For over 16 years, I’ve been designing solutions in the world's most complex marketplaces. Driven by a passion for building impactful products, shaping thriving teams, and continually evolving how we work. I’m currently Head of Design for Real Estate at OLX Group (Prosus), leading the end-to-end experience strategy and using design craft as a driver for growth and excellence.
Before this, I led Flights at Booking.com, its fastest-growing unit, scaling Flights from early stage to a Top 3 global OTA by booking volume. Prior, I led global teams at Just Eat Takeaway, delivering the global, 0→1, post-merger redesign to unify brand and experience across all markets. I also served as Global Design Lead at Accenture, overseeing UX for Shell global apps (Loyalty, Payments, Station Locator), and was Head of Product Design at TwitterCounter, helping users make sense of their Twitter audience.
Curious by nature, I’m a lifelong learner with a love for music, innovation, and culture. 30 countries in, and still exploring and learning from different people, places, art and flavours.
I’ve worked across startups finding their rhythm, scale-ups shaping their future and global companies including Booking.com, Just Eat Takeaway and Accenture. I lead teams to connect business ambition with experiences that matter to millions of people.
Experience
OLX Group
Mar 2026 · Present
Head of Design for Real Estate
Creating the Real Estate design vision and strategy during ≈22% portfolio revenue growth year on year, spanning consumer journeys, professional tools and monetisation.
Leading AI adoption through shared skills, prototypes, agents and UI handoffs to code, supporting wider technology gains of 47% higher output and 50% faster delivery.
Shaping Product Design, Content Design and Design Systems, aligning team structure, hiring and ownership with business priorities.
Leading new products towards launch and supporting expansion across Europe, connecting customer needs with commercial opportunities.
Leading the platform redesign and building a shared design system to strengthen trust, improve quality and reduce duplicated work across markets.
Booking.com
Oct 2022 · Nov 2025
Head of Design for Flights
Led design for Flights as the product expanded to 55+ countries and booking volume grew 230%.
Scaled the design team by 83%, growing to more than 10 people across booking, post booking, discovery, engagement, ancillaries and core services.
Set the experience vision and introduced shared planning, prioritisation and design reviews across teams.
Brought Data, Research and Design together to make customer insights easier to find and use in product decisions.
Developed senior talent and aligned Product, Engineering, Commercial, Marketing, Legal and Strategy around the customer journey.
Just Eat Takeaway.com
Mar 2021 · Oct 2022
Senior Team Lead of Product Design
Led consumer design across a team of 15+ spanning product design, design systems and UX writing, with interim responsibility for research.
Spearheaded the consumer side of the global post merger redesign, bringing the legacy organisations towards a shared brand and product experience.
Connected discovery, search, loyalty, payments and the design system with priorities agreed across Product, Technology, Data and Marketing.
During leadership changes, stepped beyond my remit to support the organisation and protected the team through clarity and focused prioritisation.
Accenture
Dec 2017 · Feb 2021
Associate Manager of Product Design
Led UX, Design Operations and UX writing for the Netherlands’ largest account, supporting digital transformation for global businesses.
Led Shell’s global app reset from discovery to delivery, defining the experience and design system to support market rollout and migration.
Helped build a design practice of 50+ people, shaping its manifesto, growth framework, hiring and ways of working.
TwitterCounter
Jan 2017 · Nov 2017
Head of Product Design
Owned the end to end experience for a SaaS product serving 1,000+ clients and tracking 300 million Twitter accounts.
Led work that increased returning user conversions by 60%, using collaborative workshops to connect customer needs with product decisions.
Helped launch Social.co, a startup focused on social engagement.
What I do
UX management
Design operations
Experience quality
Scaling design teams
Customer centricity
Organisational culture
Strategic leadership
Organisational design
Team building and development
Cross-functional collaboration
Data analysis and synthesis
Change management
Education
Federal University of Pernambuco
Bachelor’s degree in Communication Design
Recife, Brazil · 2007 to 2012
University of Porto
Communication Design · Erasmus programme
Porto, Portugal · 2010 to 2011
Certifications
The AI-Native Leader
Maven
May 2026
Executive Programme in Product Management and Strategy
Wharton Executive Education
Dec 2025
Business Transformation
Hyper Island
São Paulo · Nov 2020
Design Leadership
Designit
New York · Sep 2019
UX Management
Nielsen Norman Group
London · Sep 2018
Mentoring
UX Mentor · ADPList
Jul 2020 · Present
I support designers with career decisions, leadership, interviews and portfolio reviews through ADPList’s global mentoring community.
I’m Icaro Bione. Brazilian by birth, based in Barcelona, with chapters in Porto and Amsterdam along the way.
I lead product design at OLX, working across real estate experiences, content, design systems and the possibilities AI brings to our practice. Before that, I led design teams at Booking.com and Just Eat Takeaway.
I’m interested in how design can create value for a business while respecting the people on the other side of the screen. That means asking better questions, caring about the details and giving teams the clarity to do good work.
