Yan Hladchenko – Product Designer

Product Designer based in Budapest. Currently building PDF Expert. I care deeply about craft and the little interactions people remember.

Featured work

CVLinkedIn X Instagram

Yan Hladchenko as a child, from a 1997 home video

Yan Hladchenko in front of the Sagrada Família

Mariupol, 1997Barcelona, 2026

Dear visitor,

I’m Yan Hladchenko, a Product Designer originally from Mariupol, Ukraine.

After moving to Dnipro for university, I began my career in digital design. Today, I’m based in Budapest, Hungary – a new chapter that started when the war forced me to leave home.

Sports have always been a big part of my life. As a kid, I spent countless hours on football fields and tennis courts.

My first design project? Creating 3D football club logos in Photoshop and uploading them for FIFA and PES players. I didn’t know it then, but that small side project would eventually lead me to product design.

Today, I’m a Product Designer at PDF Expert, building tools that make working with PDFs effortless.

Outside of work, you’ll usually find me playing tennis, shooting film photography, watching football, or exploring Budapest.

Product Designer based in Budapest. Currently building PDF Expert.
I care deeply about craft and the little interactions people remember.

⌘ K

Featured work

CVLinkedIn X Instagram

Homeyanhladchenko.com

This layout is inspired by the productivity tools I love and use every day.

Each project is a tab in the sidebar. Click one to open it, or keep scrolling to move through them. Use Search to jump straight to any project.

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Looking for my experience? It's all in the CV.

Want to know more? Open the section. In short: I'm obsessed with design, love tennis, and support Tottenham Hotspur.

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Everyday Tools

PDF Expert

Tools like Convert, Notes and Stamps are among the biggest value drivers in PDF editing, and the features the market competes on. When I joined the team they didn't exist yet, so I had to build them.

I had a lot of ideas and hypotheses about how they could work, so I built a prototype in Claude Code and iterated until using the tools felt effortless — then handed that code to the developers.

The microinteractions make the process more delightful while staying practical and never wearing out their welcome, which matters in productivity tools.

RoleDesign, Development

Year2026

PDF Expert web app before the redesign, with a file list and plan usage on the left, the document in the middle and PDF Copilot suggestions on the right.

PDF Expert web app after the redesign, with a dark Upload file button, editing tools along the top, view controls in a floating bottom bar and a simpler PDF Copilot panel.

Web App Redesign

PDF Expert

When I joined the PDF Expert team, one of my first challenges was to redesign how the web app looks and feels.

I rebalanced the emphasis and the visual hierarchy, updated the color palette, and built it all so the design could scale.

As a result, key actions like Upload File carry more weight, and there's more focus on the documents people are actually working with. My goal was an interface that keeps people in flow, with nothing pulling at their attention.

While building it, I recreated the new design in code, which made it quick to validate ideas and sped development up.

This redesign became the foundation for every feature that followed — a turning point for the PDF Expert web app.

RoleDesign, Development

Year2026

Old sign-in dialog titled Welcome to PDF Copilot, with Google, Apple and email options over a greyed-out placeholder page.

New sign-in dialog titled Your document is ready, with Google and Apple sign-in beside a preview of the AI summary and the uploaded document behind it.

Sign Up Revamp

PDF Expert

During my probation period I got curious about how people actually used the product, and went looking at the top-of-funnel analytics. Only 27% of the people who pressed log in or sign up ever made it into the product.

I took it on. Part of the problem was that you couldn't see anything of the product before you were inside it, so there was nothing to sign up for.

I worked on that at several levels: personalized, value-based copy that says what happens after you log in; a preview of the document you had just uploaded; the document itself showing through the interface behind the dialog; and clearer emphasis inside the sign-in window.

Since 80% of people sign in with Google, I also took the Continue with email button out — it now appears only once you interact with the email field.

Completion rate27% → 59%

RoleDesign, Development

Year2026

Cash loan offers screen with cards for a loan of up to 5,000 €, a credit card and a higher limit.

Cash loan amount step with 3,000 € typed on a number pad and the allowed range shown below it.

Cash loan term step with a slider set to 27 months and the monthly payment updating live.

Cash loan review screen listing the amount, monthly payment, term, interest rate and card, with a button to sign.

Cash loan confirmation screen saying the loan is on its way to the card.

Cash Loan

Raiffeisen Bank

Raiffeisen’s legacy loan flow buried the entry point and overwhelmed people with complex forms and unclear repayment information.

Working in the lending department, I built the lending experience from scratch: how cash loans are presented and where exactly they sit in the app, the application and repayment flows, and managing the loan itself.

I partnered with engineers and analysts, ran user interviews to find where people lost confidence, and tested each iteration before development.

The screens here follow the application: one question per step, the monthly repayment updating as you go, and a clear summary before signing.

Completion rate+31%

RoleDesign, Research

Year2025

Account screen with the yellow credit card and a reminder of the 731 € minimum payment and its due date.

Credit card repayment details with the interest-free period, balance, minimum payment and due date.

Credit card top-up step with 731 € entered on a number pad, the card it comes from and the total balance due.

Credit card payment review with the amount, both cards and the payment purpose, above a Pay button.

Credit card confirmation screen saying the 731 € payment was sent with no fee.

Credit Card

Raiffeisen Bank

At Raiffeisen Bank we relaunched the credit card completely — what it was called, how it worked, and what using it in the mobile app would feel like. That last part was mine.

I spent a lot of time talking to customers and built the experience from scratch: opening a card, managing it and setting limits, repaying what you owe, and making it clear how the card actually works.

The screens here follow the repayment flow, from the reminder on the account screen through to the payment going out.

Against the old card it fixed a lot of what people had been struggling with, and the key metrics moved with it.

Card openings+29%

Card usage+24%

RoleDesign, Research

Year2025

yMeet

Side Projects

I got tired of constantly checking Google Calendar and email to see if a meeting was added, canceled, or moved.

So I built yMeet.

It lives in the menu bar and counts down to the next meeting, so there's nothing left to check. One click joins the call, and a notification arrives the moment anything moves.

ToolClaude Code

Year2026

Fix the PDF

Side Projects

I was exploring whether I could build a game, and I did. It's set in an imaginary world where you have to fix a PDF, talking to NPCs who help you along the way. My colleagues at PDF Expert are in there as characters – me included.

Writing the whole story and drawing the 2D arcade-style art was the best part.

You're watching a recording – the game is played with the arrow keys, so open this page on a computer to play it yourself.

ToolsClaude Code, ChatGPT Images 2.0

Year2026

Ship It

Side Projects

The idea came from Ridd and Tommy launching backyarddesigners.club.

I figured, why not make something fun about designers too, with a few inside jokes. That’s how Ship It came to be.

Build your own team of three designers and get through three rounds of sign-offs with different stakeholders before shipping your feature to prod – all while trying to make sure nobody on the team burns out.

You're watching a recording – the game needs a mouse and a wide window, so open this page on a computer to play it yourself.

Full screenLink

ToolClaude Code

Year2026

Rolls

Side Projects

I built Rolls, an AI-powered app for organizing and preserving film scans, using Glaze for the Glaze Awards.

Drop in your scans, and they come back looking like they just left the lab – arranged into realistic film strips with sprocket holes and handwritten kraft labels. Rolls also analyzes the grain to guess the film stock, helping photographers rediscover forgotten details from their archive.

This project explores how AI can bring craftsmanship and delight to a niche workflow while solving a real problem for analog photographers.

ToolGlaze

Year2026

HEIC to JPG

Side Projects

A small Mac app for turning HEIC photos into JPG – the format that opens anywhere, on any device.

Drop in a batch and it converts the whole lot at once with live progress. Preview the quality and file size before committing, choose where the results land, and optionally trash the originals and reveal the finished files when it’s done.

Try it out on Glaze.

ToolGlaze

Year2026

Lab

Side Projects

An image playground I built for experimenting with film-inspired looks.

Upload your own photo or start with a sample, then apply different film stocks to see how they transform the image.

ToolClaude Code

Year2026