In 2008 I was hired as the first in-house product designer at a Polish eCommerce startup – Nokaut.pl (later known as Grupa Nokaut). Before I joined, all the design tasks were either outsourced or performed by engineers. Shortly after I came on board, I noticed that most of the team seemed to consider design to be a mere decoration.

Nokaut.pl was a consumer–focused company, and this disregard for design, started to harm the business. To help Nokaut.pl grow, I had to introduce a proper design process (UCD) and prove the value of design. Beginnings were not easy, but ultimately,thanks to my mentor – the co-founder and VP of Product, I found my way to prove the value of design. A combination of direct collaboration with engineers and constant work on improving business metrics brought outstanding results.

One of the initiatives that helped me establish design at Nokaut.pl was a series of projects focused on optimizing the conversion rate. I tried to use my knowledge about human cognition to optimize the key aspects of user interface. For the team, it was an opportunity to observe how design hypotheses can lead to real, measurable, change.

There are very few documents and assets of my old work. After all, it was, 10 – 11 years ago and Grupa Nokaut, after a successful IPO, ultimately failed and seized to exist (years after I left). However, one case study of my early work survived thanks to talks that I had at local meetups and conferences.

In 2009 I was trusted with the optimization of critical elements of the Nokaut.pl product page. A product page was really a collection of millions of individual pages representing every product listed in Nokuat.pl. Collectively, those pages had the most significant impact on the overall conversion rate.

Together with the engineering team, we've worked out a series of hypotheses based on factors affecting human attention (contrast, color, movement, pattern...) and we've performed a series of multivariable split tests.