Germany

Product Design

UX Design

Customer Experience (CX)

UX Testing

UX Research

City St George's, University of London

Bachelor's Degree

Elizabeth Weyl

Senior Product Designer

Usability Testing

Qualitative research

Problem-solving

Empathy

Human computer interaction

User research

Axure

Figma

Miro

Confluence

Stakeholder management

Information architecture

Prototyping

Product strategy

Introduce yourself, define mentoring expectations and goals. Learn and grow together.

General mentorship

Navigating micro-aggression, getting paid what you are worth and finding a community.

Being a woman in tech

Practice HR, technical and behavioural interviews with mentors.

Practice mock interviews

Talk to people who've broken into the tech industry and learn their stories.

Breaking into tech

Methods of prototyping and solution validation. When to use which kind of prototype (eg. Webflow, Notion, etc)

Prototyping methods and tips

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

Explore different generative and evaluative research techniques. User research synthesis and presentation.

Conducting good user research

How to conduct interviews, what to ask, and how to analyze your results? (eg. user interview)

Conducting effective customer interviews

Uncovering how AI can transform the aviation space.

As the lead of the UX department, I orchestrate strategic initiatives to align user experiences with company objectives. Collaborating closely with Product Owners, Developers, and Quality Assurance Engineers, my focus is on empowering every team member, from C-level executives to engineers, with a deep understanding of our users.

🔍 Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Vision: Creating and driving the UX strategy, I ensure that our products resonate with user needs while aligning with the company's overarching goals.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Actively engaging with Product Owners, Developers, and QA Engineers, I foster a collaborative environment where user-centric insights guide decision-making at every stage of product development.

User Research Champion: I lead comprehensive research initiatives to uncover user behaviors, needs, and desires, providing actionable insights that shape product development. I also turn research into games within the company to foster an environment of understanding and caring for users. 

Stakeholder Empowerment: From the C-suite to our engineering teams, I facilitate a shared understanding of user-centric principles, emphasizing the importance of empathizing with our users in every decision.

Holistic User Understanding: My role extends beyond traditional UX practices to ensure that everyone in the organisation appreciates and integrates user insights into their respective roles, creating a truly user-centric culture.

As a seasoned professional, I collaborated with C-level stakeholders, leveraging research insights to answer pivotal business strategy questions. My role extended to conducting and synthesizing research across seven markets, contributing valuable data for strategic decision-making.

Multinational Research Leadership: I project managed multi-national research teams and insights, conducting all English-speaking interviews, while analysing and synthesising with research conducted by others in French and German. I strategised, mentored and executed end-to-end processes, from designing methodologies to mentoring teams and conducting data analysis in three languages.

Centralised Research Transformation: Transformed the company's research landscape by establishing a central research repository, implementing best practices, and developing comprehensive training programs. This initiative streamlined information access and enhanced the overall research capabilities of the organization.

Knowledge Transfer and Mentorship: Played a pivotal role in the growth of the team by training and mentoring junior designers in both research and design methodologies, fostering a culture of continuous learning and skill development.

Strategic AB Design Testing: Created and implemented AB design testing strategies for our top-performing products, ensuring a data-driven approach to optimization and innovation.

📈 Results-Driven Impact: Through these initiatives, I not only enhanced the efficiency and effectiveness of research processes but also contributed significantly to strategic decision-making, positively impacting the company's bottom line.

🚀 Passionate About Growth: With a focus on continuous improvement and growth, I am dedicated to driving impactful strategies and fostering a collaborative environment that thrives on research-driven insights.

As a freelance user researcher, I successfully steered and analysed two impactful user research projects. My work was distinguished by its effectiveness, leading to the extension of my contract for additional projects.

Strategic Vision: Crafting and executing research strategies, I delved into the intricacies of user behaviour, translating findings into actionable insights that informed product development decisions.

Holistic Research Approach: From project initiation to in-depth analysis, I handled every phase of the user research lifecycle. This involved designing methodologies, conducting interviews, and rigorously analysing data to uncover meaningful patterns and trends. 

Client Collaboration: Collaborating closely with clients, I ensured that the research outcomes aligned seamlessly with their objectives, providing a valuable perspective that enriched decision-making processes.

🌟 Extended Engagement: The extension of my freelance contract was a recognition of the tangible value I brought to the projects. This extended collaboration allowed for further exploration and refinement of user experiences.

📊 Data-Driven Decision-Making: Through meticulous data analysis, I empowered clients with evidence-based insights and next-step recommendations, fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.

- keylight is a startup at the heart of Berlin, transforming the subscription world
- As part of a UX team of two, I worked across the entire business, from the Founder to every developer and QA.
- I supported the Art director in creating our Design System, by defining all interactions and component requirements such as accessibility and localisation
- Organised and facilitated workshops to help solidify the company's vision through Design and Marketing principles

- Mendeley provides software for academics, where I work across three product teams
- I was promoted to senior UX designer after a year and a half!

Research
- I lead the research efforts within my product design team of three and championed research best practice within my design team of 13 and the wider Elsevier research teams
- Conducted research to uncover product opportunities and influence business roadmaps
- Widened the reach of research by making insights and reports available to stakeholders, through mediums like research tools, email and Slack channels
- Championed a user-centric approach by attending all team ceremonies to share insights
- Planned and facilitated workshops to kick-off research and internalise user insights
- Improved user research across the Mendeley design team, by introducing discussion guides and best practices for conducting and communicating research
- Mentored designers to conduct research, creating teaching material, and running training sessions
- Increased reach of research through training, live-streamed user sessions and created spaces to ask questions about users and discuss insights
- Communicated Mendeley’s user research to the wider Elsevier research team by creating a Mendeley level taxonomy of user insight tags contributing to a centralised user research repository
- Represented Mendeley design team internally and externally, speaking at the RELX UX Summit and UX Crunch, hosted by Elsevier
- Acquired the Deque accessibility training certification

Design
- Designed across Web, Desktop and Microsoft app store platforms
- Crafted elegant solutions supporting users in complex situations, such as long and short-term note-taking and offline capabilities
- Created seamless designs with multiple touchpoints throughout our range of products
- Participated in weekly design critiques with designers to ensure consistency across the company

- RedEye is a fast-paced agency environment, working with a range of clients and domains
- Autonomously planned, conducted and analysed user research and usability testing on products and prototypes
- Managed client projects end-to-end, from conception through to ideation
- Brainstormed with clients to understand business limitations to create actionable designs and ideas
- Crafted designs for each actionable insights uncovered in research, including recommendations for A/B testing experiments
- Conducted expert reviews, accessibility audits and competitor analysis reports
- Mapped out user journeys, from idea phase to user flow diagrams and wireframing
- Facilitated tree testing and card sorting, and supported other researchers in focus groups

In addition to my role, I was also the Kudos champion for my office. A motivator in the office to reward employees and boost team morale!

Code First: Girls is a social enterprise that works with companies and women directly to increase the proportion of women in tech and entrepreneurship. 

Now in its second year, the Code First: Girls “Ones to Watch” 2016 list profiles 25 of the most ambitious and exciting young women under 25 years old, who are making an impact in technology and entrepreneurship.

Cognia is a start-up with a product in cloud platform software for PCI compliance and telephony. As a member of a small team, I get to work closely with all members of the team, QAs, developers, marketing, systems and admins. My role is to work closely with both clients and developers, ensuring when our product goes out the door it's a smooth journey. I also write the telephony scripts using nodeJS, for our custom call scripts, telephony menus and IVRs. 

As the company has changed focus on priorities my role has changed responsibilities. Now I am the business analysis of the team, taking on the responsibility of ironing out requirement details, the user stories, challenging business value of what we do and putting that at the core of each story. I've also taken on the UX responsibilities, incorporating it into the analysis of stories, ensuring it's a focus of what we do and why.

The UX projects I have worked on so far include redesigning our internal system support tool. The aim of this was a tool aimed at making our lives easier when maintaining our estate. The tool was designed to be used late at night which involves making critical decisions of turning on and off our service boxes for clients across the globe. 

The second project involved redesigning and building our knowledge base, using Wordpress with a custom template. I got involved with branding to ensure our fonts and colours matched across products. Throughout this process I also discovered that not a lot of resources are out there for designing essentially a custom wiki, which is why I started my own blog post with the resources from UX communities and the decisions that we went with. 

The current project I'm now working on is designing and building the whole experience of our Public API. From desk research in APIs, to personas, designing and building the documentation to actually training clients.

Roles at ThoughtWorks are flexible. I have been staffed as a developer, UI developer and as UX. Working with a whole range of technologies, primarily Ruby and Java. I work with a range of tools, including Photoshop, IntelliJ, Go, Snap CI alongside different practices such as agile and kanban.

I worked alongside a very diverse group of people, including right from the get go during training for 5 weeks in India with people from all ThoughtWorks offices. In India I had the opportunity to learn bits of different languages in order to adapt, including Hindi and Chinese. Back in Manchester I had the opportunity to also practice Spanish, German and Romanian with colleagues.
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As champion of education, I have a strong passion for teaching. I have volunteered on behalf of CodeFirst:Girls, teaching their 6 week advanced Ruby course. I have also ran my own 1 day UX workshop teaching students about what it means to be in the UX role demonstrating prototyping, user research, personas and empathy mapping. 

Alongside two colleagues I taught at Westholme school in Blackburn denoting the technology industry as a viable option for students just about to choose their A Levels. We offered a crash course in what it means to be a business analyst, a developer and a quality analyst. 
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During my internship at ThoughtWorks I focused on accessibility of websites, with regards to those with disabilities. I worked with people in India for user testing and learnt how another targeted audience uses technology so we can help increase their User Experience.

I also shared my knowledge on numerous occasions through formal and informal presentations, shared in Birmingham, Spain, Manchester and Glasgow. I also had the chance to do some user testing for another company and offer feedback on their product.

I introduced new automated testing tools for accessibility, through pa11y. I was able to follow this tool right from its dev ops stage through to maintenance when being used. 

Internally I wrote articles on my findings to share knowledge and create an explicit learning point for those with limited knowledge on such a broad topic.

Responsibilities at CDL included being part of a core team looking after one of their web products. I looked into usability and fixed a backlog of UX tasks. The system was in Java 7 using the customised Wicket framework. I also had the opportunity to study the Stanford Database online course alongside a group of colleagues. 

For the last 6 weeks of my placement I joined the infrastructure team, catering to hardware and software problems across both offices. I was able to listen to issues and communicate back possible solutions that we could employ to fix someone's issue.

Elizabeth Weyl🇩🇪

About Elizabeth Weyl

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