About
I'm Pavel Lupu.
A product designer who also builds. For 20+ years I've helped teams turn ideas into products people actually use. I'm usually the one asking the uncomfortable questions before launch, not after.
The long way round
It started with swapping faces in Paint.
Before I knew design was a job, I was tracing people in photos and moving them around in Microsoft Paint. Then I found Photoshop and taught myself from online tutorials. At 17 someone paid me for a social media post, then for photo edits and party posters.
My first real job was as a graphic designer at an online casino company: social posts, newsletters, website assets. I wanted to build what I designed, so I started writing the newsletter HTML myself. Then I asked if I could design one of the company's websites. They said yes, Bootstrap had just come out, and that's how I got into the web.
I went back to finish a computer science degree. A friend recommended me to Softrust, a software company whose app needed a new UI, and that became my first UX project: wireframes, information architecture, user flows, prototypes and developer handoff, all learned on a real product. In my fourth year I started freelancing, and read The Design of Everyday Things and Don't Make Me Think to understand what I'd been doing.
20+
Years of design experience
50+
Projects delivered
10
Industries, from big pharma to fintech
500+
Mentorship minutes on ADPList
My path
From party posters to products.
01
Graphic designer to web designer
An online casino company, where I started coding my own designs, then a few months as a web and UX designer at an agency.
02
First UX role
Softrust: a new and very complex product, and the place I learned UX on real work.
03
Designer and front-end developer
Amelis, a Sodexo company, with a small freelance team, through two redesigns as it grew from 13 to 39 agencies.
04
Founding member at Soulver
From 2021: product manager, designer and full-stack developer, from the idea to the first revenue.
05
Four years on a fintech app
User flows, UI, prototypes, design QA, roadmaps, customer support, and the usability testing that caught problems before launch.
06
Today
Product design for global publishers and financial data companies through an outsourcing partner, plus freelance work with founders and products I build myself, like Sitefar.
What I believe
I'd rather you learn something in a week of testing than in three months of building the wrong thing.
Usability testing, user interviews and research are the cheapest way to find out you're wrong. Too often there's no time for them, so teams build first and learn after launch, when every lesson costs ten times more.
I've seen the other side too. The fintech app I spent four years on launched and worked, but it never found enough traction to prove product-market fit. A working product isn't a validated one.
Selected work
Some of the work behind those 20 years.
A design sprint for an online therapy startup, two redesigns for a growing Sodexo company and a brand and website for a handyman business. The full list is on the work page.
Product design · Mobile app
Soulver: bringing psychotherapy closer to people
A design sprint, two prototype iterations and 15+ user interviews for an online therapy startup.
Read case study →
UX design · WordPress
Amelis: in-home care, ready to scale
Two redesigns for a Sodexo company growing from 13 to 39 agencies: +295% users and +340% leads.
Read case study →
Branding · Website
Meșter Simplu: handyman services a few clicks away
A name, a brand and a WordPress website for an offline business, launched in six weeks.
Read case study →How I work
I'll ask the uncomfortable questions early.
I dig into the why before the what. Sometimes that makes me look like the product's enemy, but it's how I keep it from failing later.
Weekly video calls
You always know where things stand and what comes next.
Written PRDs
Decisions are written down, not stuck in someone's head.
Design and code from one person
Less gets lost between the design and the build.
Fast, evidence-backed decisions
Some research behind every big call, never research instead of a decision.
A good fit
Founders and small teams with an idea worth testing
You have an idea or an early MVP, a budget and the domain knowledge. You want help with product design, strategy, validation and growth, and you make decisions quickly.
Probably not a fit
"Just make it look pretty"
If you need it to look good by Friday, I'm not your designer. If you need to know whether it will work, I am.
Recommendations
Kind words
Pavel took the time to really understand the industry, asking great questions, digging deep, and reframing problems in ways that consistently moved us forward. He made the whole collaboration feel easy and energising. … I’d work with Pavel again in a heartbeat.
Danielle Carvalho
Learning Designer, Oxford University Press
Worked on the same team
We met when we were in need for a Ui/Ux design for our mobile app, and he did a wonderful job. So much so that we decided to partner and he became our Product Manager. Soulver wouldn’t be the smart, user-experience-friendly and beautiful product it is now if Pavel wouldn’t have joined the team.
Alice Petrescu
Legal Counsel, Soulver team
Partner on Soulver
Away from the screen
A family, a vizsla and a lot of book summaries.
I live in Bucharest with my wife, our son and a vizsla who makes sure I take breaks. I'm originally from Moldova, came here for university and stayed for work. I work in English, Romanian and Russian.
When I'm not designing, I'm learning something unrelated, usually through Headway summaries on self-development and investing. I'm very passionate about passive income. I'm still waiting for the first euro of it.
