Chris Arteaga

During my career, I’ve been able to work across many areas of the design field, which I believe has given me a holistic approach to collaborating with others and the design work I deliver. The first part of my career was focussed on honing my digital design craft, followed by working in more strategic design roles. I then learned to and coached other designers to zoom out and investigate the bigger picture of the problems we are trying to solve before jumping in to define well-crafted and thoughtful solutions.

As a consultant, I’ve been challenged to work in high-pressure situations, where I need to perform and deliver value from day 1 of starting on a new project or client. I thrive when faced with new challenges since I can quickly understand the value I need to deliver, ask the right questions and take action to start delivering.

For the past year, I took on a new challenge as a designer to work on the other side: a digital product company, which has been a breath of fresh air since I have been able to learn so much being dedicated to a single product. Working for a start-up, I’ve been able to take on a hybrid role as designer and product manager, where I’ve combined my product design and digital strategy skills, to deliver value to our users, whilst learning a lot about product delivery and data analysis. This has been a really exciting journey and I’m looking forward to continuing to learn more about the product-space whilst bringing my own perspective to the team.

Lastly, with my experience, I’ve created perspective on what being a designer means to me. I am a designer and mentor who isn’t scared to challenge the status quo since I always put the users of the products I design first, whilst drawing on my gut-feeling to not enter analysis paralysis. At the same time, I’m not afraid to fail since these are the moments that I’ve learned the most about myself as a designer and person.