Hi there,
I am Tomasz

I work as a UX developer.
My mission is to create logical experiences combining user and business needs.

My way to UX

    My way to User Experience Design was not straightforward. It was a long and complex process that allowed me to build my skill-set, learn empathy, gather multicultural proficiency and find my true passion.


01 Computer Science

    My first motivation is IT. I started my higher education at the Computer Science faculty, where I gathered basics knowledge of programming and crucial skill for my future career: algorithmic thinking. After two semesters I decided to move forward and I passed a drawing exam to Architecture Faculty.

02 Architecture

    My second motivation is Design. I obtained a Master’s Degree in Architecture and Urban Planning. But the most crucial was a year when I was an exchange student in Istanbul. There I meet a mentor who change my life: prof. Ozan Önder Özener. He thought me the basics of Computational Design, a field of design using algorithms to generate parametric geometries.

03 PhD Studies

    Computational Design became the major topic of my Master’s Thesis and subsequently mayor field of Ph.D. research. I was teaching junior students basics while polishing my skill-set. Then, after one year another milestone happened, I got a job offer from one of the most influential architects of our time: Ma Yansong, founder of MAD Architects from Beijing. It was like winning a lottery.

04 Parametric Design

    In April 2015, I borrowed money for one way ticket to China. Before moving to the Middle Kingdom, I already studied the basics of Mandarin for about one year. At MAD Architects, I was part of a team developing one of the most influential architectural projects of the XXI century: Harbin Opera House. I built life-lasting impactful friendships with peers all around the world and met my wife to be.

05 Project Leader

    After two years of experiencing harsh air quality in Beijing, with my fiancée we decided to move to Guizhou a historical province of eternal spring. My proficiency in Chinese increased rapidly and I accepted an offer as a project leader at the local design institute. I successfully led a team containing 10 Mandarin-only speaking designers.

06 UX Design

    My third motivation is humanity. After years of searching, I finally found a field that connects all three stimuli into one fascinating being, and it is User Experience. After watching practical and theoretical tutorials, studying influential books and practicing with smaller projects I am ready to move forward...


If you have any questions, how or want to know something more about
my way to UX please do not hesitate to send me a message:

The story begins

Intersection of Programming,
Design and Adventure

    It was around 2007 when I for the first time heard term usability, but at that time I was not ready for becoming UX Designer. I was then a computer science student and I treated it as a curiosity. I was simply too absorbed by studying algorithms and programming languages to see the world from the perspective of users.

    One year later, I made an important decision to abandon computer science and I was accepted by an architecture faculty. I had a feeling that computer science was too technical. My mission was always to create good for people, it is why that time I did many charity works. I helped homeless, poor and rejected people. During this time as an architecture student, I started to see the world from the perspective of users, and I began to ask myself questions. How would people feel inside this space? How would it work for people? How space could influence emotions?

My magic flower: Oxalis Triangularis starting to bloom in Istanbul, 2011.

    The next milestone happened when I was accepted as an international exchange student by the Istanbul Technical University. I spent the second year of my master's degree in this ancient city, where for centuries eastern culture met the western one. That time I took a great effort to study the Turkish language. When my flatmates and friends went for parties, I was sitting in my room and constantly repeat Turkish lessons. After one year I was capable of speaking Turkish relatively fluent, and it was somehow a great achievement for me as Turkish is not an Indo-European language.

Practising Chinese calligraphy in Poznan, 2013.

    But what was most important, it also opened my eyes to a different culture, allowed me to communicate with completely unknown people. For the first time, I also realized how similar European languages and cultures were. When I was learning English at school, I had a feeling it was so different from my mother's tongue Polish. But when I became proficient in language with completely different roots, I started to see overwhelming deep similarities, in grammar, in way of thinking and most importantly in Latin roots of a great part of the vocabulary.

“Seeing is believing, but is it truth?
Depends on your point-of-view.”

Morgan Freeman

    In Istanbul, I met one of the most important mentors of my life prof. Ozan Önder Özener, who introduced to me the secrets of parametric design. A way of thinking of buildings as of computer programs, where all parts of geometry could be mathematically described. My background in computer science and knowledge of C# gave me a tremendous advantage over other peers in my class. In days, I was able to absorb and apply the knowledge that took other students months or more to do. Very soon Parametric Design became my strongest asset, and topic of my master thesis.

The professional journey begins

Time as an Architect

    After finishing my master's degree, I graduated from architecture faculty in 2014 and the next milestone happened. That time, I studied Chinese for around one year, and I was invited for 3 months-long internship to Guizhou province by a local design institute. I had spent amazing and productive time in the Middle Kingdom and I knew, one day I had to come back to China.

    After coming back to Poland started to work for the same Chinese design institute, which wanted to open the European branch of the company. Simultaneously my employer supported me to start a Ph.D. This way I spent the next few months studying, working on architecture projects and practicing Chinese.

    Good things, however, have a tendency not too last too long. My Chinese employer realized that they were not yet ready to move the creative process to Europe. My Chinese was also not yet good enough to coordinate projects using only this language. I was left with started Ph.D., and for the first time in life technically jobless...

MAD Architects family picture in Beijing, 2016
© Rasmus Daniel Taun

    That time events started to accelerate again, I designed a portfolio and sent it to a few selected studios in China. A few days later, magic happened... I got an invitation for an interview from MAD Architects. The studio, I learned about in university, I admired their buildings in design magazines and they wanted to talk with me. I could not believe what was happening. The interview went relatively easy. The studio was mostly interested in my parametric design skill-set. A few days later I got a job offer letter, and I knew it was one in a million chance, it was that time or never. I borrowed money from parents, bought a one-way ticket and two weeks later I was on a plane to Beijing.

At MAD Architects in Beijing, 2016
© Rasmus Daniel Taun


    Time at MAD Architects was definitely the most important experience of my life. I worked a lot, even as for Chinese standards: 360 or more hours a month (yes, yes it is around 12 hours a day without free weekends). I learned a crucial lesson: that perfection never comes from anything, but it is a series of countless iterations and almost impossible persistence.

    What was the most important however are the friendships I build and incredibly skilled people I had the opportunity to meet. MAD Architects were a unique mixture of cultures, collecting the best of the best designers from all around the world. I believe that everyone has an interesting story to tell, experience to share, and only what I had to do was to listen. So, I listened and learned.

"He made serious commitments to the assignments that were distributed to him. Not only delivering satisfying results but also he was always highly motivated to look into other methodologies to improve his working process, which is such a rare quality."

Ma Yansong
Founder, Principal of MAD Architects
www.i-mad.com


    During my time at MAD Architects, I contributed to many world-class projects, build meaningful friendships and matured as a designer. A year later, I felt it was time for a change. I realized that as working for star architect was an amazing experience, there was one crucial issue. The last word always belonged to the principal architect, and many crucial decisions were not data-based, on the contrary, they were arbitrary. As many of the studio's projects are icons of modern architecture, knowledge of an undergoing process started to interrupt me. I felt our buildings were somehow isolated, and we often ignored the opinions and feelings of future users.

2:00am at PWD Architects in Beijing, 2017
© Marcel Holmberg

    I wanted to try to be closer to users. I decided to leave my position at MAD Architects and accepted a job offer from a new studio created by two talented, more experienced architects who just left Ole Scheeren's office in Beijing. They were looking for their own creative identity.

    As our newly built team, we worked extremely hard to provide great designs. My personal impact on projects grew dramatically. I was able to propose many data-based solutions, that were enthusiastically accepted by principal architects and clients. Our team worked hard and our effort was awarded by winning a series of iconic competitions in Asia.

Discovering Identity

Following my passion

    While being in Beijing my personal impact on projects increased, but I still somehow did not feel concretions with future users. The successful projects I realized were often far away, and there was no opportunity to talk to local people. It is why when my old employer from my Ph.D. times contacted me, I decided to move to Guizhou province. Where we meant to realize local projects, talk to local users and try to understand them, finally start building for people.

With my wife in Kunming, 2019

    I became a project architect, responsible for coordinating Chinese and newly created Polish design teams. I led multiple social housing projects, and finally, I was close to users. I was able to talk to them and to listen. My Chinese proficiency also increased greatly, and it finally opened long-closed doors to the ancient culture. As the work pace was much slower, I had more time to travel with my wife around Asia, and again learn from a different culture.

Rediscovering UX

Back to the roots

    This time, during one of my evening readings I found an eBook version of 'Don't make me think', written by Steve Krug in my hands. I absorbed the book in a few days, and almost twelve years later, again I came across term usability. This time it was not just a curiosity but a real problem - this time I knew it was something more. As I read more and more about designing experiences I started to realize it was a field that I was always looking for. It connected three crucial fields that shaped my personality: computer science, design and the ability to make people's lives better.

    Finally, in the spring of 2019, I decided to quit my lucrative position as the project architect in Guizhou. I was 100 percent sure, that I wanted to become a User Experience Designer. I knew that the long way that led me to this moment was not wasted time, but a complex process that will allow me to design excellent experiences. I had enough connections and skills to sustain my life as a freelance architect. I traveled with my wife around China while working with demanding Chinese projects and studying User Experience design. I was reading more and more books, articles and video courses.

Some of the books I came across during my immersion into UX Design.

    As I progressed into the field of Experience Design, I started to see glaring resemblances between skills necessary for architects and UX Designers. The biggest differences are scales and timelines. Architectural projects often take years to finish and are almost exclusively designed in the Waterfall methodology. Changes are simply too expensive or almost impossible to execute. While in UX Design products are technically never finished. Agile or lean methodologies are iterative from their nature. There is always something that could be changed, there is always a way to upgrade the product. And it is great!

Why UX Design?

Making people happy by making things simple

    Architecture as a profession is old, ancient even with thousands of years of tradition. This great historical heritage is an amazing thing but it also makes architects resistant to innovations. Even parametric design, my strongest asset that opened me the doors to MAD Architects in Beijing is not widely used, it is actually still a curiosity. While IT is progressive from its nature. There are always new cutting edge technologies to emerge, there is a lot of energy and opportunity in the field.

“Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.”

W. Edwards Deming

    I chose to become a User Experience Designer because this profession is data-driven. In its relatively short history it amazing developed tools to measure user behaviors, that architects could only dream about. Every theory could be benchmarked and proved wrong or correct.

I am a self-taught UX Designer, during the study working with whiteboard helped me to understand many aspects of this profession.

    My mission as a UX Designer is to create logical, easy to use, data-based experiences. To hear user voices and carefully combine them with business needs.

    As technology progresses it tends to get more and more complex. As a designer, I have a special responsibility to make these complicated processes simpler. The goal is to create delightful to use, inclusive products.

    The design allows us to differentiate our brands by showing attention and care about our customers and users. Everybody values design either consciously or unconsciously. This is why I am passionate about creating meaningful, polished experiences. From my experience, I know that good design makes creators and customers happy.

Summary

Intersection of design, business, and intercultural proficiency

    Thanks to my diverse background in computer science, architecture, parametric design, team management, and intercultural proficiency. I am able to connect UX/UI design with real business goals while providing polished client experiences.

    Currently, I am looking for freelance or full-time commitments. If you have any project or idea in mind. Please feel free to contact me, and talk about your objective.

    I am passionate about designing and building polished experiences to make sure your customers and users are fully satisfied when they are interacting with your products and services online.

    In case you would like to know more about me, my work or have any questions, feel free to send me an email anytime.

Follow my journey

Latest Instagrams

Follow my journey on Instagram and feel free to message me anytime: @tomas_hei