✩ about me
Brazilian roots
I'm originally from Curitiba in Brazil, where I graduated in Visual Design (2000) and completed a Master's in Web Design (2003). This city was important for my professional formation and essential to my design practice.
My career started early, in 1997, as a marketing assistant in an eco-tourism agency. Later, at University, I participated in multiple training programs, such as product manager at the Pro-ação comunitária and as a designer at the Vivat Florest, giving me a great foundation in Eco-design and Sustainability.
During the early 2000s, opportunities became vast on the Internet and HCI (Human Computer Interaction), and my focus shifted to Interaction and Visual Design. I started my career in Digital, using my skills to design mobile apps, websites, digital marketing campaigns, and asset design.
Between 2001 and 2003, I also experienced entrepreneurism, and together with two other colleagues, we offered digital services through an agency called Nextmedia.
In Brazil, between 2004-2008 and 2010-2011, I worked at Positivo Informatica (Dynamic Content Coordinator), Lojas Renner (Web analyst), AcessoZero (Lead Interaction Designer), Agência Casa (JWT) (Lead Interaction Designer - Contractor), Learnway (Lead Interaction Designer). As a design and digital strategist consultant, I worked with clients such as Volvo, Renault, Bematech, Porto Seguro, Boticátrio, Banco do Brazil, Gol Linhas Aéreas and many others. I also conducted lectures at FaberLudens, Ensitech, Aldeia, and a few other institutions.
International career, Canada and Finland
I lived abroad for the first time in Helsinki between 2009 and 2010 and worked as an Interaction and Visual Designer at Fjord Helsinki. During that time, I collaborated with teams from brands such as Skype, NSN, Nokia, BBC, TVe, and Ericsson.
After spending another two years in Brazil, 2010-2011, I returned to Helsinki with my family. Between 2012 and 2017, I grew my career as a Digital Channels Strategist and Service Designer consultant for Ixonos, Fjord / Digital Accenture, Futurice and Digitalist (Ixonos). Some of the brands I worked with during that time were Marcopolo, Nokian Tyres, Honka, Iittala, Stockmann, Viking Line, Safmarine, OP, Rovio, Fira, YIT, Fennia, Fortum, Swarovski, ABB and BMW.
In 2018, I moved to Canada, Vancouver BC. During almost three years, I had the opportunity to lead and expand the Digitalist offering in NA, and as Design Manager, I established a team of 20 design consultants with a range of competencies (13 in Vancouver, BC and 7 in San Francisco, US). Our accounts included Finning, Microsoft, Nokia, Google and Pacific Blue Cross.
During the COVID crisis, my family and I moved back to Helsinki, and since May 202o, we have lived in Helsinki. Still working for Digitalist as a Design Director, I led work for ILOQ, Fortum, Posti and Stora Enso.
VTT was my destination from 2021 and 2022, and along with some brilliant minds, I had the opportunity to work as Design Lead for multinational projects with clients such as Ansell and in ecosystems strategies (multi-brands) to uptake new technologies, sponsored by ESA (Europen Spacial Agency), HEU (Horizon Europe) and Business Finland.
Nowadays, I have been working remotely as a Design Lead contractor since January 2023 for Zurich Group Insurance. Learning about big corporations and the enterprise world, supporting CX transformation projects and leading and implementing the Sustainable Options program. More than ever, engaged with multidisciplinary teams in diverse business units worldwide.
Continues learning
As I got more involved with digital Design, I realized its evolving nature and how we approach it is continuously transformative. In 2012, my motivation to deepen my understanding of Service Design, Business Innovation, and Co-creation principles drove me to a Master’s program at Laurea University (Finland), focusing on Service Innovation and Design. I also started lecturing about Service Design in a Digital Context a few years later.
During all these years, I have been very involved with some Design communities and associations, such as the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and Service Design Network. I am always interested in exploring new and established tools, approaches, and techniques, but much more about exchanging knowledge with other people about Design. My most recent initiative to contribute to the community is the Geist, where, together with Sergio Tavares, we are building a community around radical and participatory cultural research https://www.geist.institute.
I also founded the first Brazilian design community at Orkut (2001), with some 10,000 members, and helped establish IxDA chapters in Curitiba, Recife, and later in Helsinki. I was part of the organization of Interaction South America 2013 (Recife-BR) and Interaction 16 (Helsinki, FI) conferences and many other smaller but still very significant events. I also regularly share my work in publications, workshops, and conferences. See more here.
Contact Me via:
Design Lead (Jan 2021 - Sep 2022) Espoo, Finland
At Zurich, I help with putting the CX Strategy into action. My main focus is on supporting business units to make the most of CX capabilities, such as customizing CX standards and handling innovation based on customer journeys. I also lead the Sustainable Options project, which aims to create tools and guidelines to map, analyze, ideate, evaluate, implement, and measure the performance of solutions that provide customers with sustainable choices and help them adopt a more sustainable lifestyle.
Design Lead (Jan 2021 - Sep 2022) Espoo, Finland
As Design Lead, I was directly responsible for the quality, creativity, and delivery of projects. I peer design with other design colleagues and nurture holistic innovation and systemic thinking at VTT’s research work and organization.
Some of the work done at VTT:
Forest Carbon Platform (FCP) Website
(FCP) Co-creation process
Discovery and holistic requirements
Design Director (2020 / Helsinki),
Studio and NA Design Director (2018-2020 / Vancouver BC)
and LEad Service Designer (2016-2017 / HElsinki)
Digitalist Group
In November 2016, I joined Digitalist Group as Lead Service Design; my role was to act as an expert consultant, helping customers to discover their digital future. These projects vary from extensive discovery to design implementation sprints. Later in January 2018, I joined our Vancouver studio, where I managed a local design team of 13 designers and facilitated internal and external dialogue around design practice in North America. With the challenges brought by the Pandemic, came my ex-pat contract termination and my early returned to Helsinki; now I'm gladly working as Design Director at our studio in beautiful Helsinki.
“I was very lucky to work under Jane and benefited greatly from her depth of design knowledge and her optimistic spirit. She was able to lead our team through difficult challenges with kindness and empathy while inspiring us to deliver our best work. As a manager, she sought to give me, others on my team, opportunities for personal growth such as getting journal articles published or stretching skills in facilitation at the BMW summer camp. Her guidance was invaluable in helping navigate client organizations and crafting holistic design strategy. She is able to jump in at varying levels of detail for our projects to offer guidance or input. I know the next team she leads will benefit greatly from her experience, knowledge and sense of humor.”
SENIOR SERVICE CREATOR
FUTURICE (Aug 2014 – Nov 2016)
At Futurice, I worked closely with the team to strategically understand client and consumer needs, and ensure alignment of these insights throughout the service design process to shape research strategies and concepts, to help connecting businesses to their users and economic goals.
“I had a pleasure to work with Jane in a project where we developed a new way of building apartment buildings together with end users. Jane is full of different set of tools to find out what our customers really needed and draw a great customer journey map, which helped us remarkably to build a successful product. In a nutshell Jane brought our concept alive and helped us succeed in our goal. I would gladly work with Jane in future and I sincerely recommend her to a service design project.”
Senior Interaction and Visual Designer
Fjord, Helsinki (May 2008 – Dec 2009, May 2014 - Jul 2014
This was my second time at Fjord. There I worked as Interaction Designer. I helped to create a web concept to a large company called Safmarine, which operates in the transportation segment.
“We have worked with Jane at the same team on a number of different projects. Jane is a very pleasant team member, knowledgeable and experienced in the sphere of her competence - interaction design. Jane is also a thorough and creative visual designer, which was always helpful in our work. Jane was always attentive during the meetings and shared her concerns openly in a timely manner.
Our mutual projects with Jane were all successful.”
“I learned to use my expertise to define better the problem considering sources that were not only coming from my past work life or the assigned team. I learned to transform assumptions to a hypothesis. The “great design” comes with the understanding of the client capability and experts insights, customers wants and needs and the design trend magic. All this together is a powerful tool for the business.”
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Follow my work
The best way of learning something is interacting with other people. Conversations usually bring a lot of interesting aspects to the topic that you may not have considered when you were studying it alone. Different opinions and other points of view make your findings more valuable. That is why I contribute and participate in various communities.
jane vita at medium
A few months ago, I started transferring all my articles to Medium and also contributing as writer to one of the most prestigious design community there, the UxDesign.cc. ( https://uxdesign.cc/ ) and in Portuguese ( https://brasil.uxdesign.cc/ )
Jane Vita at Slideshare
My first slide set contribution for SlideShare Design community was in 2010. Since then, I've added several public presentations on my profile. Two of them were featured and had got a broader audience, the topics where Immersive Experiences and Healthcare's Digital Future. More than 20 presentations to check out!
Service Sandbox
The Service Sandbox initiative started with the goal of creating a co-creation tool that helps designers and other professionals to create better and more meaningful services in physical spaces. Since we can’t do it alone, we decided to share the knowledge and improve the methodology together with the community. The first and second version are online to download!