Intro

Context

Process

Solutions

Outcomes

Digital Factory PRO/EDU

UltiMaker

2025

Turning four fragmented tools into one cloud platform—and making it the daily driver for 3D printing teams worldwide.

Role

Lead Designer — Product Strategy, User Research, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Prototyping, Usability Testing

Development

2023 - Present

Release

Q1 2025 (Initial Launch)

Team

UX — Dominik Strykowski, Lorenzo Romagnali

PM — Rob Veldkamp, Mariska Maas

ENG — Sergeii Servenchko, Daniel Mirabolghasemi, Craig King, Simon Edwards, Rano Hardjmesito, Volodymyr Leha, Volodymyr Yevdokymov, Yelyzaveta Tahunova, Ivan Shaparenko, Pavlo Starusiev, Job Lampe

Digital Factory Pro/Edu is UltiMaker's central platform for 3D printing operations—connecting printers, preparing prints, monitoring jobs, and managing access as organizations scale from solo users to multi-site teams. It consolidates what previously lived across four separate tools into one unified experience.

I led design alongside the Product Director and two EU-based engineering teams, owning the experience end-to-end—from strategic workflow definition through shipped product. My core challenge was aligning two parallel efforts, Digital Factory and Cura Cloud, toward one coherent vision.

The situation

"I just bought a printer—where do I start?"

When MakerBot and UltiMaker merged, we inherited four overlapping products—each solving parts of the workflow but none serving as a clear starting point.

For new customers, this was chaos: multiple logins, multiple apps, and no obvious answer.

We needed to unify how customers use our products and give them a clear starting path.

The complexity underneath

I was designing for two worlds that share the same products but have completely different daily needs.

A manufacturing engineer asks: "Can I trust these printers to run this job consistently across all my lines?"

A K-12 teacher asks: "How do I let 30 students submit work without drowning in files"

One platform had to serve both—across 15+ printer models with incompatible firmware.

We interviewed 42 users across this spectrum to find where these worlds actually converge.

How I approached it

The first-mile target

Underneath the different use cases, everyone shares the same starting requirement:

Get to a successful print as quickly as possible.

The core workflow loop that Product and Engineering aligned on investing in first

Key Moves

Embedding the slicer

How does a user get from "I have a file" to "I have a part in hand"?

Previously, users had to install Cura, slice a file, then open a separate tool to send it to the printer. This wasn't just a convenience play; it was the only way to unlock users blocked by IT restrictions.

For a deeper dive on the creation of the slicer, see: Cura Cloud.

We brought slicing into the browser—so the entire prepare → print → monitor loop happens in one place.

Creating a shared intake funnel

How can one manager serve an entire school or production site without drowning in requests?

We repurposed an existing feature called "Projects"—originally built for storing finished parts—and turned it into an intake system for incoming work requests. Same technical foundation, entirely new purpose.

Students or colleagues submit files through a link, the manager triages from a single queue, and jobs flow directly to printer.

Differentiated roles on a shared foundation

How do we allow scaling for user groups that grow in different directions?

Professionals need collaborative workflows for shared production across sites; educators need guardrails so students can participate without breaking things.

We designed three base roles, then layered EDU-specific permissions so a single platform serves both worlds without feeling like a compromise.

Outcomes and Impact

38% YoY growth in monthly active users (142.7K → 196.7K, Sept '24–'25)

Monthly print jobs grew from 3K to 89K—a 28× increase