Tobias Ottahal

Tobias Ottahal

Principal Designer in Vancouver, BC, He/Him/His

About

Senior design leader specializing in brand– and product design for the renewable energy sector. 13+ years of experience. I lead with empathy and creativity combined with research-driven, results-oriented process to find unrecognized opportunities for innovation.

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Work Experience

2018 — 2024
Vancouver, Canada

▶ Responsibilities:
• Lead the design team of 15 designers and 5 developers across multiple time zones.
• Ensure consistent, exceptional user experience across highly complex B2B product and system running $2.9T worth of energy infrastructure assets, such as solar generation.
• Conduct user testing to effectively solve customer pain points and find opportunities for innovation.
• Collaborate and communicate data-driven research across teams to inform and build effective and cohesive experiences.

▶ Accomplishments:
• Led cross-functional and cross-continental teams to:
• Identify, create a $8M new product pillar and build the end-to-end product.
• Improve the user experience of creating critical energy infrastructure investments by 27%, saving $1M and keeping client retention to 100%.
• Redesign the global suite navigation UX and UI leading to navigation ease-of-use improvement of 34% and a task success rate improvement of 47%
• Mentor to 7+ developer colleagues in design thinking, careers growth and development opportunities.

2017 — 2017
Vancouver, Canada

• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to build outstanding apps, interfaces, and brands.
• Communicated with stakeholders and clients on product development
• Translated words of wisdom and visions into meaningful interfaces relating to real life.
• Researched, implemented and shared best development practices with the team
• Conducted user experience research and studies
• Rapid prototyping and delicious interfaces.

2016 — 2017
Vancouver, Canada

• Lead the UX/UI design of the SKIO platform.
• Designed interactive prototypes to communicate and validate hypotheses.
• Planned and executed usability studies.

2015 — 2016
Vancouver, Canada

• Considered requirements from various stakeholders, internal and external, from executives to marketing departments to end users.

• Conducted user interviews, processed user feedback and made recommendations.

• Translated concepts into effective information architectures.

• Created personas, user stories, workflows, and mockups.

• Built and iterated on working prototypes.

• Designed interfaces and components for web-based energy management software products.

2012 — 2015
Vancouver, Canada

• User needs discovery, requirements gathering, user persona definition, use cases and workflows.

• Wireframing, prototyping

• Art direction for iOS and Android applications.

• Established UX/UI strategy, process and infrastructure.

1998 — 2006
Co-founder at Fuchikoma
Gothenburg, Sweden

Ran a small web design collective together with three colleagues. Did several website productions, along with some recruiting and networking projects.

2004 — 2005
Gotheburg, Sweden

Conceiving, animating, and retouching digital ads and banners.

2001 — 2002
Gothenburg, Sweden

Part of F&B's online department Virus. Developing ideas for ad campaigns, storyboarding, commercial illustration, animation.

Education

Side Projects

Ongoing

My personal design practice.

Speaking

2013
Vancouver, Canada

Together with Hamza Vora, I gave a presentation of our experiences teaching design and setting up disaster relief in Pakistan during the worst floods in the country's history.

2010
Vancouver, Canada

Together with Hamza Vora, I gave a presentation of our experiences teaching design and setting up disaster relief in Pakistan during the worst floods in the country's history.

2010
Mountain View, California, USA

Together with Hamza Vora, I gave a presentation of our experiences teaching design and setting up disaster relief in Pakistan during the worst floods in the country's history.

Awards

2013

Recieved the People's Choice award for MeKeeper, an app to empower patients to control, store and update and share their health information at any time.

2009

"Nice Fit" grad project at ECUAD with Jeff Werner. The project consisted of printed publication of our theory and a table that interactively responded to objects.

2009

Among the graduates with the highest GPA

2005
Scholarship from Kai & Greta Bäling's Foundation

Scholarship for attending Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design

2002

Interactive Campaign, "GP Was Here" campaign
*“Guldägget“ is Sweden’s biggest advertising awards ceremony.

2002

Client: IKEA
Campaign: "Perishables"
*“Guldägget“ is Sweden’s biggest advertising awards ceremony.

2002

Client: SCA Hygiene Products
Campaign name: "Karaoke"
Media: Interactive, banners/Mini-Sites/Promos

2001

Client: SCA Hygiene Products, Libero
Campaign: "Be prepared"
*“Guldägget“ is Sweden’s biggest advertising awards ceremony.

Features

2014

Featured in the book "The Business Action Planner" by Taendem Agency - a toolkit to bring structure and focus to business building efforts.

2013

Together with Lydia Cambron and Lisa Säfwenberg I was the subject of a case study on generative design tools, written by Louise St. Pierre in the design research book "Convivial Toolbox" by Liz Sanders & Pieter Stappers.