Christian Bolorinos

During my time at WSA I started to be comfortable enough with PHP and JavaScript to start to make my own pages from scratch.

WSA is an award for digital products helping drive the UN SDGs. Being a global organisation (any UN member state can participate) WSA provided many opportunities for global connections. However, while the WSA community was informed of global events through the website - they often had little idea what WSA was doing locally. Additionally, the application process changed based on the requirements of the local coordinators, so the application process was very convoluted on WSA's old website - which asked for them to look up their local expert and find out what the local rules were from them.

These dynamic country pages were my way of solving that problem. The pages showed the unique application process for each of the 182 participating countries, and linked users directly to the database where they could submit their application. Additionally, the country pages showed the local winners, youth ambassadors, national experts and local events - giving the users a way to interact directly with their local WSA community, and actionable steps to get involved. The pages greatly increased the number of applicants to the WSA Award, and strenthened their presence on a local level.

Other tasks I did to strenthen WSA's local presence and engagement included using ChatGPT to regionalize their newsletter. The software they used for their 20k contact list (Brevo) showed the location that each contact was opening the emails from. I used this data to segment their mailing list by region, creating 5 different regions. This helped promote local events, and increased engagement from the users who were now being shown content that was more tailored to them.

I also created the explainer video for WSA. I'll leave it here so you can get an idea of the motion graphics work I did for them - and also incase you are completely confused about what WSA does!

During my time at Ria I assisted in the interface design for their app, which is now avaliable in the US, Canada, the UK, Spain and Australia.

To see the full app you can download it on Android or IOS. My role was to oversee the design of the customer facing side of the app, supervising the product designers and app developers to make sure the app was consistent with our branding and reflected the best UX practices for what we knew about our user base.

The app was made in a hurry, as during Covid-19 Ria was forced to quickly create a digital platform for their services (which until then had been done in their brick and mortar locations). However, the app was well received (we followed up with customer support to find out if the app was causing any problems with users).

Two notable updates I made on the 5Mins app were the social functionality on the home page, and the gamification system.

Home Page

5Mins is a B2B app that allows users to learn skills relevant to their role, while competing with their coworkers, and in some cases, being guided or supervised by their superiors. When I got to 5Mins their home page showed mainly algorithmically suggested content based on the user’s skillset. This made sense when it had less than 500 monthly users, but as we got nearer to 10 thousand, we wanted to start having some social activity on the app as well. The first thing we did was add the “share” button to videos. If a user liked a video they could share it either within or outside the app. Additionally, we added a social tab to the home page which allowed users to view content that was either suggested by their coworkers, trending in their teams or assigned by their company. You can view a clickable prototype of my designs here.

Gamification system

When I got to 5Mins there was some gamification elements in place, including a streak function and a daily goal. To further incentivise users, I added a learning path with a system of badges and (for more engaged users) certificates which could be displayed on LinkedIn or their CV.
The learning path can be viewed here.

In the early stages, the user would unlock badges by attaining skill points (which could be attained by watching relevant videos). However, once they had unlocked three badges, then they would be offered certificates as well. When the user completed the designated amount of lessons, they would be prompted to do an assessment. If they got more than 80% of the assessment correct, they would get the certificate.

During my time at SwissBorg I had many responsibilities; among them maintaining the website.

The website's main purpose was to get people to download the app. Part of how I did this was by AB testing certain components and seeing how they performed against eachother. Whenever one significantly outperformed the other, I would move forward with that design, and proceed to test something else. One obvious example of this is the QR code on the homescreen. When I got to SwissBorg it showed up on hover, but when I conducted an AB test comparing it to one that showed up by default, the second option lead to about twice as many app downloads. The Android and IOS buttons were also useless, as there was no desktop app.

Another purpose of the website was to upsell people to the premium version of the app. Part of how we did this was by showing compelling graphs comparing the yields users would get with different subscriptions. These graphs, as well as many other interactive components on the page were monitored with Hotjar so we could see which ones users interacted with more. In the Figma file below are some notable examples. The standard yield showed how much more interest you would make with the more expensive plans, and the CHSB yield showed the same. The CHSB yield had some advanced functionality too, as you would earn different amounts of yield depending on how much you had invested. Most users didn't care about this option, so we used the accordeon so they could ignore it if they wanted to, and not get overwhelmed with too much information.

This website was done for Barclay Damon, an international law firm. It was designed by me and built by a team of developers at Saturno Design. It had to be not only responsive and CMS friendly, but capable of being adapted to hundreds of individual pages without creating conflicts.

The above design was an early concept of mine for Barclay Damon’s website. It showed an office plant casting a shadow of a windmill. This would have been referencing BD’s Renewable Energy practice area, which they were keen to highlight. While this was my personal favorite, it was not the concept that the client decided to move forward with.

Another concept I put forward featured a double exposure, which was a versatile way of communicating a broad array of practice areas, and would adapt easily to the diverse needs of Barclay Damon’s attorneys. They enthusiastically agreed to this design, but requested that I incorporate motion graphics, which I was happy to do.

After several rounds of reviews, we agreed on a design for the entire website. The website contains 14 unique page designs and was built with Saturno’s custom CMS system: Webback. In addition to the 14 pages, each page was designed for mobile and tablet. Each of the 5 videos featured on the home screen had a mobile version as well. The designs of the internal pages had to be flexible enough to accomodate 9 offices, 65 practice areas and hundreds of attorneys.

Ria was the first time I was exposed to design that was entirely independent of Marketing. The purpose of my department was to change public perception of the brand, particularly among prospective talent and potential partners.
One of the ways in which we did this was by reframing Ria. Ria is generally associated with low end communities around Europe and the US, but our videos told a story about how it was a driving force in the redistribution of wealth from wealthy countries to poor ones. We also told the story about how it was a lifeline for entire communities.

Another of the ways in which me and my team did this was by making an extensive collection of educational content. These animated videos informed people of difficult to grasp concepts in finance and economics. They were put on Ria's Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube platforms. The videos were meticulously targetted, using keywords that were frequently googled and infrequently referenced. We covered not only FinTech topics such as Blockchain, Mobile Banking and EFT's; but also remittance related topics such as Microfinance and Romance Scams.
The videos were enormously successful. Our Instagram following increased by over 200% and our LinkedIn by 70% (making us the most followed account on LinkedIn among all our competitors). My role was mostly in animating, but also researching and in some cases writing the content.

Steven the Lettuce is a start-up I co-founded with 2 business partners. It is an app that gamifies sustainability by offering users rewards for logging sustainable behaviors, and provides them with sustainable alternatives to any brand/business/service they look up. I was responsible for branding the company and designing the interface.

I created the explainer video and maintained the website, steventhelettuce.org and helped pitch the project in Venture Lab and South Summit. The image above is a screenshot from the Explainer Video which features several 2d animations of Steven.

For market research on what was effective at getting users engaged, as well as to give investors a basic idea about how the product worked, I also developed a functional prototype. The prototype featured 5 different services: a social feed, a browser add-on, a petition search engine, a company search engine and a section for logging behavior. The prototype was made on Adobe XD, and has been tested on over 700 different users. Using Google Forms and the commenting function on XD, we were able to get user feedback, and iterate based on our results. The prototype went through four iterations. The final iteration can be accessed through this link.
Other research conducted for Steven included several online surveys and a simplified Carbon Footprint Calculator.

I was hired for only a 6 month contract at Servie Club Delivery, and while my formal role was as Sr Marketing Director, my informal roles included Web Developer, UX/UI Designer, Social Media Manager, UX Researcher and Motion Graphics Designer.

The company was formed to connect couriers to courier companies (Uber Eats, Glovo, Deliveroo, etc), and to reduce their churn rate (which is one of the biggest pain points for these companies). Our services included a job board and an academy where couriers could upskill and earn certificates (think LinkedIn for couriers).

When I joined SCD I also signed up to be a courier for Deliveroo to better understand the ecosystem, riding around Madrid delivering food for about 3 hours a week. I also interviewed countless couriers, both in person and online through surveys, interviews and data analysis. I soon found the massive pain point that they had, and a way we could fix it.
The hardest part about working for the delivery apps was the infernal pile of indecipherable documents that one had to complete to be able to register as a freelancer. This was made significantly worse by the fact that most couriers are either students or migrants.

The first step we made was to add a course in the academy on getting and maintaining a Spanish work visa, as well as several others helping people understand what work opportunities were and weren’t available to them. Users had to create a profile on our system to access these courses, which were marketed extensively on online communities that were popular with students and recent migrants. Additionally, we partnered with a company that registered people as freelancers for a small monthly fee (around 12 euros if I remember correctly). This meant that through our interface we were able to offer people a way to fill out this immensely complicated paperwork without lifting a finger.
The result was a massive increase in the couriers in our system. It rose from 2000 to 14000 in the six months I worked there. Our social media channels were similarly affected (+400% and +75% on Instagram and LinkedIn respectively). These rapidly inflating metrics also got us important contracts with 4 different major companies (Glovo, Uber Eats, Stuart and Getir).

Yaupon & Rose was a start-up I co-founded based in Tyler Texas. It made teas with Yaupon, a caffeinated plant that grows in the Southern US. The plant has grown in popularity in recent years due to its drought resistance, low carbon footprint, and connection to Native American Culture.

I was responsible for designing the brand and packaging as well as marketing. Over the course of four years we went from a team of three to a 15 person company with an online shop and a presence in at least eleven tea shops and hotels accross the Southeastern United States

During my time at the Master in Customer Experience & Innovation at IE, I was hired with seven others by Hilti to do research into what was causing their high churn rate among lower income buyers.

To address this issue we were given access to over 4000 emails of their clients. Of those, about 200 answered. About 20 of them agreed to phone interviews, and the others agreed to fill out a series of questionnaires designed to diagnose the issue. Over the following weeks we were able to compile enough data to understand Hilti users. Below are the ecosystem and customer journey maps we created to better understand this segment.

Our final delivery included insights from our research, suggested minor tweaks to their business model, and also the design for a value calculator to be included in their website. The calculator was meant to educate the buyers on the option (between renting and buying) that made the most financial sense for them.

During my time at the Master in Customer Experience & Innovation at IE, I was hired with a team of six people by Hemper to do research into how to leverage their new location in Madrid to create brand awareness.

To address this we did extensive research on their target audience, millenials in Madrid who enjoy travel and try to shop sustainably. We interviewed 37 people, and conducted a few online surveys as well to create a profile of the millenial Madrid ethical shopper (we named her "Calletana"). Below are two artifacts from our research phase, the ecosystem map and the customer journey map.

Besides extensive quantitative and qualitative research on Hemper's target, we also conducted AB (and C) testing to determine what sort of windows and displays they would respond to. Through this research we were able to provide Hemper with data based guidelines on how to increase engagement with their store. Below are two of the tests

CBorgs was an NFT project by SwissBorg. My task was to create the branding, assist in the marketing campaign and generate the NFT's themselves.

For the branding I was inspired particularly by Lunartics, an NFT project that gave a colorful narrative to their tokens. I wanted the tokens to have a story. Since part of the proceeds were going to projects in sustainability, DeFi, and Web3 I made them into space robots that had come to help us earthlings with what they deemed to be our most critical problems.

This concept was open ended enough to adapt to any partnerships. I was able to make simple animations of the CBorg tokens talking to each other and discussing the world's problems - and what they deemed to be practical solutions. These were featured on Twitter and Discord, and rapidly created an awareness of the project.
In addition to the branding and marketing, I also assisted in the design and performance tracking of the website, and the generation of the NFT's themselves. A team of illustrators created a plethora of outfits, accessories and expressions on the CBorgs, and the software Bueno.nft was able to combine them into 10,000 unique tokens. From there they were exported onto the Ethereum blockchain.