7 Questions with George Balinov, 15toGO’s Senior UX Designer
George is a creative director with a strong focus on designing user experiences for all kinds of digital products (websites, mobile apps, IoT devices, and so on). Among his notable accomplishments is being a founder of HYPE Digital Agency and working for one of the biggest gaming companies in the region — XSsoftware.
Check his LinkedIn profile
1.What is your background and why did you join 15toGO?
I remember that I was always fascinated with logos and all kind of visual communication as a child. Later as a teenager, this fascination led me to designing a ton of logos and websites. After some years and a lot of work on web-projects with millions of users, I got familiar with the concept behind User Experience. I figured out that I was already involved in a lot of the UX activities, but I hadn’t thought that much about the people that were going to use whatever I design. This lead me to focusing more and more on user research and testing, which is now a big part of my work.
As for how I got involved in 15toGO, me and Peter Lozanov knew each other back from our days as students in the University. After graduation, we stayed in touch and more than two years ago Peter was already keeping me in the loop of his plans to develop a travel app. At some point he asked me for my help to shape the visual interface of the web and mobile apps. After finding out about the amazing progress made so-far and the final concept, it took me some time to wrap my head around it. But after meeting the team and finding more about their ideas and plans, I saw the huge potential and I knew that I could help a lot with designing the product.
2. What is your role in 15toGO team?
Right now I’m delighted to be the senior UX designer and guide the design of the 15toGO mobile and web apps. You can find me working with the rest of our design and development magicians, crafting the user interface for all parts of the product. My goal while creating something new is always is to engage a variety of people both internally and externally, so that I can bounce off different ideas and discuss our designs. We all want our mobile and web apps to be as intuitive and easy-to-use as possible right from the start. This means that we try to shorten the learning curve, so travellers are able to find and book a trip as fast and easy as possible.
3. What gets you most excited about the project?
As a travel enthusiast myself, I can’t wait to be able to book trips with other like-minded people. The idea for social travelling has been explored before, but nothing close to what we are doing with 15toGO. It’s meant to be used by a great variety of people who love to travel, which is challenging but gives us the ability to make a lot of user research and testing. 15toGO is a big scale project with a lot of interface and user interactions, which means we will have fun playing around with new designs.
4. Where do you see the project in the next few years?
I definitely expect a lot of people to take advantage of 15toGO. I know that A LOT of exciting trips will come true thanks to our app. Hopefully, this will create an opportunity and environment for unheard of travel deals, but in the end I believe it will always be about cool people meeting each other and starting a couple of friendships along the way.
5. Which do you think are the main challenges that the project and the team will face?
I believe we’re facing most of the challenges typical for a tech startup. In terms of business those are getting people’s trust and making traction as quick as possible, talking with travelers and building a community. Providing a great customer service in the future should not be neglected, because it’s among the most important factors. In terms of our product we need to be wary of the challenges that come with excessive growth and scalability, which are the constant improvement and the optimization.
6. How would you describe the atmosphere around 15toGO?
The team is full of bright and experienced people, and ALL of them are fellow travelers! One of the things that is constantly in the air is the enthusiasm with which everyone is working towards making traveling with friends even more affordable and fun.
7. Tell us one interesting thing about yourself?
Besides working as a creative director, I’m also really into teaching design. For the past couple of years I’ve been teaching different UI and UX design courses in Sofia, and the response so-far has been awesome. I believe that everyone who feels good at something should try to teach it for a while. This really gives you a better understanding of the subject that you are proficient in.
The 15toGO app is now downloadable both for iOS and Android:
https://15togo.page.link/medium
