The problem to solve

I led discovery to reframe the business problem, align executives on risk‑aware scope, and define a phased, evidence‑led approach that prioritised fairness, visibility, and trust.

• Reached agreement on framing the problem, business risks, guardrails, and decisions
• Led product feature ideation workshops, journey mapping, and feature prioritisation
• Prioritised feature roadmap by impact and downside risk using Kano analysis
• Tested assumptions quickly without over‑investment using AI-accelerated design

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When Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria needed to add digital proof of identity to certificate applications, trust and clarity were as important as productivity gains.

The problem to solve

• Digital application forms still relied on paper-based and in-person verification steps
• Physical steps compounded inequality for people with limited mobility, time or confidence
• Regional and vulnerable communities were disproportionately affected by paper-based verification
• Available digital verification options were controlled by financial institutions, raising trust and privacy concerns

Approach

Using service principles to design a prototype, I tested a proposed integration of a third-party verification service within the context of an existing government service:

• Planned and ran moderated usability testing with representative Victorian users
• Redesigned an end-to-end certificate application process with digital identity verification
• Tested with representative users to measure task completion, confidence and satisfaction
• Managed risks to government reputational spillover and negative sentiment

My recommendations to government

• The entire journey must feel like a government service to maintain trust
• Progress and context must be preserved when moving between systems
• Reduce unnecessary questions by reusing information already provided

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I needed to reconsider the customer experience for rewards to introduce points redemption processes for both outright purchase and ongoing repayment plans. I also needed to introduce member authentication to the flow, to enable personalisation and rewards membership functions.

The problem to solve

To design feasible and desirable personalisation, I needed to redesign the customer flow

• When was the earliest that an influential and viable personalised price could be shown?
• How to balance additional complexity of points currency with the desirability of rewards pricing?
• How to design an engaging experience that had a viable backstage process?

The work done

• Analyse competitor strengths and weaknesses with heuristic evaluation
• Synthesise customer experience principles to influence decisions
• Co-create the experience to understand the best fit within constraints
• Test the customer experience with an iterative prototype
• Monitor engagement, conversions and feedback after launch

Strengths, weaknesses and opportunities

To answer the question, “why buy from Telstra?”, we needed to synthesise design principles for our rewards program so that we could evaluate our design ideas against a ‘north star’.

I used a heuristic analysis to evaluate 12 competitor rewards programs. For each key experience, noting moments of joy, integrations, touchpoints, frustrations, trust and transparency, and the ease of use including constraints of how and when rewards currencies could be used.

I synthesised the following rules of thumb from what was working, and what wasn’t.

Preparing for usability testing

After facilitating co-design sessions with key stakeholders from product, design, technology, legal, and customer service, I evaluated 4 options for flows against each of the 4 customer experience principles.

I prepared an interactive prototype of the proposed solution for message placements, progressive personalisation and authentication, rewards redemption, and discounted price.

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When redesigning a self-service portal, I needed to prioritise the highest value improvements to work within budget, but also keep a strategic end-goal in sight.

Using design principles to generate insights, I prioritised a design roadmap that fed the product backlog, worked on redesigns with an iterative design plan, and added to content and accessibility guidelines to achieve consistency.

The problem to solve

• Applicants need to resolve blockers quickly to avoid delays and lost opportunity
• Application delays were a risk to business revenue potential
• Feedback themes were usability, accessibility, mobile experience and process fit
• Enquiries needed to be sent to the right place to avoid processing delays

Approach

Working with lean and agile principles, I needed to focus my design efforts on the highest value improvements:

• Review against industry-recognised design heuristic conventions
• Collaborate with stakeholders and experts to prioritise improvements
• Order a backlog by business viability, technical feasibility and UX desirability
• Design an iterative hypothesis to address the highest priority improvements

Building the case for redevelopment

After commencing the review, it was clear configuration alone would not address enough of the issues found, and that to achieve accessibility targets, the effort would exceed the available resources.

Ordering the backlog

• Issues were prioritised by business viability, UX desirability, and build feasibility
• The highest priority issues were estimated and added to the product backlog
• Additional work orders were created for redevelopment to address the backlog
• Remaining work was added to the design roadmap and guidelines created

The following example shows how the review was applied to redesign a contact form.

Contact form redesign

Current state review

I started redesign tasks using the design review and backlog to break down the big design piece into smaller units of work. As an example, here’s a summary of the design review for the contact form.

• Guidelines needed

  • Writing style inconsistencies included use of passive language, inconsistent sentence case, inconsistent first-person references (“your”, “my”, “their”), and inconsistent proper noun capitalisation
  • Design inconsistencies included the use of components mismatched to the type of question, like pull down lists with hundreds of options, and checkbox components used when a radio control was more appropriate.

• Simplified form design

  • A single column form layout was needed to reduce the risk of omission errors
  • The number of questions needed to be reduced to fit on a single page, by conditionally hiding irrelevant questions, and removing the unnecessary information gathering
  • On-screen instruction was needed to explain what information was needed, but instructions for how to use a web interface (e.g., ‘click below’) were not needed.

• Improved accessibility

  • Pull-down option select elements were not accessible when used to show hundreds of options
  • Unanswered mandatory questions should not have had a valid answer selected by default, so that omission errors would be detected
  • Temporary placeholder text should not have been used for instructions because they disappeared. Persistent helper text was needed for error correction (e.g., to explain phone number formats).

• Mobile experience

  • Ineligible text that appeared partially off screen and text that was obscured under overlapping elements reduced form usability
  • A responsive design was needed to re-flow wide content to fit the screen, and replace fixed width tables that did not resize
  • The mobile navigation needed redesign so that navigation links were usable and not obscured off-screen
  • The mobile header needed redesign. One quarter of the mobile screen was filled with unused white space that displaced useful content.

Download design review (PDF 11.2Mb)

Future state redesign

Using Figma and a design system based on Fluent, I needed to redesign components to address the accessibility issues and improve mobile compatibility.

The design had to accommodate two states: a future state, and an operational state:

1. Future state: a strategic end-user focussed design that addressed 422 issues and achieved WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria with a contemporary design system
2. Operational state: a design iteration, collaborated with product and technical teams, based on a prioritised roadmap of 20 of 422 improvements and the legacy design system.

The redesigned contact form

• Reduced redundant form choices from 600 options to 20 options
• Responsive and mobile compatible, and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility improvements
• Content consistent with writing style guidelines.

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Approach

RMIT’s public website supported a huge range of services, from course discovery and new student acquisition to current student front doors for support and services. The existing interface was fragmented, inconsistent, and difficult to maintain. To deliver a sustainable uplift, I needed to:

• Build a deep understanding of the breadth of services across the university
• Lead design across organisational silos to gain buy‑in on a shared look and feel
• Construct a new design system compatible with legacy CMS constraints
• Translate photography and print‑brand elements for digital‑readiness

Work I completed

I joined the project as Senior UX Designer, responsible for shaping the user experience and ensuring the new design language could be implemented within RMIT’s ageing CMS. My work included:

• Extend the UI/UX design system

  • Retrofit the agency-provided visual designs for compatibility with legacy CMS, and evolving brand and content and UX requirements
  • Redesign the navigation, visual design, page grids, interface patterns, brand images, and proposed information architecture to match the legacy content feed
  • Test the new information architecture, new navigation, and new interface patterns.

• Assist content migration

  • Cross-functional stakeholder engagement across multiple organisational silos
  • Influence work without authority, enabling different ways of working with a unified look and feel
  • Design dozens of new content templates and new UI patterns that match real world context
  • Photography for use across the site for brand and content purposes
  • Design sub-brand applications for campaign sites, schools, and RMIT International.

• Improve accessibility

  • Interview students living with a disability to test the new design with assistive tools
  • Test intuitiveness of key journeys with English-second-language international students
  • Test cognitive load of complex tasks using course information.

Results

The project delivered a more consistent, accessible, and maintainable digital experience for RMIT. It also laid the groundwork for stronger digital governance and a more unified brand presence.

I had an excellent foundation from external agencies Symplicit, U1 and Reactive taking on the initial visual design and journeys, our internal leadership team driving organisational change along a bumpy road, and our long-suffering digital content team. Together we delivered:

1. Successful testing and rollout of a my redesigned navigation and content structure
2. Collaboration with content teams across the university to rebuild hundreds of pages
3. Close partnership with engineering to transform legacy CMS outputs with CSS and JS
4. The RMIT site relaunch in 2013, establishing a modernised foundation for future digital work.

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RAPs is a service designed to address inequitable access to education.

Using co-creation to understand the end-to-end experience, we prioritised improvement opportunities based on impact and technical complexity.

The problem to solve

I needed to reach out to accessibility communities of practice, students, health care professionals and internal stakeholders to find out what was working well and where there was room to improve services for students living with a disability.

• Start with a deep understanding of students living with a disability
• Work across organisation silos and include users to co-create a future state vision
• Evaluate opportunities for improvement, using service design rules of thumb
• Shift thinking from current solutions to problem statements

Outputs

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I was asked which of two shopping cart designs was more likely to meet user needs. A live test wasn’t practical, so I needed data to inform a high-risk decision.

I proposed a robust and achievable research plan to support a redesign of a shopping cart. When the need arose for unplanned research, I needed a way to get more customer insights and keep the rest of my schedule intact.

Urgent unplanned work is not ideal, but when new discoveries raised important questions, I needed to adapt my plan. Although qualitative activities could have given us more depth, they would have disrupted my scheduled activities, inconvenienced participants and exceeded my budget. Quantitative, unmoderated research was an achievable and effective way to get a ‘quick read’ of categorical preferences.

As part of a broader research program that included multiple research methods, planning a contingency for quantitative design evaluation got the best outcome for the project.

The question, “Which of these two design concepts will we develop?”, could have been researched using multiple methods but the question was one of probability. Which design, A or B, was most likely to meet user needs?

The problem to solve

• Design axioms (rules of thumb) and customer feedback indicated two potential design solutions (A or B)
• Both designs (A and B) followed reasonable practice and weaknesses were not immediately obvious
• Axioms for simplicity and affordance when taken to extremes, appeared to conflict
• Preferences were important and experience (not price alone) was driving channel value

Approach

• Participants used a mobile prototype to perform tasks and answer questions on their own device
• 300 participants were split into two balanced cells with similar characteristics, and each cell rated one design
• Non-parametric tests found statistically significant differences in how the designs were rated
• Results were shared quickly, followed by a report and a solutions workshop

Report

The report drew conclusions by analysing closed-question responses (what responses participants chose) with sentiment analysis of free-text responses (why they chose that), and a statistical test on how customers rated each design (A or B).

Non-parametric tests were used to report on statistical significance of preferences. This analysis was the first step of an ongoing optimisation experimentation program, and the methods evolved after live experimentation capability was deployed.

It’s important to note that although analysis revealed a statistically significant result by comparing 2 variations, and did so at the early stages of design before development, that this experiment wasn’t concluded until an uplift was observed in production.

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I love working with teams who have a drive to make things better. But strong motivation to solve problems must be balanced with an understanding of which problems to solve.

I was I brought into the team to check that a web application was accessible. It was the last development sprint.

The team had built a website to help community organisations and non-profit fundraisers comply with government legislative requirements and make the formerly paper-based process easier.

I needed to become familiar with the complexities of the product, understand the needs of community fundraisers, then plan and run research activities to evaluate the proposed design.

Interviewing internal stakeholders revealed that subject matter experts had completed requirements discovery using expert-level knowledge of backstage processes and legislation. Community fundraisers had not seen the design.

Testing

I observed two user groups with a think-aloud usability test protocol. Group one was a mix of staff administrators who oversee regulation and support backstage process, and group two were community organisation fundraisers who need to comply with regulation.

Observing staff subject matter experts helped me understand how internal stakeholders viewed the process fitted to the legislative model. Observing community user workflows helped me understand how the system fitted real world use.

I had a hunch that comparing and internal and external perspectives would help build empathy. By including both staff and community users in the research I hoped to understand how the design was aligned to the needs of both community users and staff.

Staff user group

Staff subject matter experts were familiar with the backstage processes.

Staff participants said that the design was clean and simple, and that filling in the forms online was much easier than the paper-based version.

Staff participants were observed completing tasks with a reasonably high success rate, and subjectively rated the system as performing well. After the first few tests it looked like the new system was meeting staff expectations.

• “It’s simple and basic, nothing that I think needs to be changed.”
• “Easy to use overall.”
• “That’s the way our process works.”

Community fundraisers group

Fundraisers were asked to use the new system to complete their workflows the way they would normally on paper. I asked them to talk to me about how and why they work that way.

Community users became disoriented by a process flow which didn’t match the way they needed to collect information.

Specialist jargon vocabulary used in the interface instruction caused confusion and incorrect information to be supplied. Errors would require call backs to resolve, increasing support requirements for both users and service desk.

Community users became increasingly frustrated with poorly sequenced navigation that appeared to take users backward.

I observed them failing key tasks, losing work done without a save function, or giving up having been unable to complete tasks.

• “I’m lost – haven’t I been here already and already answered these questions?”
• “I’ve had this screen before. We’re going around in circles. I thought I’d gone back to the previous screen…
• “Where am I now? Are these traps that you set for us?”
• “I’m really angry now. This is the worst thing I’ve seen in years”
• “Where’s the exit? I would get out of the whole thing. This is disgusting. I’d complain to the Minister”
• “I find this impossible… I’d rather print the form off and spend two hours completing it on paper”

Areas for improvement

Underlying problems and themes became clear throughout the test.

• Process flows needed to match the way users gather information in the real world
• Users needed to know what information they needed at hand before they started
• Inaccessible overlays needed to be replaced with straightforward linear flows
• With multiple business touch points, users still needed one point of contact
• The form should not have asked for the same information twice, even if it is needed by two different business units
• With multiple steps to complete, a save function was needed to retain work done
• Internal business vocabulary and jargon needed to be simpler plain language
• A clear progress bar was needed so that process steps could be understood

Measuring the difference

With hundreds of insights, I was confident that analysis would demonstrate a measurable difference in how the system matched the needs of staff and the needs of the community.

By correlating participant task success rates with questionnaire responses, along with in-depth voice of the community, I reported on the overall similarities and differences between the two groups and the challenges they faced.

Comparing staff and community user feedback

Staff participants rated the system significantly higher than community participants for satisfaction and effectiveness. Staff reported far fewer issues, and the problems observed were not as severe compared to external users. Staff used their knowledge of the backstage process to recover from errors.

Staff participants were far more forgiving, and important design problems were not represented in their feedback.

Actions taken

Findings were written in a detailed report and distributed for the team to consider. A summary of findings was presented in a follow-up workshop to prioritise improvement opportunities.

After commitments were made to address critical issues, the development team needed to estimate refactoring code, because many of the features that tested poorly had already been developed.

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Using regular customer feedback, I helped a mobile app developer increase their wallet-share, and built the business case for further customer research.

The research brief

As UX Researcher it was my responsibility to support the decisions of a team of 15 product owners, 15 designers and an executive board.

Product

• Sportsbet is Australia’s leading mobile app in the gaming category
• Half a million customers spend up to $1 million per day
• Thousands of products across two websites and two mobile apps

Business goals

• Differentiate the Sportsbet experience from competitors by being responsive to customers
• Experiment and test to deliver innovative, targeted and safe experiences
• Support development by mitigating potential risks of negative reactions to change

Customers

• Market share is driven by customer choice of provider
• Customer choice is driven by quality experiences and rewards
• Most customers regularly choose two or more providers
• High-value customers have low loyalty and switch regularly

My research approach

Found opportunities to guide decisions

• Embedded myself into the product team (not the development team!)
• Unpacked solutions and assumptions into questions
• Recommended appropriate research methods (not just surveys!)
• Answered research questions and gathered hundreds of new insights
• Participated in regular product ideation and discovery sessions
• Shared design insights the day after, followed by weekly reports

Validated evidence by correlating attitudes and behaviours

• Managed participant recruitment, using data to target specific cohorts
• Observed pain points of customers as they used their preferred products
• Quantitatively measured severity and impact of qualitative issues found
• Prioritised actions taken using quantitative data to size each opportunity

Integrated research into agile development

• Designed a research process that integrated into fortnightly development sprints
• Researched features for each upcoming sprint and shared insights before build commenced
• Collaborated with stakeholders to prioritise research request backlogs
• Collaborated with stakeholders to agree on the value and urgency of opportunities found

Key design challenges

Here’s a small sample of the types of insights generated from my customer research.

For each finding, evidence was written up in a report, analysis was presented, recommendations were discussed, and follow-up actions were prioritised.

Help customers to discover products

I researched customer discovery of entry, exit and re-entry points for core journeys like registration, product selection, and product purchase.

• Product choice added flexibility but placed pressure on users to manage choice complexity
• Useful product suggestions required intuiting customers’ current mindset and goals beyond historical actions
• Poor personalisation trained customers to ignore marketing and product suggestions
• I researched influence opportunities for omni-channel journeys (radio, TV, print and in-person)

Match content to customer mindsets

Recruiting customer participants with carefully managed customer cohort data meant that I could match prototype content to product preferences and better simulate machine learning personalisation.

• Recruited participants that were representative users of the content being tested
• Increased content relevancy prompted exploration and increased perception of service value
• Presentation of personalisation was critical to mitigate ‘creepy’ monitoring that degraded trust
• Personalisation enhanced the memorability and enjoyment of key ‘brand moments’

Ease core journey friction points

By observing participants as they used the product in a naturalistic way, the impact of friction points became clear.

• Poor accessibility on data entry forms increased uncaught human error for important information
• Journeys without consistent error recovery increased anxiety, sense of loss, and degraded trust
• Higher error rates observed on small elements near mobile screen edges
• User accuracy was impeded near physical edge bevels of wrap-around mobile device screens

Redesign shopping cart journeys

Initial experience of product innovation relies more heavily on journey design than instruction.

• Multiple journey entry points were required to complete combination products
• Established behaviours influence combination product choice more than instructions
• Unclear eligibility in marketing messages caused disappointment and loss
• Lower value offers prompted unfavourable comparisons

A solid business case for research

• Costs

  Research costs comprise software, recruitment, incentivises and consultancy at $300,000

• Growth

  Measured growth is 10%, comprising $1,000,000/day (actual) minus $900,000/day (previous trend)

• Cost recovery

  At 10% growth, $300,000 cost is recoverable 3 days after launch of the new design

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