Meet Lisa

I’ve spent the last 20 years working as a human-centered designer. In this time I have recruited, coached, and trained hundreds of UX and CX practitioners, I built a truly awesome experience design consultancy, ran it for ten years, and then sold it to PwC – one of the world’s largest professional service consultancies. 

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These days I help others grow their own amazing careers in this industry, whether they are new practitioners, seasoned leads, design managers, or companies who want to build their design capability.

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My story started with the simple promise of free drinks after work.

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Way back in the earliest days of the internet I was a bright-eyed psychology graduate with no actual work experience and no experience doing anything terribly practical. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and I had no clear idea of how I was going to use my degree. But I loved to write and I needed a job, so I talked my way into a trainee role with the magazine for a large chamber of commerce.

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That was where I was first introduced to the internet.

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The very conservative chamber of commerce had a whacky division that sold websites to small businesses. There were no corporate high-flying blue-chip companies on our books – one client was an old man who owned a cuckoo clock shop.

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I became friends with the developers who built these sites. The poor guys (and yes, they were all guys) had a tough job. They had to do EVERYTHING, from designing the site structure, producing the look and feel, writing the content, and of course, building the damn thing. Naturally, they tried to palm off the content production to me, the chick who was good with words. This usually involved a generous exchange of free drinks after work.

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It became clear that the way I needed to structure the words for these sites needed to be different from the way I was writing for the print magazine during my day job.

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This was the most valuable user insight I have ever had, as it sparked the beginning of a long and happy career in human-centered design.

Bit by bit my skills grew, right through the original dot com boom (and then the bust), through the earliest mobile technology, the launch of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and through the beginning of responsive design, Agile, design thinking, and now the dawn of automation, data, AI and the bots. Over the years I grew from the girl who would write copy for her friends for free drinks to the owner of a pioneering experience design consultancy and a seasoned practitioner, shaping the CX capability of a global consulting giant.

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I know, right?!

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The thing that hasn’t changed through all this is that there are always people using the technology that we design. No technology will ever be successful without placing human experience front and center, fuelled by the delightfully flawed emotions of fear, frustration, and desire.

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I can help you become the lead designer of your career.

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Our industry has well and truly grown up now, and that growth has come with its own set of challenges. There is a vast number of people who “want to get into UX” and don’t know how to land their first gig. There are practitioners with a few years of experience under their belts who struggle to operate in a tense business world, with objectives that don’t line up properly and laughable deadlines. It can be a real downer to deliver your best work only to have it blocked by a stakeholder who just doesn’t get it.

Through all these years my favorite part of my job has been helping others build truly awesome CX/UX careers for themselves. Your initial education is your entry ticket. I can show you how to get your foot in the door of this amazing industry and guide you to success once you’ve walked over the threshold.

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I can’t wait to get you on your way!

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