What is Vouch?

UX/UI Designer

Lara Rusu

I’m Lara, and I design digital stuff that doesn’t suck. I’ve freelanced my way through startups, corporates, and everything in between. Good design isn’t magic, it’s listening, testing, cutting what’s not needed, and knowing when to push back. This profile isn’t fluff. It’s here so you can see what I’m actually like to work with.

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Portfolio

Key Takeaways

Strengths

Clarity, speed, and a high bar for quality. Lara knows what matters in a design and what doesn’t. She’s the kind of teammate who quietly sets the pace for everyone else.

Challenges

Lara can get stuck trying to perfect things before they’re ready. It comes from a good place, but it doesn’t always help. She’s learning to trust that messy, fast, and collaborative often beats polished and late.

Achievements

Lara’s shipped work that’s won awards, boosted key metrics, and helped early-stage teams find their footing. She’s redesigned onboarding flows that doubled activation, brought structure to half-formed ideas, and helped clients go from “we think we need a designer” to “we’re glad we found her.” Her portfolio spans five countries, but what sticks most is how much easier products are to use after she’s touched them.

Communication

Collaborating with Lara feels like a creative partnership. She listens before she sketches, asks sharp questions, and knows how to translate ideas into interfaces — even when the brief is vague. Her ability to cut through noise and bring teams into alignment is one of the reasons clients often keep her on long after the initial scope.

Vouch Summary

Clarity of the Elephant 92%

Clarity of the elephant is a score given by the endorsers and grades the accuracy of our Vouch summary. Learn more

Vision-Led Design and Creative Drive:

Across all interviews, Lara is described as someone who doesn’t just respond to a brief — she reimagines it. Her ability to zoom out and understand the broader product vision makes her a standout contributor in early-stage and scaling teams alike. Clients and collaborators praise her for pushing projects forward, spotting UX bottlenecks others miss, and bringing clarity to ambiguous scopes. She has a bias toward action, and it shows — from kick-off to final handoff.

Adaptability and Execution Power:

Whether jumping into a brand overhaul or joining midway through a live product sprint, Lara adapts fast and gets moving. She’s comfortable taking ownership of the full UX/UI flow — from research to interaction design — but just as ready to collaborate with specialists when the scope scales. Her ability to switch between detail and vision, solo work and teamwork, makes her especially valuable in freelance settings.

Growth Edges:

Lara’s bar for design is high — which is a strength, but occasionally slows early sprints. She’s aware of this and has started to embrace faster prototyping and lower-fi testing, knowing that imperfect feedback often beats perfect silence. As one collaborator put it: “When Lara lets the process stay messy at first, the results tend to shine even brighter.”

Overall Impression:

Lara brings both clarity and spark to any design challenge. She’s a thoughtful builder of experiences, a strong collaborator, and someone who raises the bar not through ego but through insight. If you’re looking for a designer who can help teams move with purpose and create work users genuinely love — Lara’s your person.

Interview Transcripts

Clara Jensen

Head of Product Design

Interviewed by Jarrod on 4th April

Lara joined our design team on a 6-month freelance contract, originally to support a product refresh and ended up becoming instrumental in a full UX overhaul. What stood out from day one was her ability to listen deeply and challenge assumptions without ego. She has this way of calmly reframing problems that suddenly makes the whole room go “Ah, that’s what we’ve been missing.” She’s a rare combination: a thoughtful strategist who genuinely cares about the end user, and a meticulous executor who actually ships. In weekly design reviews, she always came prepared with not just options, but reasons. We didn’t just get beautiful screens - we got rationale and research behind every decision. If I had to nitpick, I’d say she sometimes takes longer upfront to nail the framing before moving into visuals. But I’ve learned to trust that process because once she gets moving, she’s lightning fast and incredibly precise. Lara also helped us bring non-designers into the process in a way that felt natural. PMs, devs, marketing - everyone wanted her in the room. Honestly, I’d bring her back in a heartbeat when the next project comes up.

David Nari

Frontend Developer

Interviewed by Sam on 2nd April

I worked with Lara on a couple of startup projects where she handled the full UX/UI flow and let me just say, handing off designs from her is a developer’s dream. Her files are clean, her logic is sound, and she’s always happy to walk through decisions without getting defensive. What I appreciated most was her ability to keep things collaborative, especially when timelines got tight. She never treated dev like a handoff , she brought us into the thinking. That made a big difference when we had to solve layout challenges or deal with shifting requirements. She also has this very chill but focused energy. Even when clients were being vague or pivoting mid-sprint (you know how it goes), Lara stayed steady. No fluster, no drama. Just “okay, let’s figure out what’s realistic.” If anything, she could push a bit harder when it comes to speaking up in louder group settings, especially with execs in the mix. But once you’ve worked with her a few times, you realise she’s always got solid opinions, she just doesn’t lead with volume. Overall, Lara makes the whole team better. I'd jump on any project where she’s on the design side.

Amira Shah

Founder at Kindling

Interviewed by Sam on 2nd April

I hired Lara to redesign the onboarding flow for Kindling and honestly, she exceeded expectations. I’ve worked with other designers before, but she brought a totally different level of empathy to the process. She spent time getting to know not just the product, but our users. She listened to interviews, read feedback, and actually challenged some of the assumptions I’d had in the early build. And she was right. Her changes led to a 30% increase in onboarding completion, which directly impacted our paid conversion rate. Lara is also just easy to work with. She gave structure to what felt like a chaotic early-stage project and helped me see how the brand and product experience could actually align. She brought clarity to places where I felt stuck, and even helped me pitch the updates to investors with before-and-after screens. The only thing I wish? That I’d looped her in earlier. She doesn’t just make things look good she makes them make sense. If you're building something you want people to actually connect with, Lara’s the person you want on your team.

Tomás Ortega

Co-founder at Looply

Interviewed by Katie on 15th March

We brought Lara in during a make-or-break moment our MVP was functional, but users weren’t sticking. Engagement was flat, and we couldn’t figure out why. Lara didn’t just come in with a Figma file; she came in with fresh eyes, humility, and a sharp sense of what actually matters to users. She immediately got to work mapping friction points, conducting short-form interviews with early adopters, and laying out what she called “UX blind spots.” Turns out she was spot on. The new flow she designed didn’t just look cleaner - it felt intuitive. Within two weeks of launching her redesign, we saw a 2x improvement in module completion rates. I’ve worked with freelancers who overpromise and disappear, Lara is the opposite. Understated, focused, and totally dependable. She communicates clearly, sets boundaries well, and somehow makes everyone feel calm - even when the stakes are high. If there’s one thing I’d tell her to lean into more, it’s her instinct. Sometimes she presents an idea like she’s not sure it’s strong, but then it turns out to be the exact thing we needed. I get it, design’s subjective, but her gut is good. She’s earned the right to trust it. Would I work with Lara again? Already have. She’s our go-to now anytime we touch anything user-facing.