resume

Jess
Matz


* 1990
uses "she/her" pronouns


hello@jessdesigns.it

back
work experience
Since Oct 2022

Resourcify

Product Design Lead

Build, manage and mentor a team of 2 UX designers and 1 Brand Designer. Work closely with product and engineering leadership to reduce UX debt and ship customer value.
  • Grew the design function by 150%, hiring senior-level talent with high output.
  • Unlocked high-volume deals by delivering mission-critical Enterprise features and pushing for usability at scale.
  • Raised the UX maturity and design efficiency through 6+ major DesignOps initiatives (e.g. UX career matrix, proto-personas, design principles, Design System).
  • Initiated a strategy pivot, R&D re-org, and new engineering strategy by running 25+ PMF research interviews and uncovering a clear USP and value proposition.
  • Founding member of the FLINTA* ERG.
Aug 2019 – Oct 2022

Grafana Labs

Senior UX Designer / Design Lead

Joined as the first designer, built the UX function from scratch. Delivered products and features to 20+ million users. End-to-end responsible for the entire Grafana OSS experience. Design Lead for the Alerts and Incidents product group.
  • Grew the UX team from 2 to 25+ and the user base from 500k to 20m.
  • Launched 6 key features and products, including Logs and Traces as well as the mission-critical Grafana 9 Alerting. Rebuilding Grafana Alerting fixed 5 years’ worth of UX debt.
  • Aligned 35+ stakeholders for the Alerts and Incidents product group, managing expectations and functionally leading 4 designers.
  • Led a cross-functional task-force that set up the Grafana Design System and built the first 50+ components.
Sep 2015 - July 2019

quäntchen + glück

Strategic Designer

q+g is a human-centred product innovation consulting agency. I owned UX projects end-to-end and created marketing campaigns, corporate and brand designs.
  • Saved 5 companies up to €2m each by running Lean Startup processes and product-market-fit testing.
  • Facilitated 150+ workshops and design thinking sessions with up to 50 participants.
  • Delivered 7 large rebranding projects, including the quäntchen + glück rebranding project „Big Bäng“ which was a Design Iteration Award 2018 finalist.
Sep 2013 – Aug 2015

ADAPT OR DIE VENTURES

Visual Designer

  • Delivered 10 000+ presentation slides
  • Designed 7 fake door MVPs and real MVPs for various product and service ideas
education

Certified UX Writer

Berghs School of Communication, 2021
See my course project here

12-week course on UX writing research, good and bad UX writing practices, writing for design systems and more

Nielsen Norman UX courses

NN/g UX Certification Program, 2020

Courses attended so far: Persuasive Emotional Design, The Human Mind, UX Assessments, Product and UX: Building partnerships

B.A. Communication Design

Mannheim University of Applied sciences, 2012 – 2016
Graduated with distinction (1.1 GPA)
See my bachelor project here

Majors: Corporate Design, Brand Design, Interactive Media
Member of Student Council

B.A. English Philology and East-Asian Studies

University of Heidelberg, 2009 – 2012
Graduated with the grade "Good" (1.7 GPA)

Topic of Bachelor Thesis: „Multimodality in Memes: Why Rage Comics are multimodal texts“
Best graded paper: An analysis of a Neil Gaiman „Sandman“ volume

Intercultural experience

Tôin High School, Ôita Prefecture, Japan, 2007 – 2008

Biggest learnings: How to bow correctly, the regional dialect of the Ôita Prefecture, dancing ParaPara, baton twirling
achievements and media coverage

UX Mentor

8 UX designers mentored, got 2 designers their dream jobs, prepared 1 IC for a People Manager role.

Grafana Webinar on dashboard design

In 2020, I gave the webinar A beginner's guide to good Grafana dashboard design, which was one of the most-attended Grafana webinars of all time with over 1000 registrations.

Peter Drucker Purpose Summit 2020

I organized my first conference, the Peter Drucker Purpose Summit 2020, together with a team of management enthusiasts of all ages. The event took place February 12th and 13th in Mannheim, Germany and featured speakers like Jos de Blok (Buurtzorg) and Prof. Dr. Heinz-Walter Große (B. Braun Melsungen).

Remote workshops and remote culture expert

Since 2019, I have given talks about remote workshops and remote culture at conferences and meetups like Barcamp RheinMain and Innovation Culture Camp, as well as multiple companies like DB Systel.

Design Iteration Award

Finalist 2018 with the quäntchen + glück rebranding project „Big Bäng“.

Conference speaker and thought leader

Conference speaker at 15+ events, including World Usability Day Leipzig, Lange Nacht der ZEIT 2019 and brand design conference 2018. Writer of UX articles on LinkedIn and InformatikAktuell. Interviewed at the Sustain Open Source Design podcast in 2022.

over 1.1 million views on YouTube

Had my 15 minutes of fame thanks to getting on YouTube very early and posting videos from my student's exchange to Japan in 2007. In 2013, the videos went viral. Funnily, although my target audience was German, the majority of the viewers is Japanese.
skills

UX and Design

Abilities
  • User Research
  • Wireframing
  • UX methods
  • Visual Design
  • Prototyping
  • Usability Testing
  • Ideation
  • Brand Design
  • Information Design
  • Typography
  • UX Writing
  • Paper Engineering
Tools
  • Figma
  • Sketch
  • Adobe CC
  • Davinci ReSolve
  • HTML & CSS

Strategy and Softskills


  • Mentorship
  • Workshop Facilitation
  • Remote Work
  • Stakeholder alignment
  • UX Strategy
  • Design Thinking
  • Behavioural Science
  • Creative Methods
  • Public Speaking
  • Project Management

Languages

Fluent
  • English
  • German
Proficient
  • Japanese

Passions


  • Vintage Fashion
  • Sustainable Living
  • Cooking
  • Songwriting
  • Homerecording
  • Interior Design
  • Photography
  • Independent Film
  • YouTube
  • Videography

Want to see some of my work? Check out my design projects. If you want more or have specific questions, just ask!