Sophie Durand

About


Sophie Durand
Location Stockholm, Sweden
Currently Lead Product Designer @Acast
Education
  • Software Engineering — Telecom SudParis
  • HCI — Blekinge Tekniska Högskola
Experience 13 years
Previously worked with
  • H&M
  • Thomas Cook
  • BBC
  • Sainsbury's
  • Japan Airlines
  • Amadeus IT Group
  • and more

Hiya! I'm Sophie, a Product Designer based in Stockholm. I'm originally from the north-east of France, and I lived in the UK for a while before settling in Sweden.

I love figuring out how people work and think, and turning that into products that are intuitive, and genuinely useful. Whether I'm designing an experience or collaborating with teams, I'm obsessed with simplicity and efficiency.

When I'm not working, I'm usually with my husband and our two sons (7 and 4), playing a strategy board game or reading way too much (I'm in two book clubs, where "gentle" discussions get surprisingly heated). And of course, I love listening to podcasts!

Background

I'm currently a Lead Product Designer at Acast, building products for content creators and sellers, and driving cross-team initiatives to improve the experience across our product offering.

I've worked at H&M, travel company Thomas Cook, UX consultancy System Concepts, and technology provider Amadeus.

I studied Software Engineering at Telecom SudParis and Human-Computer Interaction at Blekinge Tekniska Högskola.

What my colleagues say

"Sophie is very thoughtful with everything she does, this is so useful for the teams that have a tendency to dive in and want to build the next cool thing. The 'push back' never feels like a correction, the whole team is taken along on the decision."

Engineering Manager

"Sophie is driving design quality in her teams, and structured conversations across teams. She makes explorations, different directions, and reasoning visible in Miro boards, looms, or documents. It's really useful to have reasoning documented, to be able to build on it and have actual artifacts to discuss. She articulates her points well, and is thoughtful about how she presents arguments."

Product Designer

"Sophie is a very skilled designer and she obviously knows her craft very well. When we're thrown a technical or business curveball which means we need to re-think scope, Sophie is so pragmatic about what we can cut to make sure we can stay on track and hit our goals. She's a strong champion of the user, and makes sure our planning and prioritisation sessions have a clear user focus."

Product Manager