction gestures. Building on these experiences, I have pursued a career merging user research, UX design, and empathy-driven solutions across diverse industries. From specialised usability roles to broad, generalist UX positions in life sciences, I’ve gained a holistic perspective on human-centred design. Today, I combine these insights to create inclusive, data-informed experiences, always rooted in creativity and a commitment to meaningful digital innovation. Below is a summary of how these multi-industry, multi-role engagements have shaped my user-centred approach and prepared me to tackle complex UX challenges.
During my engagement with Google’s Partner Marketing Hub—a 9,000-page platform supporting global brand managers and partners—and Google for Hotels, I employed a holistic design system to unify a fragmented brand review and approval process while guiding stakeholders through pandemic-related travel challenges. I conducted extensive user research, including interviews in English with international users and partners, to create more inclusive, localised, and scalable solutions. By leveraging Google’s established design principles and AAA accessibility standards, I introduced content review tools, a streamlined asset submission process, collaborative feedback features, and centralised messaging. These integrations reduced complexity, eliminated duplicate work, and significantly elevated partner satisfaction, demonstrating my ability to handle large-scale system design with empathy, adaptability, and a keen focus on accessibility.
While consulting for AstraZeneca’s newly formed Evinova—an initiative unifying global scale, digital innovation, and long-term backing in clinical research—I collaborated with data scientists, developers, and design system specialists to craft user-centric solutions. My projects tackled environmental impact metrics, streamlined clinical study planning, and standardised inclusion/exclusion criteria via natural language processing models. I moved fluidly between research, design, and development, adapting to organisational needs and complexities. This environment served as a crucible for my generalist UX skill set—synthesising user insights, optimising interfaces, championing design standards, and iterating based on feedback. With early prototypes, user testing, and close stakeholder alignment, I helped shape Evinova’s digital products to optimise clinical trial design, support sustainability, map cost, and advance the future of healthcare.
In the banking sector, I used a research-driven approach to demonstrate the transformative power of UX. At Bancolombia, I led UX initiatives for Plink, a data visualisation platform that helped businesses make data-driven decisions. Through qualitative and quantitative research, we refined user engagement metrics, evolving Plink to better serve businesses impacted by the economic uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic. My involvement in developing Plink 2.0 brought fresh perspectives on user goals, integrating segmented datasets and co-marketing tactics to help businesses navigate challenging times.
Earlier at Itaú, I spearheaded a digital transformation project—initially as a UX team of one—to reduce new customer onboarding time by 90%. Gaining trust in a traditional environment required compelling evidence. I ran guerrilla tests, facilitated workshops, and established a dedicated project room to display hand-sketched wireframes and interactive flows for cross-departmental input. These collaborative methods led to executive buy-in, an expanded design team, and solutions that met organisational targets and addressed real user needs.
My work at ViveLab Bogotá spanned two phases: first as a student assistant, then as a designer. In both roles, I supported the lab’s research initiatives, facilitated design-thinking workshops, and documented user-centered processes for government-sponsored innovation. This hands-on experience included usability analyses, heuristic evaluations, research protocol development, and artifact design. Collaborating with cross-functional teams, I honed a methodical, evidence-based approach that integrated eye-tracking, agile methodologies, and user interviews—all key components of my broader UX toolkit.