Product design + Computer science + MBA = ?
I'm Carter, an all-around product designer with a knack for simplifying enterprise software. You might be here double-checking if it's a real person running the website (Yes), or on the lookout for an experienced designer who has a unique value to offer to your team.
1. Full product and design ownership from ideation, research, design, development to release. We secured strategic enterprise deals with the HR integrations feature I led.
2. Redesigned an intuitive experience for enterprise payroll, all new report blueprints and view controls enabled payroll users across Australia to regain control and reduce churn.
3. Co-led job manager vision design for accountants across Australia and NZ, resulted in high customer satisfaction and substantial projected time savings, influencing the strategic roadmap.
4. Initiated 100+ impactful research at MYOB, gaining a deep understanding of pain points, motivations, and needs, this played a key role in prioritization and confident feature delivery.
5. (Research) A validity study for the rollout of simple tax solution resulted in an 80% successful migration from desktop to cloud, surpassing the company's OKR.
Over the past 5 years, I've been with Runn and MYOB, progressing from a product designer to a senior role. Throughout this journey, I've had the opportunity to work on 4 distinct products alongside various teams. I successfully completed an MBA with straight A's during the times of COVID, all while working full-time. Additionally, I've developed a few Figma widgets and plugins, making lives of designers easier. I've also spent time in Melbourne and Thailand for a while as a digital nomad.
Completion rather than perfection. Focused on building an efficient pragmatic pathway to reach business and customer goals, taking into account our capacity and resources. Design with a conscious mind of the cost to build, time to market, and the possibility to fail fast without risking the business. I follow the mantra of aligning on vision, scaling down to a feasible delivery, ensuring the completion, and continuously iterating based on data and feedback.
Design collaboration. I work across functions to align stakeholders on design objectives, and facilitate workshops on defining problems, ideating solutions, and prioritization. Collaborative design serves as a conversation starter to get the team excited about solving customer problems as a collective, demystifying UX design process, ensuring early buy-ins, and creating business
value with the power of design thinking.
Research: Champion for quality customer research in large-scale projects and derive actionable design recommendations and insights. I gather a collective understanding from the team of where we are and how additional research can drive success. I choose (cost) effective methods to bridge research gaps specific to the project and ensure various customer-centric checkpoints / artefacts are intact, such as journey maps, Kano, RFPs, usability tests, beta tests, and more.
Design: Self-claimed Figma Auto-layout wizard. I work through all stages from exploration to the final handover. Following Gestalt and Prägnanz principles and being proficient in developing design style guides that meet WCAG standards. I exercise effective visual communication through experience canvas, co-design, wireframes, sketches, IA, rapid prototypes, and hi-fis, ensuring stakeholders are on the same page and well-informed at the right level of detail. I have a passion for beautiful UI and intuitive UX flow, making the complex feel easy—a result that we are proud to deliver to our customers.
Delivery: Effectively manage quality, risks, and project timelines. I drive projects from concept to product realization and create real business impact through UX-QA, project coordination, and conflict resolution. I ensure well-documented handovers and design updates and respond quickly to new design needs. I have a tendency of building great working relationships with engineers through constant communication, involving them in decision-making and customer sessions, and encouraging them to take initiative on delivering greater customer values.
Working with complexity: In the B2B space, I value the importance of upskilling domain knowledge and have a system in place for continuous learning. I have worked at big orgs and scale-ups, gaining expertise in finance, data, accounting, HR, and service migrations and deep understanding of user motivation and needs. I’m driven by making complex feel easy and helping improve business process efficiency and reduce costs.
Doing it right: I am confident in my design process and adaptive Double-Diamond workflow for specific teams and projects. I identify user needs and product-market fit through research, involving experts and customers to understand industry best practices. I carry insights into actionable designs and take stakeholders on a well-communicated journey from defining problems to delivering solutions in customers' hands.
Thinking through problems: I design for 95% of users, think through error paths and edge cases. We rarely come across a perfect solution in the real world, so I am conscious of time, cost, technical, and performance constraints when designing. I think big, with a focus on delivering the most valuable and leanest possible solutions.
These are my stories, and I’d love to know more about yours! Currently looking for new and exciting opportunities, feel free to drop me an email at nz.carterxiao@gmail.com