About Me

In 2010 I graduated an honours degree in Design at the University of Otago. The course was deeply rooted in design theory, thinking and frameworks that were not quite what I had expected. Little did I know it at the time, but I was learning the art of true user experience design which shaped how my brain approaches all types of design problems today.

Visual and interaction design has always been innate and I've been building things since a young age. During university I founded my own clothing company (Emberley) as a way to express my creative side and make a bit of money. It was here that I learned two critical things - how to programme websites, and how to run a business. I loved how code was the building blocks behind the visual interface and empowered online interaction for our customers. The second was the importance of understanding the role business plays in product and design – everything has to be rooted in business objectives and goals – purpose is key.

After leaving university I relocated overseas to Australia in search of design jobs in Melbourne. In the summer of 2011 I landed my first web design job with Jobadder (recruitment software) which would ultimately become my foray into app design.

For the first half of the year I was coding websites for their clients, but constantly had an interest in the recruitment software at the core of the business. By mid 2012 I was helping with concept designs for new features for the software product, and it was really something to see thousands of clients using my designs – I got the bug!

In 2012 I left Sydney to join four others to start a new social network (as you did at the time) in which we raised $150k in seed funding, designed and built a custom app from scratch and proceeded to get 4,000 initial users before running out of money. Desperate to succeed we transitioned into a custom web app development company for financial services and over 18 months developed a number of customised workflow and task management solutions for clients.

In 2015 I took up a job with WPMU DEV as a Product Designer in a (nearly) fully remote team and learnt how to design for multiple different products, and a lead a team of 5 product designers in multiple different timezones around the world. Around this time I discovered design systems and have specialised (somewhat) in implementing them in every project or company I've been with since!

I've been at Hatch since March 2021 and have grown from Senior Product Designer to Principal Designer as my interest in design systems went from pipedream to reality over the course of 18 months. That's where I've ended up – specialising in the backbone design systems and libraries that empower teams of designers and developers to work efficiently and consistently. Often this can be a massive challenge, and the landscape for design systems changes all the time but it's where I find my unique set of skills creates the most value.