I was immediately drawn to Buildkite because of the opportunity it presented. A profitable and well-loved product, but one that hadn't seen much involvement from designers until very recently. It's a familiar story, in order to scale and innovate â the tools, practices and cultural understanding of Design had to be established.
As Principal Designer I've had the opportunity to affect that change at a foundational level â from the bottom up â by introducing the tools and remote-first processes that facilitate change. It's the best way I know how. I aim to demonstrate good practice by serving as an example, by coaching and writing, by being an unblocking function to teams and by establishing effective customer-first practices. Iâm your friendly face in design.
I have also been hands-on designing, with a primary focus on evolving the visual language and setting UX standards that will scale. I've also taken the opportunity to pursue my own personal agenda â to create a more human-first and inclusive product â something that is at odds with the 'tech standard'.
Proof in the Pudding...
Here are some of the landmark achievements in my inaugural year â implemented in parallel to the company tripling in size. I'm proud of what I've done, not least because the domain is so technically challenging!
đŻââď¸ Leadership
I'm an advocate for design, working across all teams to ensure we are creative, collaborative and customer-obsessed in our approach.
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Established collaborative design practices â both within product and the wider design org â to encourage creativity and consistency of output. Including the habit of regularly sharing work in progress and involving engineers early â a practice now used by all designers and contractors
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Created the visual structures and processes of a well-documented design system, integrated design as a part of the frontend working group and worked with front end engineers to implement the foundational elements of a Buildkite Design System
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Undertaken research to better understand our customers and product strategy â resulting in terminology, which has been widely adopted across the business and a standard we hold all feature development to
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Set up regular coaching with designers with PM â with the intention of elevating craft, supporting people through a challenging period of company growth and furthering career paths
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Built relations across Product, Leadership, Sales and Customer teams to better understand cross-functional work and to influence design thinking outside of the feature teams â such as how/when to involve customers, how to research and process feedback and seeing design as an enabler not a blocker
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Affected design strategy across teams by advocating for human-centred design practices â such as challenging visual density and embracing simplicity â strategies that have been particularly instrumental in the upcoming pipeline of work
đĽď¸ Craft
I strive to lead by example and set a high bar of creative excellence. I've been working cross-functionally to encourage consistency, customer-focus and the confidence to pursue unique and defensible product output.
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Designed and implemented the first visual refresh of the core product in recent memory â using the project as a baseline for accessibility and a step towards visual consistency across the app. Read the blog post
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Created a new navigation structure, colour system and custom iconography used across the entire suite of products. Including the creation, documentation and maintenance of the design system
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Worked with Marketing and Brand to elevate the visual tone of the product through a new illustrative style in 2023 â setting the foundations for a visually unique product
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Worked closely with Foundations and Sales teams to produce usage reporting tooling â which has already seen great reception from customers
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Designed various conceptual features to set an appetite for future work â such as a collaborative tools announced by the CEO at the 2022 Unblock Conference â a lot of which has gone into the roadmap, or has already been shipped
"You've had SO MUCH impact on the design culture at Buildkite, it feels like we are a proper team now. And you've influenced processes so that design actually feels like a proper thing we do in Product" â Designer
Above: Before/after accessibility improvements and a navigation refresh
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I draw professional satisfaction from enabling creative success â by providing the tools and services to help individuals and teams produce effective design solutions. I look for opportunities to affect long-lasting impact on a company... consider this a work in progress.