Nicola Badenhorst

Nicola Badenhorst

Product Designer in Cape Town, South Africa, She / her

About

I graduated from the Cape Town Creative Academy with a degree in Interaction Design and have spent the last 6+ years honing my craft in a variety of settings, from product design teams to independent studios.

Currently, I'm working remotely with a San Francisco-based studio, Logic + Rhythm, where we collaborate with startups and established companies across the US and Europe to bring digital products to life.

While at Logic + Rhythm, I worked as the Lead Designer on Switchboard, a collaboration tool. Switchboard has earned a great following since its public beta launch, has won Product of the Day, and was featured as a Rising Star in the Forbes 2022 Cloud 100.

I've also worked alongside the Bueno team on Web3 features to make NFT creation more accessible to creators on their platform.

Projects

2022

Switchboard aims to change the way remote teams collaborate in an online space by providing the tools and environments necessary to have spontaneous and collaborative conversations with teammates. Switchboard has secured $38,8 million in funding and has won Product Hunt of the Day on 02 May 2022. They have been recognized as one of 20 Rising Stars on Forbes' Cloud 100 List, as well as one of the best inventions of 2022 by the Times, and have won a Webby Award for Apps, dApps, and Software Productivity & Collaboration in 2023.

2022

Hamul allows friends to play together using video and voice chat while having fun utilizing emoji reactions and sound effects while gaming. Hamul reached out to Logic + Rhythm to assist them in improving the onboarding, invite, and search experience for their Windows Desktop App, I was tasked to lead this initiative.

Hamul has since been acquired by Roblox for $17 million in 2022.

2019

Woolworths is a premium retailer that is known for selling quality produce, clothing, home, and beauty items to consumers within South Africa. MakeReign was approached by Woolworths Online to improve the overall user experience on their Product Listing and Product Description Pages while developing a clean and modern UI to go along with their recent rebrand.

Work Experience

2023 — Now
Remote

Logic + Rhythm: Logic + Rhythm is a remote technology studio that helps companies get their ideas off the ground by designing, prototyping, and building great software together. As a member of this team, I focused on designing, prototyping, and quality assessment for various digital products, including Switchboard, Bueno, and Aloft. My work contributed to helping companies receive further funding.

Want to work with us? hello@logicandrhythm.com

2019 — 2021
Remote

H+H Digital Co. is a marketing firm that uses technology and innovation to produce growth and conversion. Their methods are specifically crafted to deliver results - tangible results. As a Freelance Creative Director, I assist the agency with all Graphic Design related tasks, including social media graphics, branding, ebooks, illustration, and landing page builds, as well as Video Asset creation for Live streaming and Animations.

2020 — 2021
2020 — 2020
Remote

Turn.io is a web app that allows social impact organizations to connect with millions of users on large-scale messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. As a Product Design contractor, I collaborated with the Turn.io team for 6 months to design new features for their application.

2019 — 2020
Cape Town, South Africa

MakeReign is a digital product design studio for ambitious brands, specializing in interaction design and pushing the benchmark in eCommerce and retail with digital products. I worked on a range of digital products for Woolworths, including the Woolworths Mobile App, Ecommerce Woolworths Website, and Woolworths Financial Services App. My duties included workshop facilitation, user research, user testing, wireframing, UI design, design system management, prototyping, asset prep, and quality assessment.

2018 — 2019
Cape Town, South Africa
2018 — 2018
Cape Town, South Africa

Zero2one is a development studio who is focused on creating a range of digital products for organizations in South Africa. Within the organization, I assisted briefly with the lifting of design-related duties, creating sitemaps, prepping wireframes and the creation of high-fidelity mocks of websites and software for the development team.

2017 — 2018
Remote

Longbeard Creative is a digital media agency that aims to stir creative revolution in the digital non-profit space. They provide design services, including website design, graphic design, and social media asset creation, to support their clients' missions. As a UX/UI Designer, I participated in all aspects of the design process, from creative exploration to quality assessment. My duties included website architecture, style tile creation, user interface design, user research, graphic design, and asset creation for social media.

Education

2015 — 2017

Certifications

2022

To further expand on my skill set, I took an online course focused on Digital Marketing. This course prepared me for all facets of marketing, including Research, Strategy, SEO, Digital Advertising, Social Media Marketing, and Content Creation.

2021

Polished up on best practices for building and managing design systems for digital products.

2018

I studied for my BA in Interaction Design, and did electives in Illustration and Photography.

Teams

Past
Logic + Rhythm