by Janus Boye
It’s all about building bridges - in particular between different ways of thinking
Talking to Kristina Larsen who is a UX specialist at VIA University College in Aarhus, Denmark, you might expect to hear about how her design leadership work bridges different departments, but as she shared her story, it became clear that her background with years of studying at Aalborg University and Aarhus University, combined with now almost 14 years working in higher education, has taken her to the next level.
In her own words, she strives to make others feel welcome, heard, valued and supported, which applies whether you are a colleague, student, a customer at VIA or a close friend.
Kristina is also a leisure doodler, a freelance mini farmer living on a field in the middle of Jutland and dreaming about landing her first board position in the next couple of years. Earlier this month, she was a highly rated track leader at the Boye Aarhus 21 conference and she is our expert of the month.
Bringing together insights is where the magic happens
Medialogy is a somewhat lesser-known field intended as a bridge-building between the technical and graphic in IT. While at Aalborg University in 2003 to 2005, Kristina did a bachelor in Medialogy and as a part of her studies, she built mobile games on Nokia phones, made an animation movie, build an interactive sound landscape for a “movie” and much more.
She then continued her studies at Aarhus University with a Masters in IT and a final thesis on ‘metaphors in the interface,' which focused on how the interface designers are faced with a growing challenge of having to make a complex tool immediately accessible to the user.
According to Kristina, she is not the best researcher, but she does love to make interview guides and talk to people. In her view, it is equally magical and exciting when you after a round of research for a project, bring together all the different insights to design new and better solutions.
We’ll get to her current bridge-building activities in a moment, but first, let’s fast forward to early November 2021, where she was a track leader at the design leadership track at the Boye Aarhus 21 conference. A quite diverse and international track spanning speakers from Zalando in Germany, Kaspersky in the UK, Grundfos in Denmark and local Aarhus based Salling Group. The photo below is from the end of the day.
Kristina Larsen on the floor alongside the speakers on the design leadership track at the Boye Aarhus 21 conference. Photo: Ib Sørensen
Ensuring a consistent and effective user experience for all of VIAs digital products
During the past 2 years, building and implementing a new design system at VIA has been a big part of her day-to-day activities.
It was launched just before the initial pandemic lockdown in March last year, and serves multiple purposes:
Bringing the visual language to life across a large higher education organisation
Encourage cross-company adoption of the design system and utilise research evidence to support design decisions
Actively promote and educate the importance of user experience across the business by giving presentations and open-minded (and hearted) entering into cross-company cooperations.
As it was launched at a time when everyone was working from home, it was tricky to sell it to the entire organisation. With over 2,000 employees and 18,000 students, it takes time to reap the benefits, but the design system has already helped consolidate the look and feel across digital and offline. It is also playing a big role in scaling the design efforts for new initiatives.
Building a better tomorrow for today’s students
Recently, VIA has launched a new project to improve the digital experience for students. Getting Kristina back to the bridge-building, not just between different departments, online or offline, but between different ways of thinking.
As she bluntly said:
After almost 14 years in the same organization, I’ve finally come to realize that what seems obvious is apparently not obvious at all
The problem is real: As in many other organisations, VIAs digital landscape is large and complex. It’s really a fragmented stack, but the aim is to make it as easy and frictionless to use VIAs digital products.
By looking at a number of user journeys with room for improvement, the project will better connect existing systems and channels and hopefully ensure a more coherent digital experience for students.
We look forward to hearing how this goes when we meet again in 2022!
Learn more about Kristina Larsen
You can find Kristina on LinkedIn, where she leads with 80% is enough on her cover photo. You can also meet her in person in our design leadership peer group or once again in November at the Boye Aarhus 22 conference.