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Halina Garycka
User Experience Designer at SPUD.ca - Product Designer & Strategist
Professional Background
Halina Garycka is a dedicated and passionate Product Designer specializing in conscious, ethical, and inclusive design. With her commitment to enhancing user experience and contributing to business growth, Halina epitomizes the qualities of a creative and innovative mind in the design field. She has honed her skills through diverse experiences, which include working in various UX and UI positions across different organizations. Currently, Halina operates as a solo UX designer for one of Canada's largest e-grocery companies where she is integral to all aspects of the UX design process—from comprehensive research and planning to detailed testing and implementation.
Career Histories
Throughout her career, Halina has demonstrated her ability to adapt and excel in various situations. Some notable positions she has held include:
- User Experience Designer at SPUD.ca: Here, she contributed to the company's mission of sustainable produce delivery, utilizing her design skills to enhance the user interface and experience across platforms.
- UX Designer at VitalSines International Inc.: Halina partnered with a dedicated team to innovate and enhance the user experience within the health sector.
- UX Designer/Scrum Master at Dearly.ca: Her dual role allowed her to not only design intuitive user experiences but also lead her team through agile processes to ensure streamlined project management and timely deliveries.
- Photography Studio Manager at 50hz Photography: This role enabled her to expand her visual design skills and bring a unique perspective to her later UX/UI work.
Additionally, Halina's journey included several UI designer positions at organizations such as Helthe Connect and Banging Rocks, which helped her strengthen her foundational design skills before venturing into more comprehensive UX projects.
Education and Achievements
Halina’s foundational training in design comes from her rigorous studies in Full Stack Designer Diploma, with a focus on UX/UI Design at RED Academy. This educational experience equipped her with a robust understanding of user-centered design principles, allowing her to apply best practices in her professional roles. Her commitment to lifelong learning continues to shape her design philosophy, making her an asset to any team.
Lifelong Learning and Volunteerism
Halina's eagerness to learn is complemented by her important volunteer work, including serving as a companion to individuals with dementia. This experience has profoundly enhanced her ability to listen and empathize with users, which informs her design work. By understanding the diverse perspectives of various users, Halina is able to create solutions that are not only functional but also deeply human-centered.
Achievements
Halina's impressive skill set includes a variety of methodologies and tools that elevate her design practice. Her expertise spans across Agile, Scrum, Lean, and Kanban methodologies, which she applies to ensure efficient project execution and collaboration with her teams.
Halina utilizes a wide range of techniques in her design process, which include qualitative and quantitative research, usability testing, and rapid prototyping, among others. She has become proficient with design tools such as Sketch, Adobe XD, Figma, and InVision, enabling her to transform ideas into practical designs effectively.
Beyond technical skills, Halina's interpersonal skills are equally noteworthy. Her belief in the importance of teamwork is reflected in her ability to lead collaborative projects that harness the strengths of diverse team members. As she states, “If you want to walk far - walk together,” and this philosophy has guided her throughout her career.
Halina Garycka’s unique blend of skills, experiences, and values allows her to approach design with a thoughtful perspective. Her deep-seated belief in the power of empathy, understanding, and collaboration underlines her commitment to creating inclusive designs that enhance user experience and aid in meaningful business growth. Her portfolio reflects a dedication to continually pushing the boundaries of her creativity while balancing the technical aspects of her discipline.
This insightful and dynamic approach to product design not only benefits the organizations she collaborates with but also the users they serve. With a constant desire for improvement and innovation, Halina is well-prepared to tackle any challenge that comes her way. If you’re interested in learning more about how Halina can contribute her expertise to your organization, don’t hesitate to reach out and start a conversation about the possibilities of collaboration.
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Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
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- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
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Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.