HCI Researcher & Design Engineer · PhD
I study people, then design and build for them.
- 7 years shipping
- 30+ citations
- 15+ awards
Pick anything up, or drag it around.Tap anything to open it.
Experiments
Plotline ●
Murmur ●
Weekend builds
Weekend builds Murmur, Plotline and small experiments
Mira Live AI resale assistant
Vera Live Speech AI for atypical voices
Plotline Live Project canvas, built in 24 hours
DrawingsOn paper
Sketchbook Five years of architecture school
10+publications
Research Peer-reviewed HCI papers
CipherPal Health data you own · PhD research
Work
Research-informed products, from live AI and marketplace SaaS to phygital hardware and Web3 health data.
Plotline
Managing projects on a canvas, not a checklist
I designed and built it all myself with AI in 24 hours: a spatial canvas with live collaboration, dependencies, and timelines.
Mira
Auditing and rebuilding a live AI resale assistant
A chat-based assistant that searches secondhand marketplaces and judges fair prices.
Spacio
Redesigning an events marketplace for professional hosts
Led product design as the platform shifted from consumer bookings to organizer-facing SaaS, repositioning the experience, a custom design system, and mobile.
Vera
Teaching speech AI to hear atypical voices
I ran it end to end: HCI research, patient datasets, model training, cloud inference, and a shipped Android transcription app.
CipherPal
Giving users sovereignty over their health data
An encrypted, user-owned health-data companion for an anti-stress device. Records on Polygon, shared on your terms.
InTempo
Turning rhythm into an anti-stress phygital experience
A rhythm-based anti-stress “phygital” game. Tap the beat on your phone or a tactile case. Lexus Design Award finalist.
Maya Labs
Making zero-knowledge image provenance usable
Sign, edit and verify image authorship on-chain, an MVP that makes zero-knowledge provenance usable.
Claire Health
Building a unified brand for a diagnostics platform
Brand and product for a diagnostics platform: web + mobile apps, email, and a partner-site redesign under one identity.
Taxi Courses
Teaching drivers safety through illustrated mobile learning
An illustrated mobile learning platform teaching drivers language, safety and traffic rules for a local municipality.
I’m Polina — an HCI researcher and design engineer with a PhD and seven years shipping across web3, e-commerce, education, finance and healthcare. I like problems that don’t fit a template: new hardware, on-chain products, AI interfaces, where rigour and craft both matter.
I started in architecture school. That training is still how I look at a product: people first, then the structure that supports them, then the form it takes.
I write papers on whether people will actually use a new tool. Then I sit down and make the interface, the prototype, sometimes the brand around it.
Recognition
- 10+ peer‑reviewed publications
- 30+ citations
- 15+ awards, most for InTempo
- Lexus Design Award finalist
- ACM-W Grant by Google
Capabilities
- HCI Research & Evaluation
- AI Product Design & Engineering
- UX / UI & Design Systems
- Service Design & Prototyping
- Web3 · AR/VR · 3D
Architectural past
I studied architecture for five years.
There I learned to put what I see, and what I come up with, on paper.
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Skulls Graphite
Drapery Graphite
Nikolskaya Street Marker
Still life Watercolor
Ionic volute Hatching
Historical Museum Marker
Drawings
On paper
Sculpture study Graphite
Research
My research informs what I build; my products test what I study. Peer-reviewed work on human-centred blockchain, wearables and emerging-tech adoption.
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Experiments
Milk Proportion
40% milk
60% coffee
know that small habits are more effective than the one could
