Many designers suffer from the problem of being seduced by their own visually attractive designs. As a key player in Knox Design Strategy’s User Experience/User Interface (UX/UI) team, Milton Arantes does the opposite. He builds things that not only look great, but work seamlessly for our clients, making their users’ lives more efficient and more productive.
Brazilian-born and New York City-raised, Milton graduated from Farmingdale State College in 2016 with an undergraduate degree in computer science. He then worked at Incentient, Inc. as a UX/UI designer, leading their design team through many full site and product build processes: from client kickoffs to development handoff, and initial brand identity research to final design reviews and QA. In this role, working for clients in the luxury and hospitality verticals, he was responsible for managing development handoffs as well, including all design specifications, documentation and fully functional prototypes, while overseeing the development process and providing graphic design, copywriting and editorial support for projects.
In 2020, Milton joined the Knox Design strategy team, and he now oversees our UX/UI projects. In this role, in addition to his technical skills, he applies (and teaches) some of the bigger-picture principles that make our projects successful. He brings to his work an intensely customer and user-focused perspective. With several years in the restaurant industry, Milton knows firsthand that his primary order of business is making the customer happy, and measures success by how well he puts himself in the user’s shoes while designing.
This includes getting his work in the hands of users early on, even as sketches or wireframes, and soliciting feedback. The creation of great UX/UI is an iterative process, with lots of testing and user feedback involved, and Milton sees his role as staying out of the way and letting the user react without bias, as early and completely as possible. The question, always, is: “Did we solve the problem?”
This often requires what Milton describes as “holding strong opinions lightly.” Clients can have forceful personalities, and in addition, understand their markets better than anyone. As a designer, Milton’s job is to use his imagination and expertise to mentally recreate his client’s world, and to build solutions that solve problems, even if the client can’t articulate precisely what they are. Milton knows that important answers will often appear in the form of project feedback or a client’s challenge to his design. His role is to hear that response, openly and completely, integrate it into the project, and in the end, produce great design that does exactly what the client – and the client’s users – need.
Milton Arantes
Sr. UX/UI Designer
