Yaroslav Makovetskyi

Lead Product Designer, Modus

SureIn · Berlin, remote

Modus is an AI workspace for insurance brokers: correspondence, documents, cases and tasks in one operational layer. Sole designer alongside a PM, a tech lead and six engineers.

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  Redirected the product concept before it reached the architecture. The original model treated every email as an isolated AI trigger. Research showed brokers work in cases, and the replacement model, correspondence to triage to case to tasks, has held since the MVP shipped and is still the vocabulary the team uses.

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  Designed and ran the research program from nothing. 35 external broker interviews and 40 internal interviews and shadowings, plus an earlier round I inherited and folded into the synthesis. All of it sits in one searchable corpus the team queries. On top of that, on site research at DKM 2025 and a competitive benchmark of five broker management systems.

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  Synthesised 158 problem statements into 11 clusters and one root cause. The resulting problem model, JTBD and journey map became the team's reference documents.

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  Took the concept to a 10 out of 10 on the "how disappointed would you be if this disappeared" test with design partners, in four prototype iterations over two and a half weeks. Paying customers later confirmed the signal.

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  Carried six parallel workstreams through a two month delivery push, filling design gaps in real time so engineering was never blocked. Shipped on schedule.

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  Zero to public launch in twelve months: internal launch, first external paying customers, then public release in July 2026. New customers onboard every week and Modus is now the company's core strategic bet.

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  Daily use has held since the MVP, with an early adopter base of brokers averaging 54 years old.

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  Own the Universal Inbox end to end and set the research cadence the team still runs, two shadowing sessions and one structured interview every week. Decomposed a months long customer escalation into four root problems and replaced a contested multi week build with two scoped one week directions.

Career break

Hanau, Germany

Role ended in a company wide reduction in December 2024. Spent the break on a full time German language course funded by the Agentur für Arbeit, Monday to Friday, and returned to SureIn in July 2025 to lead design for Modus.

Founding Product Designer

SureIn · Berlin, remote

First designer at a digital insurance broker for German SMBs. Owned design across the self service funnel, the internal admin platform, the client app and the marketing site, working with two frontend engineers.

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  Rebuilt the self service funnel mobile first after research. Contact step conversion up 118%, business type step to 84% completion, “Other” selections down from 50% to 10%, lead quality up 40%. The company's highest revenue quarter to date followed.

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  Reframed both drop offs before designing anything. The contact form was a trust problem rather than a length problem, and the business type step was findability across more than 3,000 types. Four candidate approaches, moderated and unmoderated testing, then A/B on the strongest.

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  Reordered the funnel by cognitive load so the most private questions land where motivation is highest, which lifted conversion on the hardest steps.

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  Led the company rebrand and built the design system aligned to it, and moved the marketing site to Framer so both engineers stayed on the funnel.

UX Designer

Objego, ISTA Group · Essen, remote

SaaS for private landlords managing properties, documents and finances. Shipped four core features in three months, including AI assisted invoice processing.

UI/UX Designer

Bitfuel · Frankfurt am Main

Agency work on client products in medtech and pensions. Contributed to a medtech MVP launched in three months.

Founder, web studio, then marketing agency

Ukraine

Founded a web studio delivering websites and apps for SMEs, running design, client relationships and operations. Co founded a marketing agency in 2020 as Design Director: set the design direction for branding and creative work, hired and mentored a small cross functional team, and owned client relationships and sales. Relocated to Germany in 2022.