Alena Rykunina — Product Designer

+11% rides per
user in Brazil

inDrive

Cashless users in Brazil ride more often than cash users. I designed payment experiences around Pix to increase cashless adoption, grow ride frequency, and support market growth.

Role: Senior Product Designer
Scope: Led end-to-end design and cross-functional collaboration
Team: 2 PMs, 2 analysts, 10+ engineers, vertical stakeholders
Impact: Multi-market payment rollout, +2.9% GMV uplift in Brazil

Brazil payment landscape 🇧🇷

Cash remains the dominant payment method.
Passengers prefer local instant transfers through the Pix payment system over cards.

Challenges

Passengers' view

Manually entering transfer details into the bank app is frustrating and can lead to mistakes.

Drivers' view

We don't like voicing transfer details — money should credit automatically.

Company's view

Cashless users ride with us more often, so we should uplift the number of cashless rides.

Scaled MVP to 48 countries

We implemented an MVP that allowed passengers to copy and paste transfer details into their banking app to complete the payment.

MVP outcomes

Adoption varied across markets, reaching 50% in Mexico and 47% in the Philippines.
The launch drove a +2% GMV increase from November to March.
However, we found that many users don’t notice the button on the active ride screen.

Finding a better solution for the Brazilian market

Benchmarking

We researched current B2C payment solutions and found that most used the same technology for fast money transfers. However, the user experience wasn't ideal — in Uber, passengers are required to transfer money before the ride, while in 99, users have to top up a wallet in advance.

Payment widget first-click test

I tested five variants, including the version already in production, to see if a new approach would make the payment button more visible to passengers.

Five payment widget variants compared by first-click rate

Seamless money transfers 2.0

Enhanced payment widget

I created a payment widget that provides users with real-time feedback on payment progress and results, improving transparency across the flow.

Payment flow with 200+ banks

Payment flow starting with the top 5 banks most preferred by users. This led to faster adoption and reduced checkout drop-off.

Payment activation and onboarding

To improve payment adoption during the ride, I led a cross-team promotion A/B/C test, where one variant showed a statistically significant uplift in usage. I also designed a push-triggered onboarding experience to encourage in-ride payment and reduce drop-off after the trip started.

Cross-vertical widget scaling

I collaborated cross-functionally to scale the payment widget for the courier vertical.

Rolling out a unified design across B2C & B2B apps

Later, refined slightly, then rolled out to more payment methods, more markets, and the driver app.

Driver side

Also worked on the driver side of the flow, where drivers add their Pix key to enable direct transfers to their bank account.

Redesigned PIX activation flow in Brazil, growing driver onboarding by 221% within two weeks of launch.

Marketing

Media

Estadão Read ↗ Finextra Read ↗

Result

+11%

Uplift in average rides per user

+2.9%

Uplift in GMV per user

+221%

Growth in driver onboarding within two weeks of launch

Next project · Serra

AI that turns health data into action

3x more first rides
paid cashless

Designing payment and wallet experiences around local methods, rules, and user behavior.

Cashless adoption meant designing for markets where cash was already the familiar way to pay. I designed and scaled payment and wallet flows for passengers and drivers across 48 countries.

Role: Senior Product Designer
Scope: Sole designer of the payments domain for 3.5 years, covering passenger and driver payment and wallet flows.
Team: I worked with 5 product teams and 20+ engineers across the payments domain.
Impact: Payment and wallet flows across 48 countries, with 82% driver adoption in launched South African cities.

Context

inDrive is the #2 ride-hailing app, with 300M+ downloads, but scale alone does not explain local payment behavior. Cashless adoption was the goal, so the work had to account for local methods, rules, and user behavior. I worked across both sides of the marketplace, designing how passengers paid and how drivers used payment and wallet flows.

Challenges

Company's view

We needed to grow cashless adoption across markets while accounting for local payment methods, rules, and user behavior.

South Africa

Designing for a cash-first market

I designed cashless payment flows for South Africa, where cash-first behavior was central to the problem.

Driver adoption

Driver adoption reached 82% in the launched cities in South Africa, providing a concrete result for this local-market work.

Passenger promo experiment

What I tested

I tested a passenger promotion aimed at increasing cashless choice on the first ride.

Results and rollout

First-ride cashless choice grew from 14% to 45% in one country and from 3% to 39% in another. The experiment scaled globally and helped the fintech cluster reach its annual goal for the year.

Scaling it

A research approach others reused

I led local-market payment research that became a validation approach reused by product leads. This extended the value of the research beyond the payment flows I designed myself.

Unifying top-up flows

I led the unification of 2 top-up flows, which enabled global payment integration and monetization in new countries within 2 sprints. This work addressed the shared payment foundation alongside the local-market experiences I designed for passengers and drivers.

Result

82%

Driver adoption in launched South African cities.

14% to 45%

First-ride cashless choice in one country.

3% to 39%

First-ride cashless choice in another country.

2 sprints

Global payment integration and monetization in new countries enabled by top-up unification.

Scaling the B2B app beyond 200K users

Raiffeisen Bank

I rebuilt the app architecture to help businesses transition from web to mobile while preparing the product to support a growing B2B user base.

Role: Product Designer
Scope: Led end-to-end design and cross-functional collaboration
Team: 1 PO, 8 engineers, vertical stakeholders
Impact: Scaled to 200K+ users, contributing to app penetration growth

Challenges

Users' view

Managing accounts is difficult due to no sorting, hidden deposits, and hard-to-find statements.

Company's view

We need to increase penetration with the mobile app among web users.

My view as a designer

The outdated design, unchanged since 2018, differed between the B2C and B2B apps.

Developers' view

A legacy system slows feature development.

User problem discovery

I analyzed feedback from interviews, chat support, and reviews to identify issues, focusing on five key problems:

Separate 'Account history' and 'Payment history' sections confused users and led to misclicks.
No sorting meant inactive accounts with outdated data appeared first.
Business users expected the same account view as on the web.
Open deposits weren't visible in the app, leading to confusion.
It wasn't clear that tapping an account would open its statement.

Old app main screen — problems highlighted

Redesign process

Old app design overview

Contractor payments were hard to find in the app

The mobile Account History showed only card and bank payments, while contractor payments were hidden in a separate tab. This created a mismatch with the web version and made users unsure whether their payments had been processed.

Contractor payments history on the Raiffeisen web app

Cross-platform inconsistency

The app had inconsistent designs on iOS and Android and had been outdated since 2018.

Inconsistency between B2B and B2C apps

Raiffeisen Bank users had different experiences as private or business clients.

Competitors research

1st iteration of the redesign

The process started with a simple step: updating the screen as-is to refresh the code and prepare for future feature development.

2nd iteration — full account list view

Horizontal scroll was replaced with a list, similar to the web version. Account sorting was aligned with the web version to make statement access more intuitive, and with new products coming, horizontal scroll was no longer scalable.

Unified history for all account transactions

I merged duplicated histories into one History section and removed transactions from the Main screen.

Unified navigation

Users started to have a more consistent experience across the app, and in 2024 the B2C app also improved its design, making the apps even more cohesive.

B2B vs Old B2C vs New B2C — app evolution from 2022 to 2024, part 1

B2B vs Old B2C vs New B2C — app evolution from 2022 to 2024, part 2

Lesson learned

After the update, some users found it harder to find contractor payments among their card charges. This showed that major updates need more research and validation before they go live.

Shipped to production

Raiffeisen Business Russia — App Store listing

Result

+11.5%

App penetration growth by the end of the release year

4.7✦

App Store rating

Next project · Raiffeisen Bank

10x faster business transfers

Raiffeisen Bank

Business owners had to wait up to three days to send money. I designed a new instant transfer experience that enabled 24/7 payments in minutes.

Role: Product Designer
Scope: End-to-end design of instant transfer flow
Team: 1 PO, 1 PM, 6 engineers
Impact: 62% flow conversion, transfer time from 3 days to minutes

Challenges

Users' view

The bank did not support instant transfers: payouts stopped after 7 PM, were unavailable on weekends, and could take up to three business days.

Company's view

Increase mobile app penetration among clients who still relied on the web experience.

Exploring technology in the B2C app

We looked at the existing solution in the B2C app and realized we could reuse it for business payments. Already integrated into Raiffeisen Bank's B2C app and growing fast since 2019, the tech was a natural fit for our B2B product.

Built on the national instant payment infrastructure, this technology enables 24/7 phone transfers across 200+ banks with 0% commission. The chart below illustrates the technology's rapid growth since 2019.

Growth of instant phone-number transfers since 2019

Market research

We also researched current solutions in the B2C market and found that everyone used the same technology for fast money transfers. So, we decided to reuse this technology for our B2B app.

Solutions

One click to activate instant transfers

The first approach opened with a data-entry screen. Low activation showed that the setup asked for too much too soon, so I replaced it with a focused one-click activation landing.

One-click activation flow for instant business transfers

Multiple entry points to activate transfers

Entry points for activating and starting instant transfers

Fast recipient search

I integrated the phone contact list and prioritized the business owner's number, while keeping transfers to any recipient immediately accessible.

Recipient search using the phone contact list

Easy access to the popular banks

More than 200 banks were available. I surfaced the five most frequently used options and gave Raiffeisen Bank priority, reducing the effort required to find a destination.

Popular banks prioritized in the transfer flow

Full payment scenario

Complete instant business transfer scenario

Result

62%

Overall flow conversion rate

3 days

Few minutes

Time required to complete a transfer

Next project · inDrive

+11% rides per
user in Brazil

AI that turns health data into action

Serra

Health apps track sleep, heart rate and activity, but understanding what these numbers mean together takes effort. I designed Serra to bring them together in one health score, with personalised insights and goals that help users choose what to focus on next. Generative UI shapes the interface around each goal.

Role: Product Designer
Scope: Research, product strategy, UX and UI
Format: Concept

Discovery

User type

People who actively care about their health
Want to sleep better, manage stress and move more
Need clear insights and realistic next steps without interpreting complex dashboards
Use an iPhone, a wearable (Oura, Garmin, Apple Watch), or both

Problem

Accurate tracking still leaves a simple question unanswered: is today a good day or not? Sleep, HRV and activity appear as separate metrics. Users have to weigh them against each other to understand their overall condition and decide where to focus.

Business goals

Increase engagement with quick, actionable insights
Improve user retention by building daily-use habits around health
Drive revenue through premium plan

Gaps in existing apps

Lengthy onboarding before users experience any value
Dependence on a wearable adds cost and limits access for users without a device
Technical analytics that leave users to interpret the numbers

Competitors

I benchmarked Oura, Apple Health, WHOOP and Strava, focusing on onboarding, first-use value and how each explains health data.

Oura, Apple Health, WHOOP and Strava comparison

End-to-end flow

I mapped the journey from optional device pairing to a daily summary, insights, goal creation and progress tracking, through to Premium. The flow also covers missing health data, pairing failures and goals Serra cannot prepare.

Meet Serra

Onboarding in easy steps

Users can start with available iPhone activity data, without registration or a wearable. Pairing a device adds deeper sleep and heart-rate signals, so the experience grows with the data available.

Optional wearable pairing

Users select their device and follow guided setup. They can skip pairing and start with available phone data, then connect a wearable later for deeper insights.

Optional pairing and phone activity access

Health at a glance

One vitality score brings available sleep, heart-rate and activity signals into focus. Large typography and colour-coded states with text labels make the daily picture easy to read. Plain-language AI insights explain what’s driving it, with full analytics one tap away.

Generative UI for personalised goals

Serra uses health data to suggest goals for sleep, stress and movement. Each goal has its own controls and progress tracking, with adjustable targets and timeframes.

Personalized goal reminders

Serra sends timely reminders linked to each user's goals, helping them follow through on daily actions and stay on track.

From goal to daily progress

A goal becomes part of the daily experience. The home screen keeps the target and daily results together, making progress easy to follow.

Sleep, stress and activity goals on the home screen

Detailed health analytics

One tap opens the detail behind the score. Sleep trends, performance metrics and AI insights help users understand what is shaping their current state.

Premium plan

The proposed freemium model makes the first goal free. Premium adds continuous goal tracking, advanced AI insights and Health Club access. Subscriptions are the core revenue stream, with potential wearable partnerships introduced at goal completion.

Proposed success metrics

Percentage of users acting on AI insight recommendations
Daily active users
Premium conversion rate
Percentage of new users who set their first goal
Percentage of new users achieving their first goal

Design outcome

Serra explores AI beyond a chat interface: a daily health summary leads to insights, goals and an interface shaped around them.

Next project · Raiffeisen Bank

Product Designerwith systems thinkingat global scale

+11% rides peruser in Brazil

Cashless payments from 0→1 across emerging markets

AI that turns health data into action

Scaling the B2B app beyond 200K users

10x faster business transfers

About me

Let's build something designed to scale

+11% rides peruser in Brazil

Brazil payment landscape 🇧🇷

Challenges

Scaled MVP to 48 countries

MVP outcomes

Finding a better solution for the Brazilian market

Benchmarking

Payment widget first-click test

Seamless money transfers 2.0

Enhanced payment widget

Payment flow with 200+ banks

Payment activation and onboarding

Cross-vertical widget scaling

Rolling out a unified design across B2C & B2B apps

Driver side

Marketing

Media

Result

AI that turns health data into action

3x more first ridespaid cashless

Context

Challenges

South Africa

Designing for a cash-first market

Driver adoption

Passenger promo experiment

What I tested

Results and rollout

Scaling it

A research approach others reused

Unifying top-up flows

Result

Scaling the B2B app beyond 200K users

Challenges

User problem discovery

Redesign process

Old app design overview

Contractor payments were hard to find in the app

Cross-platform inconsistency

Inconsistency between B2B and B2C apps

Competitors research

1st iteration of the redesign

2nd iteration — full account list view

Unified history for all account transactions

Unified navigation

Lesson learned

Shipped to production

Result

10x faster business transfers

10x faster business transfers

Challenges

Exploring technology in the B2C app

Market research

Solutions

One click to activate instant transfers

Multiple entry points to activate transfers

Fast recipient search

Easy access to the popular banks

Full payment scenario

Result

+11% rides peruser in Brazil

AI that turns health data into action

Discovery

User type

Problem

Business goals

Gaps in existing apps

Competitors

End-to-end flow

Meet Serra

Onboarding in easy steps

Optional wearable pairing

+11% rides per
user in Brazil

+11% rides per
user in Brazil

3x more first rides
paid cashless

+11% rides per
user in Brazil