Product Designer · Engineering mind

I design complex products that don’t feel complicated

Half of it is systems thinking and structure. The other half is genuinely caring about the people who’ll use it. Both turn into clean, usable UI.

“I don’t design from visual preference. UI is subjective, so I focus on real user problems, data and technical constraints.”
Design philosophy
Daria Zubarevich, Product Designer
Portrait
Daria Zubarevich
Product Designer · Denmark
64%
task completion in usability testing, used to refine the design
1 day
to design & ship a live BaaS landing that tested a new product
4+
years in product design, fintech & complex B2B
Let’s talk →
Selected work
Here’s some real work, and how I approached it
01  /  Moneff — web platform
Design systemUX scalingWeb redesign

Global redesign of the Moneff web payments platform

My role: end-to-end web design, design-system ownership, UX research and testing, and close collaboration with engineering.

Context

Moneff is a fintech product offering multi-currency accounts and payments for businesses and individuals. The web platform had grown without a design system or shared documentation, which made it harder to maintain and slower to evolve. Internal analytics show the web is mainly a business surface: around 54% of active corporate clients used it over the past year, rising to nearly 60% recently, versus roughly 5% of individuals — so the redesign was aimed at the people who live in the product. Over the same period the platform kept growing, from roughly 1,700 to a peak of around 3,100 monthly active users.

Problem

Scaling without a design system slowed development and made releases unpredictable. The product had also moved from B2B-only to serving individuals, but the interface was still built for business users and felt complex for personal ones, driving navigation-related support tickets.

Goals
  • Make the platform easier for both business and individual users
  • Build a design system developers could use day to day
  • Reduce support tickets caused by UI issues
  • Speed up feature development without touching the backend
Approach

I started with the design system, talking to developers up front so it was realistic to implement: components, states, spacing, layout rules and usage guidelines. Before redesigning screens I reviewed flows and IA, analysed recurring support issues, ran a competitive analysis and collected technical constraints, separating UX problems from system limits. I ran usability tests on payment and card flows before implementation.

Results
  • Feature development became faster and more predictable
  • UI-related support requests dropped significantly
  • An easier experience for both business and personal users
  • The design system became the base for future development
Trade-off

We kept the core system logic unchanged to avoid backend risk, improving clarity and usability through UX.

BeforeMoneff web platform home page before the redesign
AfterMoneff web platform home page after the redesign
Before and after — redesigning the Moneff home page to work for both business and personal users.
Moneff transaction filters side panel
Transaction filters — sort, direction, operation, status and period, in one focused side panel.
Moneff web design system in Figma — components and states
The web design system, built from scratch in Figma — components, states and usage guidelines.
Usability test results in Useberry for the Moneff redesign
Usability testing in Useberry — 64% task completion, with drop-offs fed back into the design.
Click-tracking heatmaps for the redesigned Moneff card screens
Click-tracking heatmaps used to validate the redesigned card screens against real behaviour.

The redesign was shared publicly on the Moneff blog. Read the write-up →

02  /  Spike — onboarding
0→1User trustComplex onboarding

Designing the onboarding flow for Spike

My role: sole designer taking the first version of the app to release, from research and personas through flows, prototyping and post-launch iteration.

Context

Spike is a mobile-only fintech app for traders worldwide, enabling instant transfers between crypto exchanges and fiat bank accounts in a single app. Onboarding is where users first decide whether they trust the service enough to continue.

Problem

There were no direct market equivalents, so no established patterns to lean on. The onboarding logic was complex due to multiple integrations, KYC and technical constraints, and it felt long and unclear, with a high risk of losing trust early.

Goals
  • Guide users step by step through a complex process
  • Reduce cognitive load during KYC, exchange linking and setup
  • Build trust from the very first interaction
  • Make a technically complex process feel simple and predictable
Approach

I understood the domain firsthand: I opened a crypto account myself and spoke directly with traders about their expectations and trust triggers. We defined personas and a customer journey map to locate confusion and drop-off, producing hypotheses validated later with product data. We split onboarding into progressive steps with clear guidance, prototyped in high fidelity, ran usability testing, and designed a demo tour so users could see value before committing.

Results
  • A structured flow that guides users step by step
  • Reduced friction during KYC, exchange linking and setup
  • Clearer expectations and improved trust early in the journey
  • A foundation for ongoing iteration based on real behaviour
Trade-off

We introduced tiered access instead of forcing full KYC upfront and issued a virtual card right after account creation, building trust before asking for everything.

Customer journey map for the Spike onboarding flow
Customer journey map locating the main drop-off risks across a multi-step onboarding.
Trader personas from interviews for Spike
Persona work grounded in interviews with real traders, not assumptions.
Live user-journey log for Spike onboarding iteration
A live user-journey log that turned real issues into continuous onboarding iteration.
03  /  Moneff BaaS — 0→1 experiment
Product hypothesis0→1AI-assistedLive

A live BaaS landing built in one day to validate a new product

My role: drove the experiment end to end, from proposition and narrative to design and build.

Context

Moneff wanted to test appetite for a Banking-as-a-Service offering, licensed UK and EU infrastructure for neobanks, marketplaces and embedded-finance brands, before committing engineering time.

Problem

The real question was demand. Building the product first would be slow and expensive, so we needed a real-world signal of interest quickly.

What it shows
  • Product and business thinking, not just screens
  • Comfort moving from hypothesis to live test
  • Fluency with AI tools to ship fast
  • End-to-end ownership of a 0→1 experiment
Approach

I defined the value proposition and target segments, structured the full narrative (products, integration steps, architecture, why-us and FAQ), and designed and shipped a fully branded, live landing page in a single day, without developers, using AI tooling, with “Book a demo” as the conversion goal.

Result
  • A live page that turned a strategic question into a testable signal in one day
  • Collected demo requests and measured genuine interest before any build investment
Trade-off

Optimised for speed and signal over polish and edge cases, since the goal was validation, not launch.

Book a demo
Moneff Banking-as-a-Service

Launch your Fintech without building the bank

UK & EU licensed infrastructure for neobanks, marketplaces and embedded-finance brands. GBP & EUR vIBANs, multi-currency accounts, payments, cards and FX, all under one API, fully branded as yours.

Book a demo
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A faithful recreation of the live landing hero, designed and shipped in a single day without developers. View live site →

04  /  Medical Assistant — healthcare
HealthcareEnd-to-end UXConcept

Medical assistant in your phone

My role: end-to-end product design, from research through to a high-fidelity prototype.

Context

A mobile medical-assistant concept that helps people understand symptoms and manage care from their phone. Included to show structured product thinking outside fintech.

Process
  • User research and target-audience analysis
  • Personas and customer journey mapping
  • Information architecture and user flows
  • Wireframes, high-fidelity UI and an interactive prototype
Tools

Figma for design and prototyping, Miro for research synthesis and mapping, and ChatGPT to pressure-test scenarios.

Why it’s here

An earlier project, kept because it documents the full design process cleanly from research to prototype, in a non-fintech domain.

Medical assistant concept — health portal and online assistant screens

Concept taken end to end — research, personas, CJM, flows and high-fidelity prototype. View full case on Behance →

About
What shaped the way I design

Over the past four years I’ve gone deep in fintech and business banking, the kind of product where one unclear state can break someone’s trust or hold up their payroll. That taught me to stay calm inside dense systems and hand people something they can move through without thinking twice.

My background is in engineering, and it still shapes how I design. I think in systems and states, I catch edge cases before they reach production, and I scope ideas against what’s actually buildable. Developers like working with me because I already speak their language.

Now I’m looking for a team that moves fast and cares about getting the hard, unglamorous flows right, in any domain where that kind of thinking matters.

Download CV (PDF)
Details
BasedDenmark (Midtjylland)
StatusFull working rights
LanguagesEnglish (fluent), Danish (intermediate),
Russian (native)
Toolkit
DesignFigma, Miro, Adobe Illustrator
AnalyticsGoogle Analytics, Mixpanel, Useberry
AIChatGPT, Claude, Nano Banana
DeliveryJira, Notion, Slack