Roberto Jalkh

Roberto Jalkh

Product Designer & Strategist in Munich

About

I'm a product generalist, design evangelist, and data enthusiast who builds successful teams and products across different industries.

I previously led the Product Design and Research teams at Guestline and Global Saving Group, transforming the landscape in the affiliate, travel deals, and hospitality tech industries.

Before moving to Germany, I led the brand and design efforts at Bunny Studio, an End-to-end creative fulfillment platform. I co-founded Olinguito, an award-winning startup building products for empowering citizens.

Let's chat about Futurology, Design for Social Impact, and Product Strategy.

Contact

Website
LinkedIn

Work Experience

2021 — 2023
Munich
  • Spearheading design strategy and product vision for digital products at Guestline, aligning design efforts with business goals, user needs, and industry trends.

  • Hiring and leading a team of product designers, fostering a culture of excellence and collaboration while promoting a user-centric and data-driven company culture.

  • Designed, and promoted a design system serving multiple products and development teams, successfully transforming operations and product perception.

  • We have successfully redesigned Guestline's flagship products, resulting in a significant increase in user engagement, and customer satisfaction, and boosting revenue with the business goal of having a product ready for the company acquisition by new investors.

  • I've regularly presented design concepts, strategies, and outcomes to executive leadership, board members, and external stakeholders.

  • Effectively communicated the value and impact of design on business success, by supporting sales and executive pitches for clients like Motel One, Best Western, and Point A.

2018 — 2020
Munich
  • Promoted and fostered a user-centric and data-driven company culture, which helped in creating customer-centric design solutions.

  • Successfully built and directly managed a design and research team across different business units, providing guidance, mentorship, and support to enhance their skills and expertise.

  • Developed a framework for assessing the product unit's needs, enabling me to hire and train the right people, which resulted in increased productivity and efficiency.

  • Implemented and tested a robust Design System that supports the optimization of more than 20 couponing and product review publisher sites, leading to a consistent and cohesive user experience for millions of users.

  • Led initiatives to enhance the users' experience and conversion rate for Pouch and Publisher Couponing and Product review sites for leading media outlets such as CNN, Business Insider, Daily Mail, and Focus. These efforts have improved customer engagement and satisfaction, resulting in increased revenue for the company.

2017 — 2018
Munich
  • Led, researched and redesigned the Holiday Detective brand and product

  • Led, researched and redesigned the fashion brand and product Savly.

  • Improvements to the user’s experience and conversion rate for travel deals pages.

  • Improve the conversion rate for Daily Mail Discounts by defining and implementing an experimentation framework.

  • Defined Personas with a scientific approach by analyzing and clustering data from +500 users

  • Creation of UI design guidelines.

  • Presented and communicated the design vision to the CEO, stakeholders and the rest of the team.

  • Managed a team of designers for UI/UX and Content.

2015 — 2017
Bogota
  • Improved the user interface and experience for the voice-over services, supporting the business's success with clients like Apple, Spotify, and Airbnb.

  • Researched, designed, tested, and launched the written content, translations and dubbing services.

  • Led the rebranding research and strategy.

  • Led the design guild, where design-related knowledge was shared with colleagues from all teams.

  • Developed a framework for automatically measuring and monitoring UX metrics.

  • Led and designed the Bunny Studio Design System

  • Assessed the brand perception and provided guidelines for future improvements

2013 — 2015
CO-FOUNDER & PRODUCT GENERALIST at Olinguito
Bogota
  • Co-founded and played a key role as a product person, researcher, designer, product owner, and spokesperson for a Social Digital Factory, driving positive social impact (democracy, citizen empowerment, and health).

  • Developed award-winning solutions multiple times across Latin America, thanks to our design thinking approach to social challenges and technology.

  • Worked on a diverse range of topics from discovery to production, focusing on identifying needs and developing tools to improve people's lives.

2012 — 2013
Bogota

I designed and built (HTML/CSS) e-courses for the Colombian Justice Ministry and other public entities.

Education

2022 — 2022
Product Strategy at Reforge
2017 — 2017
Designing, Running, and Analyzing Experiments at University of San Diego
2007 — 2013
Industrial Design at Industrial University of Santander

Side Projects

2023
Omega - Bed Table

Omega is a bed table composed of multiple layers of laminated wood, with fine surfaces in wood and leather.

Speaking

2019
Make Personas Great Again at UX Monday
Munich

Make Personas great again.
Unlocking the Power of Latent Class Analysis in User Research.

How to infuse precision and depth into your research practices. Discovering how to leverage latent class analysis (LCA) can redefine your approach to user segmentation, providing a robust foundation for impactful product design and content strategy.

An exploration of the methods to bring a new level of rigour to research efforts, enhancing the way user segments are defined and understood.

Awards

2014

First prize with “El Dorado” an app (iOS and Android) for empowering citizens by getting to know better the city they live in.

2014

First prize with “Yo Intervengo” an app (web, iOS and Android)  for tracking, and reporting contracts

for public works, and creating collective actions for more empowered citizens.

Exhibitions

2013
Bogota, Colombia

Selected as one of the more influential academic projects with “Mutandis”, a shoulder mount rig for digital video cameras, configurable according to user and production needs.