What are my core skills?
Leading by example
My love of user-interface design and the user-experience is what excites me and gets me up in the morning, but I am much more than a UI/UX Designer. I'm an experienced Principal Product Designer, who has experience of shaping products and of helping prioritise a roadmap for development with senior leadership, often needing to find that sweet spot between fulfilling UX requirements and fulfilling business requirements, while neglecting neither. My core skills include:
• Strong analytical and creative problem-solving skills
• A passion for interaction and customer involvement
• Excellent written, verbal communication and presentation skills
• Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously
• Proactive in learning and being fluent in latest UX trends and technologies
• Stakeholder management and influencing senior leadership
• A passion for interaction and customer involvement
• Excellent written, verbal communication and presentation skills
• Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously
• Proactive in learning and being fluent in latest UX trends and technologies
• Stakeholder management and influencing senior leadership
Mentoring my peers
I have an excellent understanding of how to design and build accessible products. Digital products must work across all platforms and honour the four principles of inclusive design - be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. My skills are far more than a typical UI/UX designer and include product management, product development and testing.
I ensure that accessibility requirements are baked into my definition of 'done' and elevate products from WCAG AA standard to WCAG AAA standard.
It's important to design with people with assistive technology needs, not for them, so I also encourage working with a diverse set of colleagues wherever possible and I always make provision for different accessibility requirements when recruiting users for moderated user research.
During my time at Asda, I was the first accessibility lead and as such I adopted the unofficial role of accessibility product manager, covering all design systems (web app, iOS and Android). I worked closely with colleagues in the product team to improve accessibility at a component/widget level and introduced new principles and processes to the product team to achieve our goals. I made sure that any new user stories had the accessibility requirements baked into the definition of 'done' and that there was a clear path to clearing the tech debt.
You can see how I apply have applied these principles in the project, Product Module Update.
Improving quality and consistency of products
During my time at Arbor Education, I built a completely new design system, which we named Juicebox. Working closely with the engineering team, I linked the Figma design files and design libraries to the component library in React, using Storybook. I put processes in place for colleagues to be able to request component-updates and new components and I documented my work to explain to colleagues what had been changed, why changes had been made and how to use the latest versions of components.
During my time at Asda, I built a new design system for iOS in Figma, a lift-and-shift project to replace a redundant design system in Sketch. A key objective of the move was to consolidate similar components and subsequently replace redundant bespoke components across the iOS platform in the live environment.
In both of these examples, I put processes in place to help me manage requests from other designers for component updates and new components and to help me manage requests from my peers across the product team (in various roles) in validating design changes as being accessible.
Reducing tech debt
I always produce handover documents for the Engineering teams. These typically will include user journeys, flows, site maps, interaction designs and style guides for web app, iOS and Android (as required). In addition to this I always annotate my designs so that engineers know how a component or widget should work for keyboard users and users of assistive technology, so that we can ensure that we don't release any inaccessible updates and accrue more tech debt.
Improving efficiency and reducing costs
When I'm not designing, I'm usually consulting and advising product teams on how to collaborate better, in order to make the product development processes more efficient and cost effective. I often work closely with Programming and DevOps teams to make allowance for new initiatives and bug-fixing in each product team during their quarterly planning meetings, to reduce tech-debt and increase quality of output. This user-centric business vision focuses on people and is measured using 5 key outputs:
Purpose - Define why the design team exists
Talent - Recruit people with behaviours and skills that align with business requirements.
Processes - Combat siloes, improve collaboration, knowledge-share, go SCRUM/Agile
Enablers - Use tools and resources which improve processes, get feedback, improve efficiency
Structure - Place design at the correct point for sign-off, at Director-level, be accountable
How do I design?
Prioritise information architecture and interaction design
I design information architecture for platforms, pages and components. For complete end-to-end journeys I will always design a flow or set of flows using tools such as FigJam or Miro.
I start every design with the accessibility tree (DOM order) and design interactions for keyboard users, including keyboard focus, then build-out from there.
Be a hands-on researcher and tester
While my experience of direct user research is limited, when I have been required to be more hands-on I've always started with a test plan, which explains reasons for the test and objectives, etc. which everyone can refer back to later. I'm confident using online user researching tools such as UserTesting.com when required.
More often than not, rather than doing research myself, I will work with user researchers and digital analytics people to do qualitative and quantitative research, evaluate and report, then use our findings to steer and justify new iterations of my designs.
I often run design-sprint workshops called "Crazy 8s", which are an open forum where colleagues are asked to ideate within a fixed time-frame to help kick-start a project and give the UX team a sense of direction, without the larger costs associated with more formal moderated user-test with customers.
I am always mindful of the "outsiders" and make provision for the least able user to be able to achieve the same outcomes as the most able user when using my products. I always include at least one persona with accessibility requirements in each test.
Manage dual work-streams
The boundaries of Product and UX often crossover, depending on how each business is structured. In any product development scenario I would expect to need to manage two consecutive work-streams - one for product roadmap and one for bug-fixes/ad-hoc iterative updates.
Champion collaboration
I always champion collaboration between teams and I'm confident suggesting and implementing processes to help facilitate better collaboration with other tech professionals such as programme managers, product owners, tech leads, engineers, testers and stakeholders, including senior leadership.
Inform and influence senior leadership
I often step outside of my comfort zone to be able to see "the bigger picture", so that I can further understand the motivations and opinions of colleagues outside of my immediate team. In doing so I am able to more easily craft solutions to problems which benefit individuals at the same time as benefiting the project and in my experience this makes it more easy to influence decisions during negotiations.
At Asda, I was integral in the parent company, Walmart's decision to reallocate their accessibility budget (to be more proactive than reactive). I am comfortable and experienced in speaking and presenting at director-level.
Use an 'agile' delivery model
I work using a combination of SCRUM and Kanban methodologies in an agile manner, typically across a two-week sprint. The objectives of the sprint are typically delivered in close collaboration with other teams such as marketing. Everyone is focussed on meeting the objectives of each sprint and mindful of how and why their contribution is so important to the success of the delivery.
Engineer 'lean', then iterate
I work with a variety of tools such as Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch and InVision to make simple lo-fi wireframes and prototypes, for presentation to stakeholders and for user-testing. I work with tools such as UX Pin, ProtoPie, Framer and Axure to make more complex prototypes for user-testing.
I use the results of user tests and the results of digital analytics to steer my designs and help shape products. On occasion, I've set up a multi-variant testing programme which requires quick prototyping and user-testing of a set of minimum viable products (MVPs), competing with each other, followed by several iterations of the winner at each stage, to optimise engagement and user-experience.Always champion the user
I think about the user in all decisions, share knowledge and understanding with different teams, provide expertise on best practice and approaches. I fully appreciate that as a UX professional I have an obligation to represent the customer in meetings and during business decisions.
When I write stories for initiatives I make sure to include personas for people with assistive technology needs and I bake requirements for accessibility into the definition of 'done'.
Review performance and adapt
I identify risks and make decisions based on evidence and testing, identifying the simplest solutions out of any options as my MVP. At the end of a project (or design sprint) I would expect to have a "retrospective" with colleagues to find out what worked well, what didn't work so well and to agree a set of actions to help prevent any similar "pain points" in future.
Seek inspiration
I am passionate about keeping up-to-date with advances in technology, in particular assistive technology, so that I can help change people's lives for the better. I enjoy learning about new and exciting advancements through research, seminars and conferences and using various channels such as blogs and social media.
Promote my work and welcome feedback
I'm confident presenting my work (and often the results of research) to my peers and other stakeholders, to better understand the direction that the project is headed and to help meet expectations sooner. I'm always humble about my work and welcome feedback.
What is my preferred methodology?
Generally, I am experienced in working in an Agile manner, whether that be in UX or CX (omni-channel). The process is often based on the Design Council "Double Diamond", but more frequently on the Google Design Sprint, which takes into account cross-team collaboration much sooner. Both generally consist of ideation, prototyping, testing, designing, further testing, delivering, then iterating in due course based on data-driven decisions.
Quarterly plans
A collaboration between Programme, Product, UX, Development and Testing teams. The purpose is to agree priorities from a backlog of initiatives based on a combination of business/stakeholder requirements and customer-experience requirements. A number of days available work is generally provided by each team based upon staff availability and estimates for initiatives must fall within the limits in order to achieve the goals.
Mid-quarter reviews
An opportunity to review progress on the agreed quarterly plan and initiate secondary "fallback" plans if necessary.
Bi-weekly sprint plans
A collaboration between Programme, Product, UX and Testing teams. The purpose is to agree priorities for the next sprint (2 weeks) based on the initiatives set during quarterly planning. It gives the UX manager the opportunity to break down larger tasks into subtasks
Bi-weekly sprint reviews (retrospectives)
A collaboration between Programme, Product, UX and Testing teams. The purpose is to talk about went well and what didn't go so well in the previous sprint, so that teams can try to avoid similar problems in future. Actions may come from these reviews for individuals which will be factored into a future sprint.
Daily sprints
A collaboration between Programme, Product, UX and Testing teams, usually at the same time each day. The purpose is to monitor the Kanban board to make sure that tasks and subtasks are being completed as planned and for the UX manager to be able to step-in and help unblock any blockers-to-completion.
Using a combination of the Design Council "Double Diamond" model and the more recent Design Council "Framework For Innovation" model, I created a 12-step process for the Inclusive Design Product Lifecycle, which I recently employed at Asda.
Summary
I have the skills and experience to adapt to any given situation and have the confidence to respectfully challenge the status quo where necessary. I'm comfortable managing myself and others and strive to educate myself and improve. I have proven that I can adapt to any agile environment and take on responsibilities outside of my official role, as required.
In adopting an accessibility-first approach to product design I can more efficiently produce products which are simple to use and which honour the four principles of usability.
I use research and resulting data on how users actually use a product to enable me to iteratively refine designs and shape the product. In doing so I'm able to build an ongoing, ever-increasing and positive emotional response from users. In other words, I focus on delighting users through simplicity.