# Sabine Kabel-Eckes > Product Design Lead at Abbott Location: Palo Alto, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/sabine Creative design and research leader with a strong track record of shaping complex challenges into user-centric solutions and driving significant business growth across a wide array of industries. Adept at leading diverse teams ranging from small, nimble start-ups to large, complex enterprises, driving strategic product enhancements and streamlining design processes. Known for fostering cross-functional collaboration and aligning design initiatives with key business objectives to fuel growth, innovation and sustained success. A no-ego team player dedicated to building healthy, supportive, high-performing teams and culture. ## Work Experience ### Product Design Lead @ Abbott Jan 2021 – Present | Alameda, California, United States - Led a dynamic product design team, enhancing design operations efficiency through strategic alignment with division goals and nurturing a supportive and collaborative team environment. Worked with leadership to define short- and long term hiring strategy and team structure. - Guided a multidisciplinary team in iteratively designing and testing an onboarding experience for an innovative insulin dose guidance product, allowing users to safely and effectively set up the product without the help of an HCP. - Directed the design of a comprehensive design system, which optimized development cycles and improves user satisfaction by standardizing design elements across products and platforms. - Redesigned and unified multiple sensor-specific applications into a single, intuitive user interface, resulting in a modular UX architecture allowing for a streamlined regulatory clearance process. - Facilitated cross-functional design sprints to identify and pilot new products and services delivering innovative business innovation, for example leveraging artificial intelligence to predict glycemic impact of food choices and provide personalized recommendations for users managing diabetes with food and exercise. - Defined the discovery phase for 0 → 1 and defined product strategy for GLP-1 users, resulting in research-driven product opportunities for patients and HCPs. ### Senior UX Consultant @ Luna Diabetes Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | San Diego, California, United States - Validated and prioritized user needs for an innovative insulin management solution by conducting quantitative market research - Created UX architecture for a mobile app to onboard users and monitor system status - Oversaw creation of detailed designs and first pass UI implementation by offshore vendor ### Sr. UX/Human Factors Engineering Consultant @ Biolinq Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | San Diego, CA - Established a strong user-centered design culture for a medical device startup. - Narrowed down features for first product release and avoiding feature creep by designing and executing market research, involving over 1000 qualified users, to understand unmet needs, market opportunities and table stakes. - Aligned stakeholders and enabling teams to successfully plan work by developing and documenting user needs and human factors requirements based on user-research, relevant standards and regulatory guidance documents, and careful assessment of risk for harm caused by use errors. - Authored and released Human Factors Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). ### Sr. Director, User Experience @ Bigfoot Biomedical Jan 2016 – Jan 2019 | Milpitas, CA - Defined the UX vision and end-to-end UX architecture for Bigfoot’s connected diabetes management solution, including service discovery, prescription, onboarding and daily use. - Translated the vision into a fundraising user story used by the CEO and co-founders to raise 35.5 million USD in series A financing. - Created a solid yet humble UX culture, tailored to meet ambitious business goals, UX and HFE best practices, and extensive regulatory requirements with limited startup resources. - Built a UX- and HF organization of 11 team members, including interaction designers, visual designers, instructional designers and human factors engineers. - Directed the team to execute the vision and deliver consumer-grade hardware-, mobile app-, web-, packaging- and labeling designs. - Mentored and coached team members to be strong voices for the users, and trusted partners for product managers and agile development teams. - Established a design system that empowered designers to make autonomous decisions without sacrificing design consistency. - Authored and released standard operating procedures (SOP) for human factors engineering, enabling successful human factors validation, regulatory submission and FDA 510(K) clearance. ### Sr. Director -- User Experience @ Good Powered by BlackBerry Jan 2012 – Jan 2016 | Sunnyvale, CA - Improved app store rating for Good Technology's flagship product from 1 to 4 stars. Created a centralized UX organization and led the transition from app design to platform design. - Attracted, developed and retained talent by offering career paths, mentorship and a strong UX voice in strategic product decisions. - Defined processes and fully integrated UX into the company’s agile development process. - Evangelized UX best practices and turned Good Technology (acquired by BlackBerry in 2015) into a UX driven company. - Redefined the user experience of Good Applications (especially Good for Enterprise) for iOS, Android, and Windows platforms. - Created a design system to allow over 2000 independent software vendors to build consistent user experiences using the Good Dynamics development platform. ### UX Designer | UX Manager | UX Director @ SAP Labs Jan 2001 – Jan 2012 | Palo Alto, CA - Within a centralized UX organization at SAP, built and lead a global 25+ members strong UX team, focused on mobile UX, to: - Designed SAP’s first mobile application (CRM Sales) for BlackBerry,Windows Mobile and iPhone in collaboration with Sybase Inc. - Defined SAP’s design strategy for native and cross-platform mobile designs. - Specified re-usable native and custom UI controls (such as mobile charting library) and collaborate with engineering teams to build a library for use by internal as well as external application developers. - Delivered the first social user experience at SAP with SAP Sales on Demand. - Developed innovative UI patterns such as “Feed”, “Collaborative DecisionMaking” and “Thing Inspection”. - Participated in the definition of the user-centered design process and user research methods to be used company-wide. - Analyzed UX capabilities of SAP’s outdated on-Demand platform and specified UX requirements to modernize it using Flex technology. - Consolidated multiple micro UX teams in Israel into one large organization under one country manager and integrated the team into SAP’s centralized UX organization. - Performed a series of contextual inquiries at customer sites to assess the impact of customization and business-process modeling on the usability of SAP applications. - Conducted heuristic evaluations, formative and summative usability tests on various SAP applications (Sales, HCM, Small Business) as well as building blocks for pattern-based UI. - Trained product managers and user-interface designers in preparing and conducting formative usability tests. - Drove the development of the SAP Usability Partners Program (UPP) to engage strategic partners in ongoing usability activities. - Developed and managed a program to conduct usability activities at user group conferences such as ASUG (Americas’ SAP User Group), SAPInsider and SAP TechEd. ### Vicar/Assistant Pastor @ Evangelische Kirche im Rheinland Jan 1996 – Jan 2000 | Hamburg Area, Germany/Palo Alto, CA ## Education ### Master's degree in Theology/Theological Studies Heidelberg University ### Ordination in Ministerial Studies and Training Evangelische Landeskirche im Rheinland ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/seckes - Portfolio: https://www.kabeleckes.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/sabine JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/sabine/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13