Hi, I'm Darlena!
I've been designing for 10+ years and have spent over half of my career as the lead or founding designer at early-stage (seed, Series A) startups. Here's an overview of my design career over the past 10+ years: I started as a visual designer building enterprise SaaS products for Fortune 500 companies. Then, I helped a social commenting platform serving over a billion users worldwide get acquired. After that, I designed and launched one of the first crypto collectible mobile apps in partnership with Crunchyroll as the sole product designer. I then spent some time solving complex system design problems for scale at HubSpot and most recently I built games on the blockchain to bring ownership back to gamers.
Now I'm looking to partner with teams that need a hand designing new concepts or getting their design org up off the ground. My primary passion lies in improving the user experience and saving people time no matter what the context is. I hope I can partner with you on your next project!
Design Philosophy
I want to help people save time and allow them to spend that spare time on what they truly enjoy. Inspired by the theory that cooking made us human (I'm a bit biased since I love to cook), I think that humans have always strived to make mundane, repetitive tasks more efficient so that they can spend their time on more interesting things. As humans, we've accomplished so many breakthroughs in the name of efficiency dating all the way back to the invention of cooking, the advent of the assembly line, and more. I think it's pretty awesome that being a designer grants me the opportunity to be a part of this story and spend my days inventing and innovating. In particular, I'm interested in how we can leverage new technologies to creatively problem solve.
Mission & Values
These are my core values and we'll get along if you share them:
- Respect for all people. Each voice and perspective is valuable. Everyone has a superpower, but not everyone's is unlocked yet.
- Self-awareness. Be honest with yourself and understand how you fit in the bigger picture.
- Growth mindset. Keep your mind open and look at life through the lens of curiosity and how to improve yourself.
- Integrity. This means not compromising on your values even when it's hard.
In addition to creating tools that save people time, I'm passionate about making education and opportunities more accessible to anyone who seek them. I'm especially interested in initiatives that seek to help others improve their financial literacy and financial well-being. I believe it's already plenty difficult to put in the work so we shouldn't gate knowledge behind the ever-rising tuition of four-year universities. I'm highly supportive of and energized by the recent change in our industry to welcome career shifts via online bootcamps, courses, and similar programs.
Contact Me
I'd love to hear from you!
Send me an email at hello@darlenatran.com