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UX Journey of Galina Shokhova

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Galina Shokhova

My Qualifications

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User Research
Hollywood Plot Architecture
Critics & Interpretation
Analytics
Campaigns and Content
Communication
Stakeholder Diplomacy
Tech & Automation
Memes
Journey Mapping
Design Thinking
Semantics
Education

From Theory to Practice

My studies built the foundation for seeing UX as the craft of understanding, translating, and shaping human and business stories.

Marketing Experience

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Analytics
Analytics
Content Creation
Content Creation
Website Building
Website Building
Marketing

UX Experience

Open my first projects in UX Research & Design!

UX Experience
Showroom
Open
Xelebrate
Open
Kloop
Open
Stakeholder
User groups
Journey mapping
HCD
Interviews
MVP
Empathize
Ideate
Prototype
Interviews
Pain points
Insights
User journey
Pains & gains
Testing
Define
Design
Test

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Contact me

Showroom

Insurance agencies in Switzerland struggle with too few applications and high turnover in their sales teams. As part of developing an internal recruiting platform, I explored the end-to-end recruiting and onboarding experience to understand what high-performing agencies do differently.

My role involved planning and conducting interviews, mapping the employee journey, synthesizing patterns, and translating them into How Might We questions and early concept directions for improving recruitment and onboarding experiences.

Project steps

Sales hiring & onboarding journey

Overview

  • Context: Recruiting & retention in field sales for financial services.
  • Methods: Stakeholder & employee interviews, employee journey mapping, problem framing, and HMW ideation.
  • Target group: Career-changers entering advisory/sales roles.
  • My role: UX researcher & facilitator (planning, execution, synthesis, and concept framing).

Disclaimer:
This work forms part of an internal project for the company I am currently employed at, supporting the development of a digital recruiting platform. To maintain confidentiality and respect company ownership, specific findings and strategic insights are not disclosed here. The focus lies on my UX research process and individual contribution.

Research

I combined interviews with a structured employee-journey to understand motivations, friction, and retention triggers across the first two years.

Research questions

What motivates career-changers to enter sales?
Where do doubts or drop-offs occur in the application process and why?
How is onboarding experienced in the first 12 months?
What factors influence the decision to stay after onboarding?
How do candidates envision their future in the role and company?

Stakeholder interviews

To understand the business and organizational context, I conducted stakeholder interviews with recruitment leads, regional managers, and HR professionals. These conversations helped frame the problem from multiple perspectives — balancing agency needs with candidate experience.

Recruitment pain points from the business side
Current onboarding processes and gaps
Differences between top-performing and struggling agencies
Retention challenges during the first 12 months
Success indicators and cultural factors

Interview synthesis

In parallel, I spoke with career changers currently in sales training and early career stages. The goal was to map what motivates them to join — and what makes them stay.

Career-changer motivations

  • Desire for autonomy, self-determination, and performance-based pay
  • Attracted by flexibility and entrepreneurial image
  • Escape from routine and search for purpose-driven work

Early stressors to clarify

  • Uncertainty about income stability and commission structures
  • Lack of clarity about what “good” performance looks like
  • Negative social image of sales: fear of family/friend judgment
  • Unclear expectations about team support and collaboration

What supports retention

  • Structured onboarding and clear development paths
  • Feedback, recognition, and early confidence-building moments
  • Fair culture and accessible, supportive leadership

Employee Journey

I mapped the journey from first contact to year two to spot expectation gaps and drop-off risks.

Attraction & first contact
Selection & match
Onboarding & training
First wins & performance routines
Growth path & retention signals

How might we…

  • find and attract the right career-changers more intentionally?
  • give transparent confidence about commission-based income?
  • check competence, personality, and culture fit early and fairly?
  • set realistic expectations for the role and onboarding workload?
  • make development paths visible and reduce uncertainty in year one?

What I delivered

  • Research plan, discussion guide, and candidate criteria.
  • Interview synthesis & employee-journey map with priority friction points.
  • HMW problem framing and concept directions for the platform.
  • Recommendations for recruiting, onboarding, and early-tenure rituals.

“The best kind of design isn't necessarily an object, a space or a structure: it's a process - dynamic and adaptable.” - Don Norman

Xelebrate

We set out to design a wedding vendor platform. But we discovered that what couples actually need is not better bookings, but better planning and collaboration.

My role focused on uncovering these insights through interviews, journey mapping, and user story definition. This research reframed the concept into a shared planning tool that reduces stress and helps couples stay aligned.

Project steps

Overwhelmed bride sitting on the floor surrounded by planning tools

Overview

  • Project Type: Group project at FHNW
  • Focus: UX Research, Requirements Engineering, Concept Development
  • Duration: 6 months
  • Target Users: Engaged couples, planning their wedding without a dedicated planner
  • Methods: Interviews, Journey Mapping, User Stories, Value Proposition Canvas
  • My Role: As part of a 4-person UX team, I actively contributed to user research, synthesis, and the definition of product requirements.

Disclaimer:
We developed and tested an interactive MVP with real users. Due to confidentiality, detailed designs and test results cannot be shared at this stage. Insights presented here are anonymized and generalized.

UX Research

I followed a classic UX process, but let research guide every pivot and priority.

Market Analysis

I examined the existing wedding tech landscape, identifying gaps in existing tools:

Focus on inspiration and booking.
To-do lists are rigid and generic.
Multiple disconnected tools.
Lack of collaboration.
Wedding planning tools

Interviews for User Research

Through in-depth interviews with recently married and engaged individuals, I explored their planning journeys.

How did they start?
What decisions caused friction?
How did they feel during the planning process?
What made them feel confident or overwhelmed?

User interviews

Research Insights

Synthesis & Affinity Mapping

To manage large volumes of qualitative data, I created a custom GPT that allowed our team to query interview transcripts and reference synthesis notes in seconds, saving time and improving consistency during concept development.

I clustered insights to find repeating pain points.

Interview insights visualization

Surprisingly, the vendor search was rarely the bottleneck:

Mental overload
Unclear starting points
Missed deadlines
Decision fatigue
Lack of shared overview
Emotional pressure

“I never really had a clear picture of what was happening when or everything that had to happen.” – F.

The Pivot

At this point, we decided to shift our concept from a vendor directory to a smart, collaborative planning companion. Instead of helping couples find services, we would help them plan together, with less stress, more structure, and a clear overview.

“It felt like project management. But when it worked, it gave us peace.” – O.

Journey Mapping

I mapped emotional highs and lows from engagement to wedding day. This helped me pinpoint key stress phases and uncover opportunity areas where a digital tool could reduce anxiety.

User journey map

User Stories

I wrote prioritized user stories to frame key features. These stories later shaped the usability test scenarios and informed our design priorities.

“As a bride, I want a shared checklist with my partner, so I can feel supported and stay in sync.”

Value Proposition Canvas

I analyzed user pains and gains to define the most relevant product values — from clarity and overview to task sharing and emotional reassurance. This became the foundation for the MVP requirements.

Value proposition canvas

Reflection & Next Steps

After translating research insights into product requirements, we built a clickable MVP and conducted usability testing with our target group. While detailed outcomes are confidential, the tests confirmed core assumptions and guided the next iteration.

This project stands out to me for how deeply research reshaped our direction. The process highlighted how early discovery can prevent teams from building the wrong product efficiently.

Kloop

Kloop is a concept developed as part of the Google UX Design Certificate ↗. The brief was to design an app for buying and selling secondhand children’s clothes. But my research reframed the challenge into something broader: how to make passing on kids’ things effortless, trustworthy, and emotionally rewarding for parents.

Throughout the project, I applied the Design Thinking process, from empathizing with real users through interviews and diary studies, to defining key insights and ideating possible solutions.

Project steps

Kloop

Overview

  • Project Type: Student project within the Google UX Design Professional Certificate
  • Target Users: Eco-conscious and busy parents
  • Goal: To explore how to design a system for passing on kids’ things that feels effortless, trustworthy, and emotionally rewarding for parents.
  • UX Research Methods: Competitive Audit, Interviews, Self-Observation, Journey Mapping, Affinity Mapping, “How Might We”, Concept Sketches

Empathize

Before diving into design, I explored how parents in Switzerland already buy, sell, or recycle kids’ items. I compared popular resale platforms, donation options, and recycling programs.

Value proposition canvas

Interviews

I conducted three interviews with parents living in Switzerland to understand why “keeping things in the loop” so often fails in practice. I asked parents questions such as:

How did parents manage kids’ items the last three times?
Where exactly do time, effort, and motivation get lost?
What emotional factors influence these choices?
What matters most to parents when dealing with secondhand kids’ things?




Interview Snapshots

Parent 1: J.

  • Mother of a 12-year-old and a 3-month-old
  • Currently on parental leave
  • Recently moved from Germany
  • Deeply values sustainability

“I try to avoid throwing things away unless they’re really broken. A lot of things stay in the basement because I don’t know what else to do with them.” – J.

Parents 2: M. & G.

  • A couple with two boys, aged 7 and 11
  • Both working full-time
  • Moved to Switzerland from France 12 years ago
  • Value thrift and avoid waste: their home and basement are cluttered.

“If I find something good secondhand, I take it right away. You never know if you’ll see it again. Especially kids’ and sports gear, because the boys keep growing.” – M.

Parent 3: S.

  • Mother of an 11-year-old girl
  • Working part-time
  • Swiss native
  • Cares about sustainability but prioritizes quality

“I only sell things I’d still buy myself. My daughter sometimes sells her toys at school markets for pocket money. The rest I just give away or throw away if nobody wants it.” – S.



Self-Observation

To better understand the pain points, I turned the lens on myself. As a mother using the same platforms, I started documenting my own experiences in a diary for one month every time I bought or sold a secondhand children’s item.

Self observation

Define

To make sense of the interviews and diary notes, I clustered all the observations into themes using affinity mapping.

Key Insight Themes

Sustainability vs. convenience
Storage as avoidance
Effort-to-value imbalance
Trust and uncertainty
Different definitions of “worth it”
Cultural contrast

“In Switzerland, reuse is neither practical nor social.” – J.



User Groups and Problem Statements

I defined user groups and problem statements based on behavior and motivations observed during research.

Eco-conscious parents

Motivated to reduce waste but limited by time, transport, and local opportunities. They want to act responsibly but find sustainable actions inconvenient and fragmented.

Problem statement: They need an effortless way to keep kids’ things in use because they want to avoid waste, but there is no big demand for secondhand items.

Pragmatic, time-limited families

Busy parents who buy and accept secondhand items to save money but struggle to sell or donate because it takes too much time. Convenience often overrides sustainability intentions.

Problem statement: They need a quick and low-effort way to declutter responsibly because they have no time to pass on outgrown items, and existing systems are complicated and time-consuming.

Quality-driven minimalists

Parents who value durability and prefer fewer, high-quality items. They selectively buy and sell premium items but discard or store the rest because it’s “not worth the effort.”

Problem statement: They need a curated and reliable way to pass on good items because they want to maintain quality circulation without wasting time on low-value exchanges.

Ideate

User Journeys

I mapped four user journeys with friction points and design opportunities based on my research.

Selling - "Toys nobody wants"

User journey: Selling toys nobody wants

Main Pain Points:
Time-consuming listings, unreliable communication, ghosting.

Opportunity:
Simplify listing flow, auto-match offers with demand, rewarding quick responses.

Buying - "The missing pieces"

User journey: Buying the missing pieces

Main Pain Points:
Scattered platforms, repeated searches, inconsistent information, unreliable sellers, no protection or refund options.

Opportunity:
Centralize search and enable safe, transparent exchanges.

Decluttering – “Clothes with no clear end”

User journey: Decluttering clothes with no clear end

Main Pain Points:
Sorting takes time, uncertainty about what happens to donations, emotional guilt and lack of feedback.

Opportunity:
Add simple sorting support and visible reuse feedback.

Buying in Bulk – “Just in case”

User journey: Buying in bulk just in case

Main Pain Points:
Overbuying “just in case”, hidden waste in storage, no overview of owned items.

Opportunity:
Introduce inventory tools and community sharing to reduce surplus.

How Might We...

To move from research to ideation, I translated the key pain points into “How Might We” questions.

  • How might we build greater commitment among users in the circular economy (reduce ghosting and inaccurate listings)?
  • How might we remove pickup and drop-off tasks from the user’s to-do list?
  • How might we ensure that reuse feels trustworthy, social, and human?
  • How might we make offloading items take under 60 seconds?
  • How might we remove uncertainty around donations and give users confidence in their real impact?


User Stories

  • As a parent with no time, I want to pass on things quickly so I don’t feel guilty about waste.
  • As a busy professional, I want clear communication and quick confirmation so I don’t waste time on unreliable buyers and sellers.
  • As a sustainability-minded parent, I want to know my donations really help someone so I feel my effort matters.
  • As a family with limited space, I want easy give-away options so my home stays organized.

Prototype