Aras Bilgen

Aras provides design training and coaching for designers, business analysts, agile teams, managers, and executives.

He was the Senior Vice President of experience design and front-end development at Garanti Bank, a BBVA joint-venture in Turkey. His team worked on a broad range of areas, from mobile apps, web sites, ATMs to enterprise software, discovery, long-term strategic research.

Prior to Garanti, he was the Product Director for ÇiçekSepeti, the largest flower and gifting site in the world. He was a Product Development Group Manager at Monitise, where his team of product managers and designers delivered top-notch digital experiences for leading financial institutions and e-commerce sites, such as İşBank, Visa, eBay, Turkcell, and Turkish Airlines. He was a UX planner at Intel where he led the UX planning for Tizen (with Samsung), worked on MeeGo (with Nokia) and adapted Intel’s brand identity system for the software products.

Previously, he was at Microsoft Research, where he developed a gestural system for interacting with displays remotely. He completed similar research efforts at the University of California, Irvine and Lancaster University, United Kingdom.

Aras holds a BSc from Bilkent University and an MSc in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. He is currently pursuing a BA in Sociology from Anadolu University. He is an avid cook and he drives his colleagues crazy by winning all food-related trivia games.