About Me
Typically involved in all aspects of web design with skills across the full UX/UI spectrum
Over 10 years’ experience leading B2B SaaS design of web and mobile solutions for complex digital transformation projects, fintech solutions, and enterprise-level content management applications and web projects
My Background
Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, but recently moved to Toronto, Canada.
My early experience and education are grounded in user centered design principals and interaction design. I have a first class honours from B.S. Digital Media Design at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Over the years this has expanded to include the full spectrum of UX and UI design.
My strengths are in communication, particularly for leading non-tech stakeholders through UX design processes, and designing and managing solutions within tight budgets and timelines.
Primary Skills and Responsibilities
Leading the design process,
Conducting workshops and meetings with various stakeholders,
Requirements gathering, user journeys, and information architecture,
Specification documents,
Creating wireframes, prototypes, and UI mock-ups and assets,
Usability and accessibility testing, including QA and QC,
Client CMS training and support,
Collaboration with development and testing teams during project deliveries.
How I got here
Screenshot of the first website I designed during my computer science degree in 2012 for my friend’s multimillion dollar idea where people could ‘Swapsy’ their items with others. Think eBay but trading, not buying or selling. Sadly, there were no big cheques or Netflix documentaries to follow…
From games development to interaction design
I discovered interaction design by mistake. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do after school. When I was a kid, before the age of smartphones and social media, I would design and create all sorts of board games for myself and my two younger brothers to pass the time. Why rely on Santa when you can create them yourself? I was always drawing, painting, and had art classes every year in school, so naturally I thought, how about a degree in Multimedia and Computer Games Development?
It didn’t last long. After two years of computer systems, JAVA, and C++ fundamentals, it was clear that I was far more interested (and apt) at the creativity side to games development than the coding.
The catalyst
I found the recommended reading list of a sister course, Digital Media Design, that I had some overlap with. One book was Steve Krug's “Don't Make Me Think”. I was hooked. Suddenly I could look back at all the times I had to validate and verify my custom board games to my siblings and realise that I had experience with much of the UX process without even knowing it. The psychology behind how we think and why when interacting with products, and in this case the web, was fascinating to me.
The pivotal moment
The university allowed me to transfer to Digital Media Design. The course had a broad range of interesting topics covering the design process, including audio and video production, web design, HCI, user research, industrial design, and graphic design. For someone who didn’t know what they wanted to do after school it was certainly a flavour of everything media and design related. Four years later I graduated with first class honours.
Screenshots from my final year thesis app design
My final year thesis was about designing a mobile app prototype that dealt with the issue of food waste in student accommodation. From extensive research of the problem, conducting field studies and interviews, to problem solving, planning, wireframing, user testing and eventually a high-fidelity mobile prototype design. Check out the old iPhone case!
The kitchen planning scene from the movie The Founder, 2016
In the movie The Founder, there is a very brief scene where McDonalds, on the brink of inventing the fast-food industry, is testing kitchen layouts for optimal food delivery efficiency. You know your mind is geared towards user experience when a scene like this is what you remember the most about a movie. I probably could have watched a movie of this scene alone, though I doubt my friends would have felt the same way. They certainly were not as fascinated about chalk outlines on a tennis court as I was.
From UX Principals to Enterprise UX
That initial, albeit brief, venture down the path of computer science gave me a unique background and advantage compared to my UX graduating peers. My experience landed my first big break - an internship with SAP. The mission at their Dublin AppHaus, as they call it, was to build next generation analytic applications on-demand. I joined their Agile User Experience & Design Development team as a UX Designer. The products we designed that year went on to win the People Choice Honourable Mention at the 2014 UXAwards in San Francisco.
The education that mattered
Being part of that large team in Dublin but headquartered from Palo Alto, and working on enterprise level B2B and B2C products and prototypes at a fast pace, taught me the real-world agile processes and frameworks that I still use today. When they said the AppHaus was highly collaborative and flexible they meant it. My time at SAP was a whirlwind of proof-of-concept research with development, product owners, and stakeholders, minimum viable product design, user testing and analysis, and low to high fidelity prototype iterations, sometimes all in the span of four-week cycles.
My next step was to join a small web design agency, pTools, as the sole designer for all UX & UI responsibilities.
Web Design Agency
Over my time at pTools I have worked with well over 100 clients from both the private and public sectors across a wide range of businesses and services such as government agencies, stock exchanges, financial institutions, healthcare, education, regulators and service providers. Notable clients include the London Stock Exchange, the Irish Health Service Executive, Heineken, Alcon, Hyundai Ireland, both the Irish Defence Forces and National Police, and healthcare providers such as IBTS Giveblood, CUH & CUMH hospitals, as well as many large local authorities and government agencies in Ireland. Projects are across bespoke web solutions and CMS-driven web projects. I have equal experience as a solo web designer across all UX and UI phases and as a design lead within a small design team.
Long lasting client relationships
The longest-running bespoke solution that I have designed (Alcon, US) has been ongoing for over 7 years. This includes twice-weekly client workshop calls on sprint planning, feature specifications, requirements gathering, and also testing sprint deliveries and support. This solution is an enterprise-level employee and consultant management system, with features related to event planning, logistics, financials and expenses, contract generation and signing, attendee management with RSVP and sign-in functionalities, consultant portals, multi-stage approval workflows, admin portal controlling worldwide country settings, extensive user management and permissions, reporting, dashboards, and a host of other complex and detailed workflows and features.
My Experience
10+
Years of Experience
Senior UX/UI Designer
pTools
2016 –
pTools software is used to develop enterprise-level solutions for customers in private and public sectors for bespoke solutions, fintech applications, and pTools CMS web projects. Clients include leading exchanges and financial institutions, government agencies, regulators and service providers. At pTools, I work on both sides of the business, leading our CMS Umbraco v8 product design and CMS web projects, as well as the design of complex bespoke applications and fintech solutions for various clients across the world. My main responsibilities are in user experience, accessibility, requirements gathering, business analysis, creating user stories & use cases, wireframing, and UI design. I will lead the project or product through the research and design phase by conducting meetings and workshops with various users and stakeholders and oversee projects through development, quality assurance and delivery while liaising with different project teams and stakeholders.
UX Designer
SAP
2014
The SAP AppHaus in Dublin is a highly collaborative, flexible and creative environment. I spent an 8-month internship working on multidisciplinary research and development teams focused on building next-generation analytic applications on-demand.
