Julia Kulgavchuk

Product/UX researcher and designer. Player-coach, hands-on leader and strategist.

From early discovery to established products, I build the evidence base for product direction and decisions, and then I build the product.

10+ years across medtech, pharma, digital health.

portrait photo

Recent work

From hypothesis to product direction

From hypothesis to product direction

Signum, 2024–2025

Signum regularly identifies potential product opportunities. Before building, Signum needs to know: is the opportunity real, what could the solution look like, and does it fit customers' existing workflows?

I led several strategic discovery projects that answered these questions and designed concepts for the validated opportunities. Outcomes ranged from pivots to new products on the roadmap to no-go at the gate.

Ultrasound at home with ML

Ultrasound at home with ML

Novo Nordisk, 2022–2023

An ML-powered medical device for self-administered ultrasound scanning. The UX challenge: operating a phone while handling a probe and conductive gel.

I led end-to-end research and design. The app guided users via voice and video instructions in a clean flow. The project passed the gate review and was handed off to a 100+ person team for development.

  • concept development
  • UX mapping
  • prototyping
  • UI design
  • instructional design
  • user testing
Neonatal Resuscitation Course

Neonatal Resuscitation Course

Laerdal, 2019

A neonatal CPR course for doctors and nurses in a software app paired with a physical simulator.

I designed the interface, built a functional prototype in code with live hardware integration, and tested it with clinicians through multiple rounds before handoff.

What I bring to the team

full cycle research

Full cycle research and design

Strategic alignment, clear scope, decision-ready insights, designs from early prototypes to production-ready UI, success measurements, process ownership, stakeholder engagement all the way through.

research

Tactical and strategic research

Mixed methods research from opportunity discovery to implementation validation. Qualitative data, business data, usage data. Scoping, planning, executing, communicating.

design

Concept development, prototyping, design

UX and product design across web and mobile, from early concepts to polished handoffs. GenAI-supported rapid prototyping. Functional prototyping with connected hardware.

facilitation

Facilitation of collaboration and engagement

Facilitation that brings product, engineering, data science, clinical, and leadership perspectives into the process early. Workshop facilitation that turns stakeholders into co-owners.

leadership

Leadership in developing people and practice

Setting up research and design operations, tooling, ways of working, process leadership. Coaching and professional development.

Other projects

Workout tracker redesign

Workout tracker redesign to meet a changing business strategy

Lenus, 2022

A new workout tracker for the online fitness coaching platform.

Redesign driven by a shift in business strategy and a need to fill a key competitive gap.

Smart workout planning

Smart workout planning to include automation

Lenus, 2021

Smart suggestions to coaches when they plan workouts for their clients.

I led this supportive automation feature from concept to validated designs and a phased data requirements plan.

COVID-19 Decontamination Toolkit

COVID-19 Decontamination Toolkit with Frolic Studio

Side project, 2020

A volunteer project to design a decontamination kit for N95 masks.

Frolic Studio's kit is a decontamination box that anyone can build on their own using off-the-shelf supplies. It uses UV-C light which is a proven decontamination method.

IoT API experiment

IoT + API: Thingy:52 + Airtable experiment

Side project, 2019

I started this project because I wanted to advance my JavaScript skills and learn how to interact with Bluetooth devices on the Web. It seemed like a cool little device, so I was curious.

This project is written in JavaScript. It collects input from two Nordic Thingy:52 devices into an Airtable database via Web Bluetooth and an Express server.