Nicoleta Ciobanu

Nicolate Ciobanu is a big fan of a short course – she credits the UX/UI Design short course she took post-Covid with opening new doors for her in the design world, eventually leading to her current role at MUBI. Moving between Moldova, Portugal and the UK, a medley of visual and cultural influences has shaped Nicoleta’s approach to design. At the same time, learning to start from scratch multiple times has been tough. Below, she shares how empathy and advocating for users, not just visuals, are central to her role in UX/UI.

What I do

My creative practice
My job is to make sure I give users a flawless experience when interacting with our product. I research and design end-to-end flows that make complex solutions feel effortless. At MUBI, this means owning the user experience, which translates user needs and business goals into intuitive, friction-free user journeys. I am lucky enough to work at a place where my interests – such as watching films – help inform my creative practice.

Influences and inspiration
My family is a big inspiration to me for their resilience, adaptability and hard-work. I am originally from Moldova, a tiny country in Eastern Europe with Soviet influence and a very rich culture. My first visual memories are watching Russian cartoons with their animated typography and the packaging design of the ice creams I used to get as a treat.

I moved to Portugal at seven years old; my parents were searching for a better life for us. My dad was a truck driver and my mum a cleaner; life was hard and I was always conscious of where I came from when making decisions about what to study and my future career. I grew to love Portugal and still find a lot of inspiration there: the colorful buildings, interesting tile patterns, amazing food and music. I am also loving the UK and find inspiration in the beautiful countryside, traditions and abundance of musicians, creatives, artists and filmmakers here.

My friends are also a source of inspiration to me. They are all very inclusive, open-minded and resilient.

My training
Before I moved to the UK, I decided to study a professional course in Portugal so I could get a job without going to university. One of the subjects was graphic design and I loved developing logos and branding projects. This helped me build a portfolio and got me applying for unis in the UK.

I managed to secure a place on the Graphic Communication course at Norwich University of the Arts, the only university that interviewed me online and didn’t ask me for an English test (which costs a lot of money). I accepted the offer and moved to Norwich in September 2016 without having ever visited the city or the university. It was a big risk – no one in my family had ever studied or worked in the creative industries.

I eventually went on to work at OneAgency in Norwich, where I worked on interesting branding, animation, social media and design projects. After a few years, I felt pretty comfortable within graphic design and wanted to learn more about digital design. I had a little break and went back to Portugal at the end of 2022, taking on freelance work and starting an intensive six-month UX/UI course. This opened so many doors for me in terms of finding jobs, allowing me to apply for positions at companies whose products I love using on a daily basis.

Nicoleta's NUA graduation

Favourite recent project
My favourite and probably most rewarding project was designing the Prosperh app with Innovagency, the last agency I worked at in Lisbon. The app tracks the mental and physical health of employees and provides helpful data and tips. I designed the user experience: from logging your data and how you’re feeling mentally and physically to accessing information to deal with different mental health issues, whether that’s anxiety, depression or stress. Mental and physical health is something I take very seriously and advocate for, so working on this project was a full-circle moment for me.

The project was funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme.

A day in the life
A normal day usually starts with checking any emails and getting up to date with any project updates. My days can be very different, but one consistent thing is communication with developers, engineers, my manager and my fellow UX colleagues to make sure projects are running smoothly and that we create the best solutions for our users.

Sometimes I’ll be conducting user interviews to gain design solution insights or I’ll be benchmarking research before starting a design project. And of course, there’s lots of design! At MUBI, this could be a landing page to help people decide which membership plan they want or a banner that announces a new film is out on our platform.

A starter pack for my job:
Figma, auto-layout, my family’s Labrador pic updates, Chrome with 47 tabs open and ChatGPT/Claude for copy placeholder text because "lorem ipsum is very 2015".

How I got here

Starting my creative journey
After graduating, I was lucky to get a 3-month internship through NUA’s partnership with OneAgency in Norwich, which was extended for another three months. The pandemic hit, which forced us to work from home; even though my colleagues were amazing at supporting me virtually with regular video calls and check-ins, I struggled a lot during those months and felt frustrated when trying to learn new things. I had to be very proactive and resourceful, deepening skills (like animation) by myself. Looking back, it was a blessing in disguise: it made me so much more confident in that junior role. Eventually, my hard work was noticed and I got offered a full-time position; I started to be trusted with bigger projects and my senior colleagues began to rely on me for a lot of animation work.

At my second agency job, I felt a lot more confident and quickly found my feet, even though I was starting out in a new design area (UX/UI). UX/UI requires you to be more vocal to advocate for users – websites and apps need to pass accessibility tests to ensure users with certain disabilities are included. Speaking up helped me to gain more confidence and quickly integrate into the team.

At MUBI, I feel my confidence has grown even more. Everyone is very approachable and kind. It’s also a very international team where we can relate to one another’s experiences of moving countries and starting from scratch.

Landing my first few jobs, clients and/or commissions
When I decided to come back home to Portugal, I worked freelance for OneAgency and with clients I found via word of mouth. My first ever client came through my manager from OneAgency and the rest was a family effort – my siblings were the main drivers, finding people in need of graphic design services.

Biggest challenges along the way
My biggest challenge was moving countries so many times – finding work, building a community and adjusting to the way of life in each of these places.

As much as I loved experiencing different countries and cultures, I found it challenging to build my self-identity. There are different parts of each country I love and connect to, but I felt I was only allowed to relate to my Moldovan heritage. With the years, I’ve come to realise that I’m lucky to have come from a traditional country while growing up in a more modern and creative one – and now, working and living in one of the most creative hubs in the world! I can cherish all the good things from each place and that is okay.

My social media and self-promotion vibe is…
I don’t have much experience with promoting my work to be honest. I've been a very shy person for most of my life and only recently managed to gain the confidence to share some of my projects. I use LinkedIn as I feel I can share at my own pace and keep my work separate from my personal social media. I am lucky enough that my partner and most of my friends work in the creative industries and big up my work, while being equally honest if it needs improving.

Three things I've found useful in my career:

Courses, programmes, initiatives, access schemes or job boards I've found helpful
From my own experience of getting into the industry, I recommend checking if your university partners with any industry agencies. Job boards I’ve found useful are LinkedIn and If You Could Jobs. I’ve also found the meet-up Friends of Figma great for networking. Reaching out to recruiters from the recruitment agency Represent has been useful too: Joe Cooper was kind enough to go through my portfolio and give me advice on what was good and what needed improvement, alongside tips for looking for jobs in the UK market.

Get a mentor if you can – this could be a tutor you have at uni, a colleague from your workplace, or someone from ADPList or The Arena. Having a mentor will keep you accountable, give you reassurance and confidence in how things are developing and encourage you to attend events or take part in creative challenges. For example, my mentor encouraged me to do the Fedrigoni 365 calendar challenge and I ended up having my work published with lots of creatives I look up to, including one of my tutors from NUA

I am an advocate for short intensive courses. If you are stuck in an industry that feels stagnant, don’t be afraid to find a course and learn something new – it can help open doors. UAL does a variety of short courses across different subjects and Google's UX Design Certificate on Coursera is a solid start too.

My greatest learnings when it comes to making money and supporting myself as a creative:
I’ve been lucky enough to be able to support myself through my creative job in full-time positions, but when I was freelance, there was the anxiety of when the next payment would come. I had to learn to ride the wave and keep occupied with other things until the next gig came through. Then there was having clients not pay, which I learned the hard way. I eventually learned I needed a better process to vet projects and clients before starting work. During this time, I also moved back in with my parents, which meant I could save my freelance income, making it manageable when I went through periods of less work.

I try to have open conversations with friends and family about finance to learn how I can best manage it myself. Both my siblings work in accounting and have a lot of knowledge on the matter, which I like to extract. Relying on people you trust who know more about a certain topic makes it easier to navigate.

We need to be realistic that it's a tough world in the creative industries and you shouldn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed about picking up additional jobs while you build your career. There are always positive skills that you will gain, such as time management, multitasking and communication, that you can apply anywhere.

My advice

My most useful career tips
Be flexible, adaptable and open-minded. Sometimes we can be too caught up in our own way of working; being open will help with the growing pains you go through in the industry.

What I'd say to someone looking to get into a similar role
Begin with the fundamentals and get familiar with typography, colour, layout and hierarchy. Get yourself on Figma as soon as possible. It's the industry-standard tool and it's free to start. Practice by redesigning apps you already use every day – you'll learn faster this way.

Build a portfolio early, even if it’s with self-initiated projects. Employers want to see your thinking, not just pretty screens so show your process: the research, the wireframes, the iterations. Three strong case studies will always beat ten shallow ones.

Empathy is the thing that separates good designers from great ones, in my opinion. UX/UI isn't just about making things look nice, it's about understanding how a person feels when they land on a page, tap a button or hit a frustrating dead end. You have to be able to put yourself in the user's shoes; feel their stress, their confusion, their delight, and design for that emotional experience, not just the visual one.