A privacy focused suite of productivity software

Proton offers a suite of products as an alterntive to the big-tech productivity tools, such as from google or microsoft. Instead of paying with your personal information and data to the tech giants, Proton products offer a complete priavte and secure ecosystem. During my time at Proton, I was responsible for all Proton products, which have been:

ProtonVPN

ProtonVPN represented a new design direction for Proton—moving beyond email into the broader privacy ecosystem. The challenge was creating a VPN interface that felt trustworthy and professional while making complex networking concepts accessible to everyday users.

The design focused on simplicity and transparency. Instead of overwhelming users with technical details, we created a clean interface that showed connection status, server locations, and security features in an intuitive way. The "Quick Connect" feature became the hallmark of the product—one click to secure your connection.

ProtonVPN's success was immediate, with reviewers praising its "sleek, dark interface" and "intuitive" design. It became the foundation for Proton's unified design language and helped establish the company as a comprehensive privacy platform, not just an email provider.

ProtonCalendar

ProtonCalendar was designed with a simple principle: your calendar is a record of your life, and it should be private. The challenge was creating a calendar that felt familiar to users while providing the same level of security and privacy as ProtonMail.

The design focused on clean, intuitive interfaces that made scheduling feel effortless. We integrated seamlessly with ProtonMail, allowing users to send encrypted calendar invitations and manage their schedule without compromising their privacy.

The calendar became an essential part of Proton's privacy ecosystem, offering end-to-end encrypted scheduling that kept users' personal and professional lives secure while maintaining the simplicity they expected from a calendar app.

ProtonDrive

ProtonDrive completed Proton's privacy ecosystem by providing secure cloud storage that gave users complete control over their data. The challenge was creating a file management interface that felt familiar while ensuring all files were encrypted end-to-end.

The design focused on simplicity and security. Users could drag and drop files just like any other cloud storage, but with the knowledge that their data was protected by the same encryption standards as ProtonMail. The interface made encryption invisible while maintaining the trust and transparency users expected.

ProtonDrive represented the culmination of Proton's vision—a complete privacy ecosystem where users could communicate, schedule, and store their data without compromising their privacy or security.

Outcome

During my time at Proton, we built a comprehensive privacy ecosystem that grew from a single email product to a full suite of encrypted services. The design team expanded from just me to a full department, and we established a unified design language that made privacy feel accessible to everyone.

The impact was measurable: ProtonMail grew from 100k to over 50 million users, ProtonVPN became one of the most trusted VPN services globally, and the entire ecosystem established Proton as the leading privacy platform. The design philosophy of making encryption invisible while maintaining transparency became the foundation for everything we built.

Most importantly, we proved that privacy and usability aren't mutually exclusive. By focusing on user experience and progressive disclosure, we made advanced security features accessible to everyday users, not just tech experts.