Ricardo Santos joined receeve a year ago as one of our UX/UI experts and is making the usage of our product as easy and as intuitive as possible ever since. Originally out of sunny Lisbon and now working from beautiful Munich in Germany, Ricardo brings in many years of experience and therefore is with all of his expertise an essential part of our product team.
As a UX/UI Designer, what are you doing at receeve?
When I joined receeve, there was a big gap in the company when it came to product design. Most of my time has been on establishing the proper processes so we can scale as fast and efficiently as possible.
I have worked on building out a design library – a consolidated resource of the base elements (buttons, icons and the like) used throughout the system. That was the first step needed to create our product’s design language. It facilitates our development so we can be more efficient but also improves the user experience. If a design language is not defined it would be the same as reading a book in English with four chapters in Spanish and having all the footnotes in French.
That was a big chunk of time when I started. Now the focus is on expanding the presence of design-centred concepts in our product. We are conducting multiple UX research processes in parallel to validate our hypothesis. We have made design the start point in any product change. No feature or improvement moves forward without first passing through design. Avoiding despair on the engineering side – they now don’t need to make up how something should look – and ensures the maintenance of the design language I mentioned previously.
With all of this going on we are looking to expand the team. So I have been busy with recruitment, ensuring we can find the best candidate.
What makes receeve special as an employer?
Flexibility and trust are the two first words that come to mind. The flexibility to work from anywhere and you get to make your calendar. If you want to go for a walk in the middle of the day, that’s fine. And everyone trusts that you will do your obligations without a question.
Another thing that I have found special about receeve is how much we want to find the right candidate for the role. So you know that your colleagues are going to be world-class in their fields. That helps to establish trust between each other from the ground up.
Why did you choose to work for a startup and why work in collections?
If I’m being very honest, the reasons to work on a startup are very selfish. It’s an opportunity for me to be at the forefront of an industry revolutionary product. Not only can I shape it, ensuring it has the best possible user experience and the best solutions for the problems presented but I can also achieve what I want in my career.
Hiring, managing and coordinating a full UX/UI product team is something that I have done, something that I have the skills for but at the same time something that in a big corporation would be beyond my grasp. Just because on paper it might not read that way. But in the context of a startup – or even a scaleup – that is more than achievable.
The second question was probably the most common between my previous colleagues, my friends and my family when I told them about receeve. However, to me, it was pretty clear. My goal when I joined was to make the debtor’s life easier and less stressful. Even though we don’t sell anything to a debtor, they are the reason why I joined. If at the end of the day the processes that we advocate for with all of our clients and the features that we have designed have helped someone sleep better because they don’t have to think about their debt then my work was worth it.
What does your perfect “Feierabend” (German term for ‘time in the evening’ after work) look like?
At the end of each day, I deep clean a room in my house. That helps me calm down and creates some distance between me and the work. Then I usually do some reading – either something design process-related or fantasy. Right now I’m going through a game book. Apparently, it was a popular genre in the 70s and 80s, called Flight from the Dark by Joe Dever.
Then I cook dinner for me and my partner and usually end the evening on the couch either watching a movie or some tv.
Want to work with Ricardo? Check out all the job postings on our careers page.
