Karolina Serenis
Senior Product Designer & Team Leader
Hello 👋
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Agenda

01 Who I am

Before my design journey started

My design journey

UX/UI Designer

HRTEC

Balancing customization with consistency in an HR product

UI Designer & PM

10CLOUDS

Juggling several projects at once

Product Designer

TOOPLOX

Finding my feet in a flat org structure

Senior Product Designer

NETGURU

The go-to designer for the tricky, high-stakes work

Team Leader

NETGURU

Making a real difference by helping others grow

Senior Product Designer

PERCHPEEKNow

Designing a global relocation experience

Karolina Serenis, Senior Product Designer

About me

Over the years I've shaped 40+ projects across all kinds of industries. What I love most is simple, elegant design that just feels easy to use, and bringing honest, genuinely useful products to life that work for people and the business alike. I'm always looking for the next chance to build a great experience. Away from the screen, I'm a keen enduro racer who loves being out in nature, keeping life minimal, and traveling slowly.

02 Careem - Super App

The biggest challenges & lessons learned

Go anywhere • Eat anytime • Get anything • Pay anyone

Careem Super App

Careem Super App

Get a ride, drive, order food and pay

A Dubai-based super app running in 100+ cities across 14 countries in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, with 48 million users.

👉Context: I spent 1.5 years on two Careem products, CNow and CPay.

💪Challenge:

  • Playing a hands-on role in building and rolling out flows in the new design system
  • Reworking existing flows hand in hand with developers and the VP of Product, and owning the new ones end to end
  • Running in-depth user research into how people mentally sort their shopping lists
  • Staying focused through shifting priorities and competing OKRs inside a big company
Careem Now app screens

Careem Pay

Fintech app

Careem Pay is the payments app built into the Careem super app. It handles peer-to-peer transfers, a digital wallet, merchant tools, and bill payments.

💪Challenge: Build the whole wallet experience, with several new features and some genuinely complex flows:

  • Credit card abuse
  • Careem Card launch
  • Underpayment and split-payment flows
  • Pay SDK library

🎯Solution:

  • Shipping new features while keeping everything consistent with the new design system
  • Designing the tricky flows for managing cards and juggling multiple payment methods
Careem Pay wallet screens
03 QI - Retail Startup

The biggest challenges & lessons learned

Retail App

QI Startup

QI Startup

Bringing car trade online in Iraq

👉Context: By 2023, Iraq's population is set to hit around 42 million, and more than half of it is under 25.

💪Challenge: Brand dealerships are rare. Most cars sell through small shops that carry several brands but have almost no online presence for buyers to find them.

🎯Solution: One app that brings dealers and buyers together. Dealers list their cars; buyers browse, compare, book test drives, and apply for a car loan to pay in installments.

QI Startup car marketplace screens

QI Startup

Voice search

💡In Iraq, people lean on voice messages over typing, even in apps built for text like WhatsApp.

👉What we did:

We added voice-enabled search so people can search just by speaking, which also makes the app more accessible.

QI Startup voice-enabled search screens
04 Otodom - Real Estate App

The biggest challenges & lessons learned

Real Estate

Otodom

Otodom

Solution

Build one product that works for every agent and can scale to widespread use.

Key results

  • Validate the Agent Profile MVP with user focus groups
  • Hit the first 500 agent-profile activations from agency-owner invites
  • Get 100% of new agencies onto the new registration form

Success factors

  • Time: cut lead response time by 50%, win clients 25% faster, and close deals 40% quicker
  • Stability: reliably deliver 90% pre-qualified leads on listings
  • Output: automate at least 80% of the workflow to get tasks done faster
Otodom real estate agent screens
05 How can I help you?

How can I help you?

Strengths

🏅

Challenging the status quo when it counts

💪

Managing stakeholders' conflicting expectations

👩🏻‍💻

Leading and mentoring a design team

🎲

Balancing business, tech, and user needs