Mon Oct 14 2024

I'm connecting with George Hatzis, a fractional product designer for early-stage startup teams. From his early curiosity about design and product at Ignition to redesigning a personal loan application admin at Wisr and building and scaling a multi-brand design system for healthcare products at Eucalyptus, he's no stranger to the twists and turns of startups and scale-ups. In this episode, we cover practical design and MVP design systems—what they are and how to apply them in fast-moving, scrappy environments; taking the independent product design route and his “Mary Poppins-style” approach to fractional work; his journey (so far) building a migration tech product alongside Niamh and Damian at Matilda; leading design teams and making a conscious transition from an individual contributor to a manager; AI as a “companion piece” for designers; the right time for startups to bring in their first product designer; and advice for product designers pitching themselves to early-stage startu...