Most products speak machine language and expect the person on the other end to adapt. I work in the opposite direction: read the person first, then decide what the interface is allowed to become.
That is not a philosophy statement. It is a method, and it produces different outputs than the usual process of wireframing before watching.
What I actually do
I am a freelance product thinker and editorial designer based in Copenhagen. I build at the intersection of language, interface, and human behavior - in EdTech, housing, and civic tech specifically. I write, conduct user research, and ship products. Sometimes all three happen in the same week.
The work tends to attract founders and teams with a real problem involving how people communicate, navigate bureaucracy, or find each other in a city. They need someone who can hold the research and the roadmap in the same hand without dropping either.
If you want a generalist who writes clean copy and moves on, I am probably not the right fit. If you want someone who treats your product like a field site and your users like primary sources, we should talk.
Who this is for
The people I work best with are hiring managers, founders, and editorial directors at small-to-mid-size companies in Scandinavia or remote-first European organizations - usually in EdTech, proptech, or civic tech. They have typically run into the same wall: the interface makes sense to the team but not to the person it was built for.
Secondary collaborators include independent researchers, journalists, and NGO leads working on language access, migration, or housing. The common thread is that human behavior is the core design material, not a constraint to route around.
You probably read product blogs. You value writing that is precise rather than decorative. You understand that an interface, like a person, requires patient reading before editing.
How I work
I grew up in Buryatia, studied in Moscow, and have lived in Copenhagen long enough to understand that Nordic silence is not emptiness - it is another kind of fullness. That layered background is not biographical decoration. It is a way of seeing several things at once, none of them fully trustworthy, which turns out to be useful when you are trying to understand why users lie in questionnaires or why two people can agree on everything and still fail to share an apartment.
The method is editorial before it is technical. I watch how people actually live, where their day breaks, what consumes their attention. Only then do I decide what the interface is allowed to become.
Early work looks like research: interviews, field notes, close reading of how people describe their own behavior versus what they actually do. Product decisions come after that, not before. A good product, like a good text, does not pretend to be smart. It changes the density of reality around a person - subtly, the way a shift in lighting makes you think differently without knowing why.
In practice, I work on product strategy, user research, content and editorial design, and the connective tissue between them. I write case studies, journal entries, and product documentation that can stand alone as thinking, not just deliverables.
Projects that show the method
Flatmate.dk
Flatmate.dk is a housing compatibility platform that treats roommate selection as editorial work rather than lottery. Most housing searches ask people to list preferences. The problem is that people describe ideal flatmates poorly. They say they want someone "clean and quiet" when what they mean is someone whose noise tolerance matches theirs at 10pm on a Tuesday.
Flatmate.dk compares rhythms, habits, and the chemistry of shared evenings - because compatibility is less about shared interests than shared rituals. Two people can agree on everything and still fail to live together if one hums while cooking and the other needs silence to think.
The case study is available at dmitrii.dk.
Samovar
Samovar teaches Russian the way language actually works in a room, not through a declension table. A word that exists only in textbooks is already dead, even if millions still speak it. The tool treats language learning as cultural immersion - through air, pauses, intonation, and what remains unsaid.
The Samovar case study explains the research behind that approach.
Indfodsretsproven
The Danish citizenship exam produces a specific kind of anxiety: the state speaks in instructions while the person responds with exhaustion, memory gaps, and the particular dread of a test that determines legal belonging. Indfodsretsproven turns that anxiety into a repeatable training environment, so the exam stops being a lottery and starts being a conversation.
Real preparation lives in the gap between how the state communicates and how a person actually learns. The case study at dmitrii.dk goes into the design decisions behind that gap.
What you get - and what you do not
You get someone who can read a situation from several angles at once and write about what they find. Someone who bridges strategy and execution without treating them as separate disciplines. Someone whose work is grounded in observation rather than assumption.
An idea without a medium is a religion without parishioners. A medium without an idea is only an expensive coworking space. I try to bring both.
What you do not get is fast, generic output. You do not get someone who treats user research as a box to check before the real work starts, or someone who mistakes a polished presentation for a solved problem.
The journal at dmitrii.dk contains field notes on language, literature, sociology, and the small absurdities from which daily life is assembled. Reading a few entries will tell you faster than this article whether the thinking is useful to you.
How to start a conversation
Writing is better than calling. If you have a project where language and human behavior need to be thought about at the same time, the conversation will be practical.
Email dmitri@babinov.dk or find me on LinkedIn at /in/dimababinov. The full picture - case studies, journal, the site itself - is at dmitrii.dk.
FAQs
What kind of freelance work do you take on?
Product strategy, user research, content and editorial design, and projects that sit at the intersection of language and interface. I work best on problems where human behavior is the core material - particularly in EdTech, civic tech, and housing.
Are you available for remote work or only Copenhagen-based projects?
Both. I am based in Copenhagen but work with remote-first European organizations regularly. Geography matters less than the nature of the problem.
How do you typically start a new project?
With observation rather than wireframes. Early work looks like research: interviews, close reading of how people describe their own behavior, and field notes on where the current product or process breaks down. Product decisions follow from that, not the other way around.
What makes your approach different from a standard UX freelancer or content strategist?
Most specialists work within a defined lane. I work between language, interface, and social reality - which means I can hold the research, the writing, and the product thinking together without handing off between disciplines. The case studies at dmitrii.dk show what that looks like in practice.
Do you work with early-stage startups or only established companies?
Both, though the work looks different at each stage. Early-stage projects often need the research and the product direction developed together. More established teams usually need someone to read what they have built and find where the machine is speaking instead of the person.
What domains do you have the most experience in?
Language learning, housing and roommate compatibility, and civic tech - specifically tools that help people navigate bureaucratic systems. Flatmate.dk, Samovar, and Indfodsretsproven each come from a different corner of that territory.
How do I know if we are a good fit before reaching out?
Read the journal at dmitrii.dk. If the way the field notes think about problems matches the way you want your product to think about problems, the conversation will be worth having. If it does not, you will know quickly and save us both time.