As the Director of Product Design & Experience, I play a creative role in software development by understanding business priorities and rapidly assessing client challenges resulting in product vision, strategy, and planning.
My day-to-day consists of applying creative problem solving and design thinking to all Switch projects. I engage in various customer calls to understand their challenges and pain points. Thereafter, I take part in internal meetings with the Product team to lead and translate the Switch vision across our projects.
Finally, I hold stand-ups within the Creative team to review and ensure our deadlines are met, and this includes my favorite social hours with James Maryan (Design and UX Lead) & Peter Parker (UI Designer).
Our logic, automation and analytics project. We’ve always had a great analytics library, a robust logic ecosystem but the UI has been there for a long time and need a refresh to ensure we cater for different personas and also bring the latest technology to deliver the best experience to our users.
I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a double degree in Interior and Graphic Design, and a Diploma in Business Management. Before joining Switch I worked for an events management company, a film production company, (making it to Cannes Festival!) and a full-service interior design studio.
The rest of my career is at Switch, and I’ve been working for the company for 7 years now!
As mentioned, I worked and studied interior design, the commercial projects were what I loved the most. The opportunity to gather and put forward my interior and graphic skills was the best thing I could hope for! I also loved the idea of growing with the company and seeing progress daily.
I love that we are constantly defying stats: we are diverse, sustainability-driven, and flexible.
We have offices across the globe and support everyone’s culture, and we are probably close to 50%-50% in gender demographic. We care about our planet, and we have a similar goal in mind.
I live in rural New South Wales, raising two beautiful young kids, and Switch has supported and trusted me in my move to the country and in the Work From Home process. I feel super lucky!
I started at Switch as the 14th employee. Today, we have grown at least 6x and to me, that’s a metric that amazes me! This shows how far we have come and how quickly we are growing.
When I moved to the Snowies two years ago, I took the lead and became a mother and planted 3,000 trees to help with our severe climate crisis - to me, taking the lead comes naturally. I love influencing at scale and inspiring people to do better! This role allows me to have my personal and professional goals in one place.
Back then, UI/UX was not as prominent as now, and digitalization is the most disrupting thing in the last 10 years, with user experience and data visualization being major contributing factors.
I started as an Apple freak because Apple was the design leader in technology - I would have never thought I would end up committing to a Microsoft Studio 2 and chucked my iPhone in the bin.
We also started with the Adobe Suite, which evolved into a creative suite with new products like Adobe XD and more. We used Adobe Photoshop and InVision, now our main design and collaboration tool is Adobe XD.
At the start, it was isolating. I am very social, and the ‘Great-COVID’ was challenging. On top of working from home, there were few opportunities for social time. Nonetheless, Switch supported me and evaluated what was possible, and I am now half working from home and half working from a co-working space. It gives me the interactions I need from loo breaks and lunch chats! The opportunities I get from remote working are that I can transform my commute time into family time, which is priceless.
We are in an interesting time, from a generation that started their careers when the Internet emerged, to kids born with a phone in their diapers. Our digital experience is shifting, shifting for the better, designing experiences for people who can handle any device. So it’s all about content more than interactions now and finding the right ‘so what' factor content in UI; it’s an aspect that I like almost more than the design itself.
PropTech is undoubtedly an industry mainly run by man, and I am glad we are at Switch trying to turn these numbers around. Also, COVID happened and unlocked new opportunities in this industry. I am incredibly passionate about the occupant end-user and there is a lot more focus on the occupant comfort and well-being than there had been before!
PropTech has so many opportunities for those that care about making an impact to our environment, make the most of it because we can change the world!
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