Alyona Shvadchenko leads UX/UI at Kainjoo with a simple outcome in mind: people arrive with intent, and the experience guides them to completion with ease.
Her portfolio reflects that mindset across multiple contexts, from hospitality to cultural platforms to e-commerce. On Behance, she describes herself as a qualified UI designer focused on visually captivating work for digital platforms, with a specialism in engaging, user-friendly interfaces and design solutions teams can maintain. She shares her location as Ukraine, and her profile shows substantial portfolio engagement over time, signalling a practice built through repetition, refinement, and real-world delivery.
We sat down with Alyona to talk about UX leadership inside Kainjoo, the craft behind clear journeys, and how design becomes a system teams run confidently at scale.
“UX begins with intent, then earns trust through direction”
Kainjoo: When you explain your role to someone joining a project for the first time, what do you say?
Alyona: I shape the journey so it feels intuitive and purposeful. I connect the brand promise, the user’s goal, and the delivery reality. When those three align, the experience feels calm, and people move forward naturally.
Kainjoo: What makes a journey feel intuitive on a busy website?
Alyona: Intuition comes from direction. Users recognise patterns quickly when the experience offers clear wayfinding, a predictable reading order, and actions that appear at the right moment. The interface does a few things exceptionally well: it frames the purpose of the page, guides attention through hierarchy, and supports decision-making through structure.
I also treat each screen as part of a sequence. One page sets context, the next page answers questions, the next page supports action. When the sequence has rhythm, users feel guided.
Kainjoo: Your portfolio spans hospitality, culture, and commerce. What carries across every project?
Alyona: The same fundamentals. People arrive with a reason. They scan quickly. They decide based on what they understand in seconds. I build experiences that respect that behaviour: information architecture that makes sense, content that lands in the right order, and interfaces that stay consistent across the whole journey.
“Hierarchy is a service to the user”
Kainjoo: Designers talk about hierarchy a lot. How do you make it tangible for teams?
Alyona: I treat hierarchy as the service layer. It tells users what matters first, what supports, and what comes next. It shows up in typography scale, spacing, layout rhythm, and the relationship between content and action.
When hierarchy works, users feel oriented. They spend less effort searching, and they spend more effort engaging.
Kainjoo: What do you look for in an early design review?
Alyona: I look for a strong page purpose, a clear primary user task, and a logical progression of information. I also look for grid discipline, type choices that support scanning, and interaction patterns that feel consistent across devices. When the foundation is strong, refinement becomes focused and enjoyable.
Kainjoo: What helps stakeholders see the value of these details?
Alyona: Concrete artefacts. User flows, wireframes with intent, and prototypes that show the reading order and the action pathway. People align faster when they can experience the journey, then discuss it in shared language.
“A design system is a delivery engine”
Kainjoo: You lead teams across multiple pages, modules, and releases. How do you keep quality consistent as the scope grows?
Alyona: I build a system teams can rely on. That includes components, patterns, and rules, plus examples that match real content. A system supports speed because teams reuse proven solutions. It supports quality because the interface stays coherent across the whole experience.
I also treat the system as a living product. It evolves with new page types, new content needs, and new interaction requirements. The key is a simple process for additions and improvements, so the library stays clean and usable.
Kainjoo: What makes a design system feel “usable” for the people building with it?
Alyona: Clarity in naming, clarity in usage rules, and clarity in examples. A component library becomes powerful when it answers everyday questions quickly: where does this pattern belong, how does it behave, and which content fits inside it. When the guidance feels practical, adoption rises naturally.
Kainjoo: How do you collaborate with engineering teams around systems?
Alyona: I work in shared language: components, states, responsive behaviour, and interaction logic. When design and engineering share that vocabulary, implementation becomes smoother and the final experience stays faithful to the intended direction. That shared language also improves planning, estimation, and delivery cadence.
“Brand and UX move together when the story has structure”
Kainjoo: Kainjoo often sits between brand storytelling and product delivery. How do you keep UX aligned with brand intent?
Alyona: I treat the brand promise as a guiding constraint. Brand shows up in tone, pacing, and the emotional arc of a journey. UX shows up in clarity, decision pathways, and consistency. When both layers align, the experience feels intentional.
Alignment starts early. We define the audience, their jobs-to-be-done, and the brand’s point of view. Then we build a journey where each section has a purpose and each interaction supports the promise.
Kainjoo: Your Behance work includes projects like a hotel website redesign and multiple e-commerce experiences. What do these contexts teach about brand-led UX?
Alyona: Hospitality teaches atmosphere and conversion working together. A hotel experience needs emotion, and it also needs booking confidence. E-commerce teaches navigation, filtering, and product discovery. Cultural platforms teach storytelling and pacing, helping users explore content and understand context.
Across these contexts, the same idea holds: a brand becomes credible when the experience feels consistent, the content feels legible, and the interface supports action.
“Complex information becomes approachable through wayfinding and rhythm”
Kainjoo: Many of our programmes involve complex organisations and high-stakes content. What does your UX approach bring to that environment?
Alyona: Structure that supports comprehension. Complex content works best when information architecture stays clear, navigation stays predictable, and page layouts guide scanning. I focus on wayfinding, reading order, and component behaviour so people feel oriented at every step.
I also design for maintainability. When content teams can update pages easily and consistently, the experience stays healthy over time. That operational layer supports long-term performance.
Kainjoo: What does a “human” experience look like when the content feels dense?
Alyona: Human experiences respect attention. They use whitespace as breathing room. They use headings that set expectations. They use microcopy that feels direct and supportive. They place actions where users expect them. When users feel guided, they engage more deeply.
“Workshops create shared language, shared language creates speed”
Kainjoo: UX leadership often lives in rooms with many stakeholders. How do you run workshops?
Alyona: I run decision-led sessions. The goal is alignment people can act on. We leave with clear priorities, a shared view of the user journey, and agreement on what success looks like.
I like workshops grounded in reality. We look at actual content, actual devices, and actual pathways. We map the journey, identify the key moments, and design the structure that supports them.
Kainjoo: What does strong stakeholder alignment feel like?
Alyona: It feels like shared definitions. People use the same terms for navigation, hierarchy, components, and success signals. Feedback becomes sharper and more constructive. Delivery becomes smoother because the team spends energy building rather than re-explaining.
“Success looks like adoption and continuous improvement”
Kainjoo: At the end of a programme, what outcome makes you proud?
Alyona: Two layers. The first layer is user experience: people move through the journey smoothly and complete their tasks with confidence. The second layer is organisational capability: teams maintain the system, reuse patterns, and improve the experience release after release.
That second layer creates long-term value. It turns design into a sustained operating rhythm, which is exactly what brand-tech consulting enables when it is done well.
Kainjoo: What do you want colleagues to understand about UX/UI leadership at Kainjoo?
Alyona: UX leadership turns strategy into something people can use. It connects audience intent, brand direction, and delivery systems. It gives teams a shared language for building, and it gives users a clear pathway for action.
Quick round
Kainjoo: A moment you enjoy during delivery?
Alyona: The moment the journey “clicks” and the team sees the sequence clearly from first touch to completion.
Kainjoo: A principle you bring into every engagement?
Alyona: Purposeful hierarchy.
Kainjoo: A signal a system is ready for scale?
Alyona: Teams build new pages quickly using existing patterns, and the experience stays consistent across the rollout.
Alyona’s work captures the practical side of brand-tech consulting: journeys designed for real intent, interfaces built through reusable patterns, and stakeholder alignment shaped through shared language. That combination helps complex organisations ship experiences that feel clear, calm, and confidently run.
