Slava Karablikov Into Product Design With Indata Labs

When he was a child in Belarus, Slava Karablikov was very close with his grandfather, a successful engineer, who therefore had access to books that were often scarce in the country. This allowed Karablikov to become brilliant on the bookshelves, reading The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Chemistry in Action by Michael Freemantle, and even translated Japanese comics with basics of Assembler.

“Despite the boring school textbook, these books are written in the vivid fascinating language. I have yet to become the star of fundamental science in the future, but thanks to these books, I understood how to work scientific approach and developed my curiosity,” says Slava.

With an impressive resume, it is evident why Slava is at the top of his game. As Director of Design at Captiv8, he spends every day generating revenue for his customers by connecting brands and influencers with their audience through innovative software. His previous experience with award-winning companies like 415Agency and RadiumOne allowed him to show the world what he is capable of, and directly contributed to their great and continued success. Despite all of this, he still remains humble and grounded.

“Being part of the industry for a long time (more than ten years), I’ve worked on many projects which ended their existence. Statistically, nine from ten startups are failing. As a product designer, you can only control some things — other people’s work, the current market situation is out of your control. But you can focus on your part of the work and get prepared for the next project. I appreciate having successful projects under my belt. But I also appreciate all my experience, no matter how successful it is,” he said.

Slava is often approached by CEOs to offer insight into their product design, such as InData Labs. The Head of Marketing knew his ability to work with data-driven marketing design, so he was invited to collaborate. In the end, he took care of all the design activities of the company. When he began to work with InData, data science and machine learning were becoming trendy. He decided that working with highly complicated projects full of infographics was fascinating, and was intrigued that it was a different type of project than he had ever taken on, showcasing his versatility.

“I knew the CEO and head of marketing in person, who are highly professional. The company had rather famous customers with unusual requirements. Also, for the first time in my career, I had to collaborate with engineers and mathematics, which seemed intriguing. So, I took advantage of trying myself in a drastically new domain,” he says.

The fun and challenging part of working with InData was that every project needed a completely different approach. On some projects, he worked according to the typical production process and supported the design of the interface. On others, he was a mediator between mathematics, customers, and users. He transformed customer requirements into users’ tasks and goals and then helped with building tasks for mathematics, and collaborated directly with Product Management, Engineering, and other stakeholders to define experience strategies that make a difference to the overall product with intuitive, cohesive, and effective results. He participated in critical company projects for key customers such as Flo and Okko, and in presales negotiations when they required product designers’ expertise. Moreover, he worked closely with the marketing department on the corporate website, reaching a high conversion rate for new leads. Finally, he also aided in recruiting and mentoring new designers.

“I like the various experience that I got in the company. All customers and their requirements were different, and the regular tasks and responsibilities were far beyond a typical designer’s duties. I discovered that the product approach could be applied to machine learning and data science issues. I appreciate the unique experience that I gained in the company,” he says.

In 2020, InData Labs was listed in the Top 10 AI Software Companies in the Global Clutch Leaders Matrix. Karablikov’s work directly contributed to such an honor, and he is so proud to have been a part of such a different project than he was used to and bring it to success.

““It’s a special feeling you have after hard and difficult work is done. All completed projects felt like a personal win. It was an unforgettable feeling to learn something new, having this “aha!” thought when you got something highly complicated,” he concludes.