Damian Abarca

Senior UX Designer

Version 1

Jan 2023 - Current (3 years 10 months)

ARUP - TBD

Senior UX & Service Designer // GovTech

Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia

Mar 2020 - Jan 2023 (2 years 11 months)

The company "Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia" is the public entity that supervises the Colombian financial system in order to preserve its stability, as well as to ensure a secure and trustworthy financial ecosystem for all the actors that participate in it.
My main role is to understand and propose solutions for some of the most important systemic challenges in Colombia's financial ecosystem aiming to generate value for the internal officials, improving their processes and relationships. In addition, my role is to ensure the correct application of a user-centered approach to design digital services and products that deliver value to Colombian citizens.
My main achievements in this role include:

- Strategic al

Manager, Design & Strategy

A Piece of Pie

Oct 2018 - Mar 2020 (1 year 6 months)

During my experience in the company, I had the opportunity to lead innovation projects for various industries (health, consumer goods, insurance and others) in South America and North America. My main role and activities as manager in A Piece of Pie included the following:

- Direction of projects across different countries and coordination of teams with different professional profiles such as engineering, psychology, anthropology and business.
- Research: Generation and execution of research systems such as in context interviews, workshops, shadowings and more.
- Development and communication of ideas, and generation of strategic insights for companies.
- Management of financial balances of projects and adequate ad

Design consultant & product develpment

fundacion semana

Feb 2017 - Dec 2017 (11 months)

Fundación Semana (Bogotá, Colombia) commissioned me to direct this project, which is within the framework of strengthening value chains, financed by the BID (Inter-American Development Bank).
The strategic objective of the foundation was to strengthen the projects that had been most successful in recent years so that they could be consolidated and thus, allow the organization to continue putting its efforts in other areas of the Montes de María area.

- Scope and implementation of the project on the early phases.
- Carrying out contextual and field research in El Salado, Bolívar.
- Use of different design research and design thinking tools, including actor mapping, generative sessions, generation of new products for

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Service design and product development

BiTalk

Jan 2017 - Jul 2017 (7 months)

Winners of the "Promotion of innovation and technological development" contest. SENA, 2017
The idea presented in the contest is a new B2B2C advertising system/service.
The service makes available to the advertising company, a portfolio of cyclists who commute to work/recreation around the city of Bogotá and who carry a disk with the advertiser's advertising for the sectors it deems most convenient, thus doing the most effective advertising and promoting the use of sustainable transport and its good practices.
At this moment, the first national pilot is about to be carried out with the bike fleet of a university in Bogotá.

- Drafting of the project blueprint
- Design and production of the 'BiTalk Disc'. Registe

Manager Dr.Bici

Mejor En Bici

May 2016 - Dec 2016 (8 months)

Service design and management of the Dr.Bici business unit.
Dr. Bici is a service of mechanics that visits the workers of Bogota companies, to maintain, care for and advise users about their bicycles, thus trying to help and improve the existing services for users who travel by bike in the city of Bogota.

- Development of business idea and business unit.
- Generation of research tools and implementation of the service such as manuals and practical guides for workers and the organization.
- Training of the team of mechanics in customer service strategies.
- Service design and research

Senior UX Designer

EL TIEMPO Casa Editorial

Mar 2016 - Jun 2016 (4 months)

I was part of the team that redesigned the national news portal in Colombia, "eltiempo.com".
During my stay I helped the UX team to develop proposals and solutions for the "paywall" project, which is now available to the public.

- Selection and generation of design research tools to understand the user experience and consumer habits, in order to transform the results into strategic guidelines.
- Team redesign of the task flow for the new paywall system.
- Collaboration in other areas of the company, in order to guarantee a better understanding and execution of the project.

Lecturer

Universidad de los Andes - Colombia

Jan 2016 - Aug 2019 (3 years 8 months)

I taught the following classes on the design bacherlor programme at the University de los Andes:

- Co-creation & generative tools: In this class, students are taught different techniques and methodologies for design research, with an emphasis on generative sessions, which they carry out with each important actor defined for their project. This course has the collaboration of the Secretary of Mobility of Bogotá, an organisation that is responsible to improve people's transportability in the metropolitan area. The students work together with this organisation to generate new solutions to the different mobility challenges faced by the city of Bogotá

- Study 4, Society and Technology: The goal of this course is for stude

Interaction Designer, university project

AIAIAI

Sep 2014 - Jan 2015 (5 months)

As part of my postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Design (TU Delft, Netherlands), I participated in forming and working with a design team dedicated to generating and advising on new strategic guidelines for a product for the Danish audio company AIAIAI.
My responsibilities included:

- Interviews with end-users and audio experts
- Creative workshops and generative design sessions with end-users
- Collating and advising on strategic recommendations from the end-user
- Generating mock-ups for the digital apps associated with the audio product design
- Meeting with clients in Copenhagen to review results and determine next steps in the design development of the product

Graduation Student

Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft

Feb 2014 - Jul 2015 (1 year 6 months)

My graduation project was carried out within the research group "DIOPD" (Delft Institute of Positive Design) of the faculty of design, at TU Delft and Matthias Laschke, from Folkwang Universität der Künste
During this period, I worked together with my supervisors on the research and conceptualization of a product that would help people improve their relationships as a couple.
Based on the theories elaborated by the research group and based on the "pleasurable troublemakers" I designed "co-habit" an alarm clock system specially designed for couples and whose objective is to help improve common practices that have a positive impact on their lives. .

-Contextual research with different tools: surveys, interviews, workbooks

Logistics Specialist

IKEA Group

Oct 2012 - May 2015 (2 years 8 months)

My role in this position was to guarantee, from the warehouse to the store, the good replenishment of products and help make forecasts based on day-to-day sales and what was expected according to analysts.

- Identification of shortages in the inventory.
- Interaction with the sales department to replenish stocks based on demand projections.
- Training logistics workers for new store openings around the world

Junior Product Designer

Energy Floors

Oct 2010 - May 2011 (8 months)

For the new SEF unit of the Sustainable Dance Club company, I carried out the conceptualization and redesign of the accommodation for the new energy generation system. I also proposed various scenarios where the user interacted with these platforms and therefore, more energy was generated.

- Materials research.
- Conceptualization of the new SEF unit in addition to user interaction in various scenarios.
- Realization of production drawings in Solid Works.
- Prototyping and testing of the unit together with my superior.

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Monitor Vela Ligera y Windsurf

Gandiasurf

May 2001 - Sep 2009 (8 years 5 months)

For 10 summers, I worked as a dinghy sailing and windsurfing teacher at Gandía surf, the first windsurfing school in the Valencian Community.
During this time I had the pleasure of empathizing with a great diversity of people, sharing experiences and trying to teach them a great passion such as windsurfing.

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Damian Abarca

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