Career story: Alen Plehandzic

From film sets and game studios to shaping the software experience at Simucube — Alen brings a decade of creative range to the Simucube Tuner interface

Alen Plehandzic’s path to Simucube winds through film production, game development, and entrepreneurship. By the time he arrived as a UI/UX Designer working with Simucube Tuner, he had built experience across three different industries, each one leaving its mark on how he thinks about design, craft, and the people on the other side of a screen.

That breadth is not incidental. It is, in many ways, the point.

“People sometimes ask how I can have experience in so many areas. I think when you approach every field with full commitment and genuine curiosity, a decade covers a lot of ground.”

A creative path that started early

Alen found his way into creative fields naturally. After studying film and television production at TAMK, he worked in video and graphics production, moving fluidly between film, animation, and visual design. It was this fluency across visual mediums that gave him an early instinct for how things should look and feel, and why.

Around 2014, Alen went into business with his partner, building a small production company in film and television. On that side, things went well: good work led to word-of-mouth referrals, and clients kept coming back.

“We were fortunate on the film and TV side. We had a good reputation, clients were satisfied, they told their friends, and new work came in. We didn’t have to advertise much.”

After almost a decade of entrepreneurship, Alen made the move to a more focused role as an employee, bringing with him everything the experience had taught him, and channeling it into a single creative discipline. He still takes on occasional film and television projects with his partner and in his free time he develops board games and video games.

This summer, two video installations they created will be shown at Vapriikki museum in Tampere, dramatising events from the Finnish Civil War.

“It’s something we’re really proud of. It’s been a long project, and seeing it come to life for the public is a great feeling.”

Designing Simucube Tuner for the long run

Alen joined Simucube as a UI/UX Designer, working primarily on the Simucube Tuner software. It’s the interface through which users configure and fine-tune their Simucube hardware.

The role draws on everything: his visual instincts from film and design, his technical curiosity from years of building digital products, and his unusually developed sense of how people behave when they interact with software.

That last point matters more than it might seem. Alen thinks carefully about what users say they want and what they actually need, and he is comfortable holding that tension.

“I usually am aware of what users want. I’m not always sure I should give it to them.” Alen laughs. “Sometimes giving users exactly what they ask for changes how they behave with the software in ways that make everything harder in the long run. Harder to use, harder to make look right, harder to add new features.”

This is not stubbornness. It is experience. He has seen what happens when interface decisions optimize for immediate requests rather than long-term usability, and he takes the responsibility seriously.

Finding satisfaction in the craft itself

One of the more unusual things about UI/UX design, especially for software, is how rarely the work is noticed when it is done well. Good design is invisible. Users reach their goal, and they move on.

Alen has made peace with that. He can work without constant acknowledgement, he says, if he can see that the interface is functioning as intended. The satisfaction is in the craft itself: in decisions made carefully, in trade-offs navigated honestly, in an experience that holds together under pressure.

“If someone sits down with Simucube Tuner and everything just flows, that’s the feedback I’m looking for. You don’t always hear it out loud, but you can see it in how people use the product.”

His background in film and television industry gave him an eye for composition and rhythm. His background in games gave him a sense of interaction and response. His years as an entrepreneur gave him a tolerance for ambiguity and an understanding of constraints. All of it shows up in how he approaches a screen.

A culture where ideas reach the table

When asked about how innovation and ideas are handled at Simucube, Alen describes a working environment that he finds genuinely open.

Ideas are shared in all team meetings, whether within the software team or if cross-functionally with other teams. Proposals are explained, questioned, and evaluated on their merits.

What he values most is that the bar for speaking up is low. Even quieter voices get heard.

“I’ve seen development proposals come from people who don’t usually say much. That already tells you something about the atmosphere.”

He describes feeling free to express an opinion and confidence that it will be taken seriously, even when the answer turns out to be no.

Curiosity and commitment as superpowers

Alen has one of those CVs that raises eyebrows.

Film and TV production, game industry, UI/UX design, entrepreneurship, the breadth is unusual. People sometimes find it hard to believe it all fits in a single career. His answer is simple: full commitment, genuine curiosity, and a willingness to throw yourself completely into whatever you’re doing.

“I learned a lot, and I also learned that sustainable pace matters. If I could give one piece of advice to my younger self, it would be: curiosity and commitment are your superpowers. Protect your energy so you can keep using them.”

At Simucube, his career range has found a home. The work is specific, the standards are high, and the products are ones he respects. Working on software used by some of the world’s most dedicated sim racers, race car drivers, and hobbyists, is a different kind of motivation, and it shows in the work.

“When you work on something people are truly passionate about, it changes how you approach the craft. The bar is higher, and honestly, that’s exactly where I want to be.”