Janita Da-Costa

Product Designer with 4 years of experience across apps, web and internal platforms at The Guardian and AND Digital, working on news, sport, travel loyalty and food ordering. Focused on finding the real problem behind a brief through discovery, then turning it into clear flows, partnering closely with product, engineering and stakeholders. Comfortable presenting work, design rationale and balancing user needs with business and technical constraints.

Uses AI tools including Claude Code to take ideas to working MVPs while owning every product and design decision.

Product Designer at The Guardian (2025-03 – 2026-08)

Joined on a 1 year contract, converted to permanent after 6 months.

• Increased Android notification opt-in from 15% to 18.5% within 30 days, with iOS reaching 17%, by redesigning onboarding into a progressive, contextual and user-controlled experience informed by user research.
• Led the end-to-end redesign of the live sports blog experience across pre-match, live and post-match, leading UX and interaction design across app and mobile web, launched for the FIFA World Cup and later extended to cricket and rugby.
• Designed the discovery, opt-in and lock screen user flows for Live Activities, defining principles and reusable patterns for sports and election coverage.
• Led end-to-end UX design of newsletter creation, launch and management workflows, introducing clearer states and reusable patterns that contributed to consistency across the editorial tools design system.
• Designed user flows, wireframes and prototypes within The Guardian’s design system, using clear rationale and documented trade-offs to align Product Managers, Engineers, Designers and Editorial stakeholders.

UX Designer at AND Digital (2022-05 – 2024-09)

Consultancy delivering digital products for clients including IAG Loyalty, Subway UK and Opus Energy

• Supported discovery, research and A/B testing for IAG Loyalty work that became the avios.com loyalty platform.
• Conducted user research and synthesis with British Airways Club members translating loyalty programme member needs into actionable product recommendations.
• Contributed to a 22% increase in Average Order Value for Subway UK’s online Meal Deal ordering experience by researching competitor ordering approaches, ideating and testing solutions.
• Contributed to £78k revenue growth within three months through the launch and improvement of the Subway Series mobile ordering.
• Designed and iterated end-to-end mobile and web experiences across retail, travel and energy clients, from user flows and wireframes to prototypes and production-ready UI.

Voluntary Social Media Manager at Black Girls In Tech (2020-09 – 2023-04)

• Scaled a global membership community to over 20,000 members across multiple social platforms through engagement initiatives, supporting partnerships with Meta, JP Morgan, ASOS and Warner Bros.

BSc in Business Management – University of Southampton

Professional UX/UI Design Bootcamp in UX/UI Design – Love Circular (2021 – 2021)