Evolving UX with startups

as their products learn to think.

SOFTWARE PRODUCT DESIGN STUDIO

THE STUDIO

The studio shapes UX strategy and design for products operating at scale and under pressure, including developer platforms, AI tools, and complex internal systems where small decisions compound quickly.

The practice builds on deep experience inside Visual Studio and VS for Mac at Microsoft, shaping core developer workflows and AI-assisted tooling, alongside startups building in technically dense, real-world domains. This experience spans security-sensitive environments, legacy systems, and software relied on daily by engineers and technical professionals.

The studio’s approach draws from academic study of neuroscience and human brain development, shaped by an art & design education rooted in St. Petersburg’s visual culture, and grounded in a foundation of software engineering. Clarity, trust, and efficient interaction become central here, especially as products gain autonomy and begin to think with the people they support.

Developer Platforms & AI Tooling

Visual Studio, VS for Mac, Copilot, Dev Box, JetBrains TeamCity

Over eight years working across Visual Studio and VS for Mac, leading UX decisions across core developer workflows used daily by thousands of engineers at enterprise scale. The work focused on foundational IDE system behaviors, including diagnostics, the editor, extensibility, and other surfaces where small decisions propagate widely and last for years.

A significant part of this work involved shaping coherence across products, helping developer tooling feel like a shared ecosystem. This meant defining common interaction models, language, and expectations across teams and platforms, reducing fragmentation as the products evolved.

This included close collaboration on early Copilot efforts, hands-on integration of AI-assisted capabilities into core IDE surfaces, and ownership of AI-powered search experience. The work operated at a platform level, spanning UX research, system definition, and cross-team coordination, with an emphasis on clarity, durability, and reducing long-term systemic friction. Additional experience includes developer tooling at JetBrains, contributing to TeamCity, a large-scale CI system.

Complex Internal Systems & Security

Security tooling, signal analysis, and applications for state radio monitoring

Security-sensitive, technically opaque systems where clarity is a safety feature, not a nice-to-have. This includes applications deployed on specialized, non-consumer operating systems, operating under strict constraints around access, data handling, and operational risk.

In these environments, design often starts from zero. The work is about creating interaction models, visual language, and shared UX standards where none exist, then making them durable enough to survive long-term use, turnover, and edge cases.

The focus is calm, controlled usability under pressure: making system state legible, reducing ambiguity, and helping teams align on a shared mental model so the tool behaves predictably across roles, permissions, and workflows. This requires rapid immersion into unfamiliar technical domains and close collaboration with engineering teams on real constraints, not abstract ideals.

Startup & Real-World Products

Operational tools, field workflows, solar and energy software

Startup products where software meets physical reality. These are tools used in the field, mid-task, mid-decision, often with incomplete data and changing conditions, where workflows rarely follow clean or predictable paths.

The work focused on bringing order to early systems without freezing them in place: untangling navigation and information architecture, establishing consistent interaction patterns, and introducing design foundations that could scale as the product grew.

Design decisions were shaped by asynchronous collaboration with distributed teams, fast immersion into unfamiliar domains, and ongoing exposure to real constraints. The emphasis is on clarity that survives real-world use, tools that stay usable when things get messy, and systems that help teams keep moving instead of getting stuck.

Games, 3D & Simulation

High-fidelity visual systems, 3D production, World of Warships at Wargaming

Experience at large-scale game development and 3D production at Wargaming, contributing to World of Warships. This work required extreme visual precision, spatial reasoning, and historical accuracy, in an environment where details were heavily scrutinized and player trust was earned through correctness rather than polish alone.

Working on complex, simulation-driven systems sharpened an instinct for visual truth under pressure: how small inaccuracies compound, how representation shapes understanding, and how credibility is built or lost over time when users rely on what they see.

This perspective naturally extends to spatial and immersive interfaces, where scale, orientation, and visual accuracy directly affect understanding, and where visuals are not decorative, but foundational to how systems are perceived and trusted.

Building something real?

Under pressure, constraint, or growth, this is how we approach it together.

Systems Thinking

Products are treated as systems, not collections of screens.

Structure, feedback loops, and long-term consequences are prioritized, building foundations teams can scale without constant rework.

Calm Complexity

Complex tools need calmer interfaces, not louder ones.

Clarity, legibility, and reduced cognitive load guide decisions. Designed for variance, not the “average user.”

Designing Uncertainty

Emerging technologies rarely come with clear patterns.

Ambiguity is explored early through speculative interface work, shaping direction before products harden.

AI With Intent

AI changes behavior, not just visuals.

Decisions center on trust, explainability, and human oversight. AI is introduced where it adds value, not noise.

Founder-Proximate

Design happens close to decision-making.

Momentum is built early without accumulating UX debt. Direction stays coherent as teams scale.

Grounded Decisions

Design choices are tested against real workflows.

Research and exposure to constraints inform direction. Systems are shaped by use, not assumption.

Designing for attention, not distraction • Design lives at the boundary between humans and machines • Complexity doesn’t need more interface. It needs more thought • Strategy before surfaces •

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Last updated April 2026
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