Revel Blog

UX Product Design Expert: Revel Employee Spotlight

Julie Holkeboer | October 20, 2020 |

People POS Spotlight
UX Product Design Expert: Revel Employee Spotlight

How Vaiva Helps Execute UX Product Design at Revel

We’re excited to share the newest edition of our employee-focused blog series. This time around, we had the chance to speak with a member of our team based in Vilnius, Lithuania. Revel’s Lithuania office is home to our customer support team, many of our product owners and designers, engineers, and other essential members of the “People POS.” In our most recent spotlight, we shared how one of the members of our SMB services team, Chris, contributes to Revel's success . We explore Chris’s passion for sales and people. In the post he explains how he utilizes his greatest asset—being himself—to exceed his clients’ expectations.  Next up we’re featuring Vaiva, a user experience (UX) product designer at Revel. She is responsible for helping create the products Chris and his team sell. After beginning her career in graphic design with a dream to one day work in the digital space, Vaiva now helps execute UX product design at Revel. 

Meet Vaiva

Vaiva joined the Revel family one year ago as a UX product designer. Alongside a team of four, she helps design intuitive, research-driven end-user experiences. She ensures Revel’s products are client and customer friendly by:
  • Studying the target market
  • Documenting users’ behavior and needs
  • Creating a design that meets and exceeds those needs 
After graduating from Vilnius Design College , Vaiva began her career at a graphic design agency. From very early on, however, she knew she wanted to design products for the digital world. After moving to one of the biggest design companies in Lithuania and working on various web design projects, she made the transition to UX design at a global digital media and advertising technology company. There, she honed her skills as a UX designer. This move eventually helped her land at Revel. “I really love working as a UX designer because each day is really different,” Vaiva explains. “People often think that design is just painting something, but you have to observe and communicate. There’s a bit of psychology involved. You have to use your logic and analytical skills to create these prototypes—it’s very interesting.” Today, Vaiva contributes design strategy and conducts usability testing . At the end of the day, her work helps delight clients with positive user experiences on behalf of the “People POS.” 

A Closer Look at UX Product Design Today

Upon receiving new tasks, Vaiva always begins her creative process by gathering as much information as she can. This involves speaking with colleagues across the company, including product owners, quality assurance engineers, developers, and designers. At times, she also has the chance to chat directly with Revel clients to discuss their firsthand experiences using our products. The collective feedback she gathers is extremely valuable to Vaiva and Revel’s team of product designers as they begin to conceptualize the look and feel of new products.  “At Revel, you can really feel the impact of your work because the product is improving and being developed very fast,” she explains. “You can really see the result when you get to speak directly with clients.” From there, she begins brainstorming ideas and often conducts a competitor analysis. Her goal is to find a few solutions to every challenge rather than just one or two. Vaiva and her team then discuss the proposed solutions with product owners, incorporate considerations that come up during user testing, and sometimes create a minimum viable product (MVP) to prepare the product for future iterations.

Recent Projects

Designing the user experience for Kiosk XT , Revel’s fully brandable self-service kiosk solution for on-premise checkout, has been one of Vaiva’s recent projects. Her focus has been on re-designing the upsell combo functionality, adding split modifiers, and offering expanded tip options. All of these enhancements will be available in Revel’s upcoming 2.66 product release . Her ultimate goal is to help design a product that best supports our clients and their customers that is simple to navigate.  “We check all cases and all scenarios to make sure the solution is the best it can be,” says Vaiva.  Note that Kiosk XT is currently available through Revel’s Early Adopter Program (EAP). If you'd like to learn more about our EAP opportunities, please contact our support team and let us know. We’ll forward your info to the right department and follow up if you’re a good fit for the program. 

How Vaiva Brings It Home

A good UX product designer creates solid end-user experiences, but a great UX product designer is constantly thinking about the future state of products as well. Vaiva appreciates the challenge of considering how her design work will evolve into future iterations of the product, and Revel’s products benefit as a result.   “I always try to prepare future ideas as well, which is a very interesting part. I’m always thinking globally,” Vaiva explains. “How can we expand on these solutions and how can we make a smarter product down the road?” Revel’s product design team recently came together and created the newest set of application icons, some of which will appear in the App Store with Revel’s 2.66 release. Rather than simply create new icons, the team developed an entire application strategy to align future versions of the icons. “This project allowed us to brainstorm together as a team of designers. So, it was not only my effort, but the effort of an entire team,” she says. Her high-performing team is accustomed to juggling multiple time-sensitive tasks.  What Vaiva enjoyed most about the app redesign was that it was a highly creative and collaborative project that incorporated contributions from the entire team.

Noteworthy Extras 

When asked about what she likes most about working at Revel, Vaiva shares that it’s the hard working people around her who motivate her to excel in her role.  “I remember my first week and my first impression of Revel, and it’s still the same today. People here are really dedicated to their work and remain so positive,” she says. “Everyone is very open minded and genuinely cares about the impact their projects have on our clients.” Vaiva appreciates that she can feel the impact she has on the development of products that so many Revel clients use on a daily basis. Revel’s entire product team is constantly refining their product roadmap to add mission critical features for clients. For this reason, Vaiva has already seen multiple projects go from her desk to the hands of real clients during her tenure at Revel. 

What’s Next

When asked how the effects of COVID-19 and Revel’s work-from-home policy affected Vaiva and her team, she noted that there wasn’t a drastic change to their work structure. Because Revel is a global company and employees span multiple time zones, the product design team was already very used to relying on video calls and screen shares to stay connected and keep projects moving.  “For me personally, usability testing was slightly different because I was used to conducting those sessions in the office with teammates. But now, I’ve adjusted to conducting them over video calls and it works for me,” Vaiva explains.  Thanks in part to devoted colleagues like Vaiva, the rest of her design team, and Revel’s employees across the globe, the company was able to quickly adapt to a new way of working. Today, they continue to deliver impactful products and features to Revel clients worldwide.