Role | Design Manager & Lead Designer

Responsibilities | Delivering UX, UI, IX, designs and specifications, spearheading a cross-platform design system, planning and executing UXR, building/presenting cross-platform product design strategy to stakeholders, and collaborating with software/hardware/firmware engineering teams on implementation and sustain efforts

Team | Anton Ljunggren (Design Director), Douglas Hungerford (Product Manager), PepsiCo IT (Engineering), WillowTree (Design), Work&Co (Design)

Managed and executed the design work for SodaStream Professional, a connected hydration ecosystem including smart water dispensers, mobile app, and customer web portal. Collaborated closely with cross-functional stakeholders to define product requirements and translate them into user-centered designs. Supported the deployment of 1,300+ machines and contributed to securing funding for the next-generation platform featuring enhanced installation flexibility, upgraded features, and an improved consumables business model.

Worked directly with agency partners to manage design execution and research workflows, ensuring alignment with project goals and quality standards. Acted as an individual contributor on key design deliverables, balancing hands-on design with effective partner collaboration. Partnered with firmware and software engineering teams to inform product features and establish streamlined processes for design handoff and documentation.

Spearheaded, managed, and executed on the design system for the SodaStream Professional program, creating efficiencies in how we built and utilized assets, guidelines, and documents across different platforms (dispensers, mobile, web portal, customer ecomm site) and user types (consumers, accessibility users, business customers, staff, and service technicians). This lent efficiencies to a very lean internal UX design team (of two), and allowed us to create a cohesive experience that reduces operational overhead, and minimizes cognitive load for any users navigating across multiple solutions.

Specialized in rapid, high-fidelity prototyping with Figma, tailoring detail levels to suit stakeholder feedback or development handoff needs. Extended prototyping capabilities to simulate complex, cross-platform interactions between apps and embedded systems. Utilized physical model making to create “behaves like” prototypes that provided valuable insights during development, resulting in roughly $100K+ savings by conducting user research and usability testing in-house.

This interactive hardware prototype is a standard Figma prototype running on a tablet and controlled using keyboard keys mapped to specific navigation and functions. This provided an incredibly rich “works-like” experience that allowed us to glean insight into accessibility considerations that informed our digital and physical interface design, as well as software engineering approach.

“Behaves-like” interactive models were created using multiple interactive prototypes running at once. These were used for testing and validating complex user flows that would require service technicians to interface across a front-facing display, automated hardware components, and internal feedback systems.