resume

Jessica
Matz


* 1990
uses "she/her" pronouns


hello@jessdesigns.it

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work experience
Since Oct 2022

Resourcify

Product Design Lead

I am building the UX practice at Resourcify from scratch and scaling the UX team. I started as the first UX person there and have strategically grown the team, managing a small team of hand-picked designers now.
  • Hands-on UX work: Acting as Principal Designer, I run research, produce designs and provide user value across multiple Products.
  • UX maturity and DesignOps: I lead my team to raise our UX maturity and efficiency through initiatives like creating a UX progression framework, proto-personas, design principles, cross-functional workshops and facilitation, as well as introducing a Design System.
  • Product strategy: After owning a project to validate and improve Resourcify's product-market fit and sales pitch, I collaborate closely with our CPO in setting product strategy and vision.
  • Team culture: I spar and coach both designers and PMs and strive for a great UX culture. On the side, I champion the FLINTA ERG.
Aug 2019 – Oct 2022

Grafana Labs

Senior UX Designer / Design Lead

As one of Grafana's first ever designers, I built the UX function from scratch, growing the UX team from 2 to 25+. After being the sole UXer responsible for everything Grafana OSS, I was Design Lead for the open-source squad and Alerting feature of Grafana and then the entire Alerts and Incidents product group since 2021, leading feature development for one of Grafana’s core value propositions. What I delivered:
  • Dozens of user interviews
  • Facilitation and ideation with developers and designers across the entire Grafana ecosystem
  • Mockups, interactive prototypes, released features and a design system in progress
  • Mentorship of UX designers
  • Functional leadership, workload distribution and negotiation as well as stakeholder management with product, engineering and leadership team.
Sep 2015 - July 2019

quäntchen + glück

Strategic Designer

In an interdisciplinary product innovation agency, I helped run Lean Startup processes to validate product-market fit for digital products from qualitative research to quantitative proof of customer interest. I was involved in all steps of the design process: personas, design sprints, user research, workshop facilitation, mockups and project management. Apart from UX and product development, I created corporate and brand designs.
Sep 2013 – Aug 2015

ADAPT OR DIE VENTURES

Visual Designer

I created the brand design for ADAPT OR DIE. In the process of creating the brand, I designed several websites and coordinated their launch, created print media and thousands of presentation slides. Furthermore, I built fake door MVPs and real MVPs for various product and service ideas like mix-your-own mineral water and The Valley Experience.
since Jan 2014

Jessica Matz Kommunikations­design

Freelancer

I create brand identities, print media, presentations and UX designs as a freelancer. Since 2016, I have leaned towards political design: I was Lead Designer for three election campagins for German mayoral elections.
Feb – Oct 2011

SAS Germany

Digital Marketing

As a working student, I helped the digital marketing team manage the SAS Germany website, coded new pages with HTML and CSS, created web ads and newsletters for e-mail campaigns. I did leave my mark by making animated GIF ads "a thing" at SAS.
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

Since 2020, I have been mentoring multiple UX designers. I help them plan their personal development and career, consult them on their portfolios and projects and empower them in setting goals and advancing their skills.

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.

Lange Nacht der ZEIT 2019

I was invited to be part of a discussion panel on the future of work (one hour video, German only) for the sixth “Lange Nacht der ZEIT 2019” on May 4th in Hamburg, Germany.

watson.de: interview about the gender pay gap

Gave an interview about my uniform wage working at quäntchen + glück for the German e-mag watson.de to mark the Equal Pay Day 2019.

Design Iteration Award

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

brand design conference 2018

Conference speaker and research paper for bdc2018 in London

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

Proficient
  • English
  • German
  • Japanese
Elementary
  • French
  • Latin

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!