Hey, I’m  Zoltán Hosszú 

and I’d love to be a Designer at 37signals!

Who is Zoltán?

I’m a creator at heart, a multi­disciplinary designer with over 20 years of experience. I design, code, teach, lead a team, and constantly push myself to learn new skills.

Becoming a designer wasn’t my childhood dream, but creating always was. My passion for building with LEGO evolved into web design, eventually leading me to specialize in UX and UI. I’ve been crafting digital things since I was 15 — 25 years and counting.

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, Swift, and SwiftUI? No problem. I use them daily — mainly for my side projects — and learn whatever is required to bring my ideas to life. These skills also allow me to speak the same language with developers.

Sounds like a manager of one? You bet! There are many concrete examples in my portfolio (40MB PDF).

Now, I’m looking for my next challenge — one where I can combine design, technology, and leadership to craft great products. I’d love to bring my skills to 37signals  and help push great ideas forward.

39

years old, born in 1985

2

years since moving to Germany

8 + 2

ages of my daughters, Aliz & Adel

13

LEGO sets I bought last year

What can I bring?

Experience

20 years of love for apps and websites
Creator mindset

Designed, built and launched various side-projects
Figma expertise

Design systems, components and variables can’t scare me
Love of interaction design

Enhancing experiences via motion, haptics & sound
Leading & Mentoring

My superpower is explaining complex things simply
Big picture with tiny details

I have a detail oriented big picture mindset

Where do I come from?

Being a self-taught designer, I’ve learned whatever was necessary to achieve my creative goals throughout my career. Here is my recent past:

Design Lead at Deutsche Telekom

Since September 2018

Currently leading a team of 20, working on our self-care mobile and web applications, used by over 20+ million users monthly.

Most important thing I’ve learned here: how to lead a team, mentor individuals for growth and work on a complex company-wide design system.

Instructor & mentor at UI Academy

Since May 2019

In the last years I’ve had the opportunity to teach UI design at various courses. At UI Academy I focus on design basics and UI design animation principles. In-between my classes I mentor students in every semester. My presentations are usually rated the highest among the participants.

Most important thing I’ve learned here: how to engage with an audience and use cool presentation techniques to effectively communicate complex topics simply.

Visual Designer at IBM

September 2016 - September 2018

IBM Budapest Lab focuses on live-streaming video products for businesses. I worked on UX/UI designs for websites and native apps for Windows and Mac.

Most important thing I’ve learned here: how to work with the constraints of an existing platform that is already used by hundreds of thousands of users.

Startups and freelancing

2000 - 2016

I’ve worked full-time for a US based fashion-tech startup, a digital agency, a popular real-estate website; and a lot of various clients while freelancing.

Most important thing I’ve learned here: how to thrive in an international environment and how to effectively explain and sell my ideas to clients.

Some of my side-projects

As I’ve mentioned I’m a creator type: in my free time I’ve made many things. Here are a few of them. You can find even more in my portfolio.

Design Hub Achievements

An online team-building game I’ve made for my team
Numerico

A fantastic Google Analytics widget and app for iOS
GAget

A simple Google Analytics tool for macOS
Zseton

Web based expense tracker for my wife and myself
Teaching

I’ve been teaching and mentoring for 8 years
IoT hardware

During COVID I learned my way around Arduino and PCBs

Design Hub Achievements

Working fully remote AND staying close to your colleagues? This can seem like two ends of a spectrum for some teams.

During 2023 I have been thinking a lot about how to keep up our team spirit in fun and interesting ways, so I’ve built Design Hub Achievements. It is an online badge collection game, specifically created for my team.

Numerico

With the release of iOS 14, Apple introduced Home Screen widgets for iPhone and iPad. As my GAget app was getting outdated in many ways, I decided to do a complete rewrite for iOS, while taking the opportunity to try a new name as well.

After 3 years, I shut down the project with iOS 17, as I simply had no time to update to the new Google Analytics API.

GAget

This project started as a widget for OS X Dashboard and turned into the most popular Google Analytics widget for macOS in the App Store during 2011 - 2018. Features included an Overview widget for the most important data, a Real-Time widget for getting real-time visitor information and Alerts for custom event notifications.

It was my longest running side project, launching in August 2011. It it even motivated me to learn Swift.

Zseton

After our wedding, my wife and I started to save up money for a house, so a personal expense tracker was needed. Since no solutions at the time allowed us to share accounts and expenses I had to build my own. Today we are using Zseton on the web, on iOS and even as a native watchOS application.

Teaching

In the last 8 years I've had the opportunity to teach UI design at various courses. The latest has been organized by the Hungarian Fine Arts University, where I teach design basics and UI design animation principles.

My classes are always rated the highest by the students so I usually get invited to judge their closing presentation in front of 200+ people at the end of the semester.

IoT hardware development

As one of my main goals for 2019 I decided to make our home smarter by building custom hardware from PCBs. Today I manage the alarm system, open and close the garage door, control many lights, set the heating & cooling and many more fun things, all integrated through Apple’s HomeKit. I love doing this and it’s a great hobby.