Wiktoria Wiśniewska Currently in Singapore

Warsaw — Product design & indie iOS

I design products, then ship them.

Designer at Mastercard, former co-founder of Swayze. I work across product, brand and strategy — and build things of my own along the way.

Product designIndie iOSWarsaw
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Selected work

01 — 05
01

Swayze

Co-founder & design · Marketplace · Closed

A marketplace pairing nano-influencers with brands. We reached 40K+ users and 300+ brand partners, hit Top 3 in the Polish App Store, and raised a pre-seed round. Then we closed it. I learned more here than anywhere else.

40K+ users · 300+ brands · Top 3 App Store PL · pre-seed

Case study soon
02

Mastercard

Product, brand & strategy · CEE / DACH / BeNeLux

On the creative desk: design systems, campaigns, and AI enablement across three regions. I also help lead AI adoption inside an internal task force — getting designers to actually use the tools, not just talk about them.

Design systems · campaigns · AI enablement

Under NDA
03

Chá

Designer & builder · iOS · Live

A flashcard app for learning Mandarin. HSK 1–6, spaced repetition, pinyin audio, a lock-screen widget. I built it because I was learning myself and nothing on the shelf felt right.

Live on the App Store · cha.cards

cha.cards
04

In Bloom

Designer & builder · iOS · In development

Cycle tracking without the clinical dashboard. A flower that opens and closes with your phases, gradients that shift as they move. Calm, not clinical — the way this kind of tool should have felt all along.

In development

Soon
05

Huawei Tech4Good

Team lead · Innovation · 2022

Led an 8-person team developing a technology-for-good concept as part of Huawei's Seeds for the Future programme. Our project was selected among the Top 6 teams in Europe, taking us to Athens for the programme's final showcase.

Top 6 Europe · Team lead · Athens

Seeds for the Future

Field notes

Selected insights

Everywhere I go, I collect design — the small decisions most people walk straight past. A few notes from the field.

New York
USA · 40.7°N 74.0°W
Read on LinkedIn
  • A bigger market isn't just a bigger Warsaw.Launching Swayze in New York meant dealing with a much larger area, more fragmented audiences and stronger competition. Scaling required a different marketing playbook, not just more budget.
  • Local traction doesn't equal global validation.A product can work well in one city and still struggle elsewhere. New York forced us to separate what was truly scalable from what worked because we understood our home market particularly well.
  • Competition forces clarity.In a crowded market, being new is not enough. Strong competition made us think much harder about what was genuinely different about the product and why someone should choose us.
London
UK · 51.5°N 0.1°W
Read on LinkedIn
  • Trademark before traction.While building Swayze, we received a cease-and-desist letter related to our brand name. It taught me to treat trademark research as an early business decision, not something to deal with later.
  • A brand name becomes an asset quickly.Naming feels creative at first, but once reputation, customers and money become attached to it, the name becomes something worth protecting.
  • Old interfaces can outlive their original function.London's red phone booths are still instantly recognisable even though their original purpose has largely disappeared. Some have been repurposed, which made me think about how strong symbols can survive even when the function changes.
Dubai
UAE · 25.2°N 55.3°E
Read on LinkedIn
  • Speed is designed upstream.Five-minute grocery delivery looks like a delivery feature, but the real speed comes from inventory and logistics being positioned close to demand before an order is placed.
  • The environment shapes innovation.Dubai made me notice how much regulation, infrastructure and access to resources influence what companies are able to build. Innovation speed is not only about founders or technology.
  • Strong systems support themselves.I learned about groups of plants designed to help each other survive in difficult environments. It reminded me that resilient systems often work because individual components make the others stronger.
Tokyo
Japan · 35.7°N 139.7°E
Read on LinkedIn
  • The best design answers the question before you ask it.Instructions and contextual guidance often appeared exactly where confusion could happen. Good design reduced the need to stop and search for help.
  • Warnings don't have to threaten.Public instructions often used friendly characters and softer communication instead of aggressive warning language. Compliance does not always require anxiety.
  • Navigation can exist beyond the screen.Different sounds at pedestrian crossings communicate direction without requiring visual attention. Accessibility becomes part of the environment itself.

About

Who's writing

One foot in a startup mindset, the other in a global company — and I've stopped thinking I have to choose.

I'm a product designer in Warsaw. I co-founded Swayze, scaled it, and closed it. These days I design across CEE, DACH and BeNeLux on Mastercard's creative desk, and build my own iOS apps on the side.

I'm learning Mandarin, which is where Chá came from. I care about friction, dark patterns, and the decisions most people never notice. Usually the small decisions turn out to be the whole thing.

Get in touch

Let's make something.

hi@wiktoriaw.com