Sweden

UX Design

UI/ Visual Design

Design Operations

Product Design

Interaction Design

Growth Design

Certificate IV

Certificate of Education

Melissa McArthur

Lead Product Designer

Communication

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Empathy

Team player

Presentation skills

Stakeholder management

Leadership

Negotiation

Conversion optimisation

Design systems

User research

Product roadmap

Typeform

UserTesting

Webflow

Adobe Illustrator

ChatGPT

Figma

Framer

Jira

Confluence

Sketch

Time management

Organisation skills

Critical-thinking

Accessibility

Data visualisation

Usability Testing

Quantitative research

Prototyping

Qualitative research

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

General mentorship

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

Talk to people who have learned to manage their imposter syndrome.

Dealing with imposter syndrome

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

Being a woman in tech

Get actionable feedback on your resume or portfolio.

Resume and portfolio review

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

Learn the best ways to answer technical interview questions with frameworks

Acing technical interview questions

How to set up the team for success by defining and measuring team's performance.

Choosing metrics and team goals

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

Prototyping methods and tips

Manage team expectations and get the most out of your meetings.

Running effective meetings

Identify and define potential product problems and generating possible solutions.

Identifying problems vs solutions

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Methods and models of exploring, deciding and delivering design.

Building a design process

Managing being the only designer at your company and working with non-designers.

Being the only designer

Ways and resources to improve your design skills.

Improving design skills

How to create personas, and leverage them in design.

Creating and leveraging user personas

Ways to provide constructive feedback to team members.

Giving effective feedback

Tips on how to work and collaborate with engineers and developers.

Working with engineers

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

Conducting effective customer interviews

How to create a positive workplace culture that drives collaboration and productivity?

Fostering a good team culture

How to successfully prepare and position yourself for a job promotion?

How to get promoted

How to ask for a promotion and negotiate for salary raise?

Negotiating a job offer

How to think about design career paths and what progression looks like for designers?

Design career path

Miro

Notion

Within our core product, a social community for people impacted by cancer, exists an extremely valuable and unique tool — the Clinical Trial Matching Tool - for cancer patients and their loved ones to discover the most relevant clinical trials available to them.

Through empathy mapping, we highlighted the fears and obstacles in our user's path throughout different stages of this unique journey. From awareness and discovery, to the actions taken after the initial discovery, to feature adoption and feature advocacy of the clinical trial finder.

We attempted to understand likely negative scenarios throughout their journey, while considering what opportunities we could take to address them, thinking about the specific wants, needs and fears of our different personas.

Responsibilities as lead designer::
- Competitor and industry research, and developing user journey maps.
- Leading the design direction from idea to development and onwards.
- Mentor, encourage, and lead other designers, with different specialties, in the project.
- Creating data-driven solutions that balance business goals with building a great user experience for our core users.
- Liaising with the data protection officer regarding user consent and data collection, processing and usage.
- Collecting and managing patient data based on extremely regulated industry and governmental requirements
- Working with the product owner to strategise, incorporate business goals within the product direction and achieve user goals.
- Collaborating with business and product teams from ideation to implementation and iteration.

Read more here -> https://www.melissamcarthur.com/projects/clinical-trial-tool

The War On Cancer app is a digital support tool for people affected by cancer. How we're able to provide a free platform is by collecting, in a transparent and secure way, our member's data, turning it into patient insights to be used for improving healthcare for those impacted by cancer.

Collected specific health data from 55k users such as moods, symptoms, treatments, cancer phase and more, to maximise our member's experience using our product, providing them with personalised content to learn and connect with others in a similar situation. This value exchange allowed us to also generate patient insights for the healthcare industry.

Products & projects:
- B2C Cancer community social network (native iOS, Android and web apps)
- B2C Research study tool / back office
- B2C Mood tracking tool
- B2B Patient insight reports

Responsibilities:
- Competitor and industry research, and developing user journey maps
- Leading the design direction from ideation to development to iterations
- Mentor, encourage, and lead other designers in the team
- Creating data-driven solutions that balance business goals with building a great user experience for our community.
- Working with the product owner to strategise, incorporate business goals within the product direction and achieve user goals
- Collaborating with business and product teams from ideation to implementation and iteration
- Liaising with the data protection officer regarding user consent and data collection, processing and usage

Leveraged user psychology and the Four Forces to uncover conscious and unconscious user motivations, to find the ideal language and market fit.
Developed a growth experiment culture to continuously to optimise conversion rate, retention, and other key metrics driving the company's North Star.
Uncovered new growth loops to leverage exclusive app content using deeplinks to increase user acquisitions and reduce advertising costs.

1* Grew the user base from 4,000 to 55,000+ using growth strategies.
2* Scaled product from proof of concept into an ecosystem of 4 cross-platform, native apps
3* Integrated CBT into a social media community, to improve mental wellbeing

My role as lead product designer was to oversee the implementation of product design strategies, objectives, and initiatives. I was responsible for directing the design, development, and enhancement of new and existing projects. I evaluated and ensured design feasibility and design optimisation.
This role also included managing the design team, maximising the potential of each individual designer, mentoring to help individual designers grow. Being a startup, it was often my responsibility to make sure we were in touch with our users's needs, providing them value (via JTBD), balanced with a strong focus on growth. My team worked closely with growth experimentation, striving for constant optimisation of both user and business metrics, and ultimately, the company's North Star.

Scaled the product from a proof-of-concept React Native app into an ecosystem of
- Native iOS app
- Native Android app
- Web app for B2C
- Internal tooling

I was the lead designer on a product offering services nation-wide that offer a sitter-to-parent childcare sharing system. I conducted a thorough UX analysis of their existing app, as well as reviewing market competitors. I benchmarked the state of their product and developed a structured approach to recreate their app into a leading user experience, using the best design-thinking approaches. I produced user flow-maps for onboarding, as well as the other crucial user flows.

I was responsible for delivering high-quality digital platform experiences for innovative start-ups in Australia. 
I was responsible for...
  •  UX Analysis
  •  Competitor Reviews
  •  User Journey Maps
  •  Entire App Wireframes
  •  Low-fidelity Prototyping
  •  Entire App Designs
  •  High-fidelity Prototyping

I worked as a senior UX designer for a leading Saas web application. I worked mostly on interactive conceptual UX layouts using my knowledge in HTML, CSS and Javascript to prototype horizontally and vertically responsive prototypes on the future state of the Saas product web app interface. I presented thorough competitor UX research using a variety of UX methodologies. I communicated directly with the CEO, COO and other stakeholders, analysed both business and user goals, then documented and presented UX solutions to the Product Owner and development teams.

I managed a project to establish the Rexlab product team’s Design System, with the goal to make our product team's work more efficient, enjoyable and to have a more cohesive product suite. Leading the project involved everything from Project Management, Design System Research, Component Library Design, Design System Documentation, Resource Sharing Research. I involved the design and development teams througout the entire process, while working closely with developers working on their counterpart to make sure the design and development libraries worked side-by-side.

I was responsible for designing an intuitive and modern global navigation for a complex CRM. The navigation experience needed to feel intuitively fast, be non-disruptive while being perceived as sleek and modern. The project involved Information Architecture Optimisation, User Interface Design, Micro Interaction Design, High-Fidelity Prototypes for Desktop, Tablet and Mobile, and Quality Assurance Testing.

I conducted multiple research projects during my time at Rexlabs. These projects involved competitor analysis, benchmarking studies, user research, shadowing, user interviews, stakeholder brainstorming sessions and more. From these research projects, I presented findings and conclusive learnings, conducted exploritory wireframes and prototypes, provided strategies to test the success of the solutions, involving both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

While the product was in the midst of a growth period, expanding into the UK market, I was tasked with continuous projects that required new features and functionality as well as adjustments to existing features and functionality to be briefed, explored, prototyped and documented. With short deadlines and complex product requirements, these projects exercised all of my previous experience as a product designer. Communication played a critical role in analysing the briefs, understanding the product and while documenting the UX solutions to the development team.

Using my user experience design background to build a complex franchise marketing management platform to for the American multinational pizza restaurant chain.

Using my background in product design, I helped solve complex user experience problems for the BBC Worldwide platform, managing shows such as Planet Earth, Doctor Who, Cbeebies and Top Gear, servicing over 80 countries in 10 languages with 100,000s of users daily. Using UX methodologies, we achieved a 12% increase in traffic, an 18% increase in page views and a 2.2% increase in session duration. Their mobile optimised touch-interface saw a 45% increase in tablet-based usage and 57% increase in phone-based users. I was also responsible for wireframing, user interface design, interaction design and prototyping on this project.

Abiding by strict globally recognised accessibility standards, I was te lead UX designer on project to wireframe and design a cutting edge website for the Queensland Government. With a complex information arhcitecture, I used a variety of UX methodologies, Card Sorting and Stakeholder Interviews to build Personas, Wireframes, Information Architectures, Prototypes and Styleguides.

Leading the human-centered approach to create amazing experiences that Guerrilla prides itself on. Using my background in product design to solve complex user experience problems through future-thinking design.

Working as the lead UX / UI Designer for clients such as:
- QLD Government
- Plan International
- BBC
- Planet Earth
- Top Gear
- CBeebies
- Dominos Australia
- Dreamworld
- Village Roadshow Studios
- Warner Bros. Movie World
- Bleach Festival
- Norco Foods

Collaborating with product management and engineering to define and implement innovative solutions for the product direction, visuals and experience. Execute all visual design stages from concept to final hand-off to engineering. Conceptualise original ideas that bring simplicity and user friendliness to complex design roadblocks. Create wireframes, storyboards, user flows, process flows and site maps to effectively communicate interaction and design ideas. Present and defend designs and key milestone deliverables to peers and executive level stakeholders.

My visual design, prototyping and animation skills were used to create persuading presentations for brands and record labels such as Sony, Universal Music Group, Redbull, Virgin Australia, Uber, Lenovo, and more. I mocked up animated videos promoting the features, functionality and designs of the Guvera product suite.

Guvera is committed to transforming the way people experience music and advancing the digital entertainment industry through award-winning innovation and technology. Founded in 2008, the international award-winning music streaming service provides consumers with unlimited access to local and international music in a way that supports the artists and record labels responsible for producing it. 

My duties included:

- Design of customised presentations for internal and external use
- Design of social communication assets for international regions
- Assist in production of campaign assets for international regions in various languages
- Assist in visualising complex processes and statistics
- Maintain a filing structure for international creative requests
- Collaborate with the Global Creative Manager to effectively and efficiently deliver other creative projects

- Building on their current logo design & branding
- Developing a fresh look and designing related marketing material
- Liaising with the manager and strategising marking ideas
- Using the Adobe Create Suite on Apple computers

- Working as a team with 6 other designers
- Strategising, and problem solving with creative and innovative solutions
- Brand development
- Logo design for various industries
- Using the Adobe Creative Suite on Apple Computers
- Creating print-ready designs and proofing other designers print-ready PDF's
- Liaising between our studio and the printing studio
- Obtaining and building on client relationships

Designing websites, landing pages, stationary, over 100 different forms, brochures, business cards, apparel, digital content such as banner ads & email newsletters, annual reports & corporate newsletters for a leading working holiday company.

Melissa McArthur🇸🇪