Mail

2019–2021: working on the product

Portal navigation

Portal navigation tied together all of Mail.ru Group's products, but by the time I started working on it, it had grown visually and functionally outdated.

I reworked the structure of the projects dropdown menu and the account menu. I added shared news and weather blocks to the navigation that worked across multiple products at once.

The goal wasn't just to refresh the interface, but to turn navigation into a tool for moving between products in the ecosystem.

My role: UX · UI · Information Architecture

Launching the Payments hub inside Mail

One of the major product initiatives of this period was launching a new «Payments» section inside Mail.

The idea was to use information that already appears in incoming emails — bills, receipts, and other financial documents — and let users act on it right inside Mail.

The new section let users pay for services, manage recurring payments, and keep a history of transactions. At launch, the service supported paying thousands of companies and covered several categories of everyday payments.

I designed the section from scratch: its structure, core scenarios, and user flows.

My role: Product Design · UX · User Flows

2021–2025: from individual products to systems

In 2021 my focus shifted significantly toward design systems. My work gradually became less about individual screens and more about building shared infrastructure that let solutions be reused across products.

Cutting app launch time by 30%

App launch speed wasn't just a technical problem: the first seconds shaped how users perceived the product's speed.

I studied the existing launch process, looked at how competitors solved it, and broke down the interface states during loading.

Together with engineers, we turned what we found into concrete changes: we optimized the launch process and refined the loading, skeleton, and feedback states.

Result: app launch time dropped by roughly 30%. Complaints about speed in the App Store and Google Play also decreased.

My role: Research · UX · Prototyping · Engineering Collaboration

Paradigm Tech

VK Workspace products use Paradigm as their technological foundation, but need to match VK Tech's visual language.

I designed the Paradigm Tech theme, which lets products use Paradigm's shared architecture while keeping VK Tech's visual identity.

The theme includes color and typography tokens, is documented in Figma, and is integrated into the codebase as a separate module.

Result: new products can build on a shared foundation without creating a separate design system or duplicating work.

My role: Design Systems · Tokens · Figma · Collaboration with Engineering

Help without designers

The Help team regularly came to designers for small changes. Instead of growing the stream of routine requests, I proposed handing part of these changes directly to the product team.

I built a centralized master file with Help's core screens and templates. Predefined elements and constraints let the team make typical changes on their own while keeping the product's visual consistency.

Result: designers stopped being a required step for routine changes and moved into an advisory role.

My role: Design Enablement · Templates · Process

2025–2026: from designer to manager

In 2025 my role changed again.

I moved from mostly systemic and product work to leading a team of product designers.

I first took over a team of two designers looking for new product opportunities and running experiments around Mail. The team later grew to five product designers.

My focus shifted from working through solutions myself to setting direction, distributing tasks, working with Product, and creating the conditions for designers to own large parts of the product on their own.

My core responsibilities

• setting design priorities together with Product;
• distributing tasks within the team;
• hiring and onboarding new designers;
• taking part in performance reviews;
• helping designers grow and move toward more independence;
• working with other design teams;
• managing the team's budget;
• planning spending on tools, software, conferences, and training.

What we shipped

One of the team's focus areas was new scenarios and experiments around Mail.

In the mobile app, we rebuilt the navigation for the «Purchases» section to make key scenarios — cashback, the showcase, and discounts — more accessible and clear. I took part in shaping the solution, preparing the design for development, and running UX research with real users. 84% of users rated the new interface as more convenient, 83% as clearer and better structured, and 81% responded positively to the new navigation.

We also experimented with a new home screen for Mail — a split-screen, more widget-based approach instead of the familiar inbox. The idea was for the home screen to give access to several important scenarios at once, not just a list of emails. For me, this project became an example of moving from interface design to searching for new product models.

Separately, we reworked Mail's Web navigation to increase usage of other products in the ecosystem. I took part in shaping the new structure and key interactions, after which the solution kept evolving with the product team. As a result, the number of products used per user grew.

Design leadership

As the team grew, it became important not just to manage individual tasks, but to make design's work more transparent and predictable.

I set up a planning system for the team: detailed reports in Jira, an updated task template, weekly sprint reporting, and breaking down large product tasks. This helped us see the team's workload more clearly, plan resources, and catch tasks that started slipping past their expected timelines early.

As a result, the share of tasks that carried over more than four sprints dropped by 80%.

In parallel, I set up regular designer participation in discovery meetings and a process for logging, scoring, and planning product hypotheses.

Design hypotheses became part of the shared product roadmap rather than a separate stream of design initiatives. The target was 20% of hypotheses in the product backlog coming from design. The actual result was 25%.