New Zealand

Michael Szeto

Product Designer

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

Working remotely

Learn essential burnout prevention techniques and replenish physical and emotional energy.

Managing burnout

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

Dealing with imposter syndrome

Strategies for maximizing your design internship or co-op program.

Getting the most out of my internship

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

Design career path

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

Fostering a good team culture

Steps to building and maintaining a strong, cohesive and effective team.

Building an effective team

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

Breaking into tech

Best practices for running productive design critiques.

Running effective design critiques

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

Learn how to properly present your work and share ideas and opinions.

Presenting your work with impact

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

Ways and resources to improve your design skills.

Improving design skills

Navigating the working relationship with PM's and engineers as a designer.

Working with product and engineering

Ways to provide constructive feedback to team members.

Giving effective feedback

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

Conducting effective customer interviews

I joined the Adplist to offer 1:1 career advice to those new to the UX industry and to expand my mentoring opportunities overseas. The Adplist is an online community of mentors offering mentorship to individuals looking to enter UX or wanting career advice.

Key services I provide include:
.  Portfolio reviews 
.  Career growth planning/consultations
.  Discussing challenges as Product/UX Designers
.  Subject/technique discussions in the industry
.  Writing up progress notes for mentees
.  Sharing resources to help further career growth

Some of my key highlights include:
.  Guest speaking for online group sessions on accelerating career growth and personal branding
.  Writing a user testing tips blog article for the ADPList blog that gained 6,000 views
.  Coordinating with different chats across Texas, Canada, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand
.  Providing support to multiple mentees in need over the covid 19 pandemic
.  Being one of the first three mentors in NZ to be on the platform

Timely is a 100% remote business that creates software for the beauty industry to manage their online bookings, P.O.S and daily business needs. Timely was acquired by Evercommerce in May 2021.

My past role involved the following responsibilities:
.  Interaction Design
.  UI Design 
.  Rapid prototyping with Invision and Figma
.  Customer visits and research
.  Usability testing with customers (remote) 
.  User interviews with customers (remote) 
.  Co-design sessions (remote and in person)
.  Presenting WIP to internal stakeholders, UX reseach and design team members
.  Writing up research plans and user testing reports
.  Assumption mapping with Product Owners, Devs and QA
.  Observing user behaviour in Fullstory and data digging in PowerBI
.  Collaborating with Designers, UX Researchers, Product Managers, Engineers and QA
.  Helping maintain UI consistency with Timelys Design System

Key achievements: 
.  Used Fullstory observations and data from the Data Science department to identify opportunities to improve the onboarding experience for trial customers
.  UI designer for a Tiered pricing for grouped services feature
.  Leading customer interviews for Timely's Tiered Pricing beta program to form insights to grow the Tiered Pricing feature
.  Ran multiple remote user interviews and user testing sessions for a recurring payments concept 
.  Established Timely's Wireframe kit for faster prototyping and ideation for testing and concept work 
.  Established a remote user testing process for our team 
.  Product Designer (Discovery to UI) for TimelyPay's Merchant form terminal web experience
.  Product Designer (Discovery to UI) for TimelyPay's Cardless Checkout experience (web and iOS)
.  Product Designer (Discovery to UI) for TimelyPay's cancellation fee for web
.  Product Designer for TimelyPay's refunds experience
.  Product Designer for Timely’s first payment gateway called TimelyPay. Launched in a tight timeline over NZ’s first covid lockdown

Movio specializes in building data analytics and campaign management software for cinema chains and film studios to connect moviegoers to their ideal movies.

My role involved the following tasks: 
  . Interaction Design 
  . UI design and UI animation with HTML and CSS
  . Rapid prototyping  
  . Internal Usability testing 
  . User Research Interviews with internal stakeholders
  . Collaborating with User Researchers, Product Managers and Engineers
  . Leading research and testing retrospectives
  . Writing up user stories 
  . Building our internal design system alongside designers and engineers

Key achievements: 
  . Lead Product Designer for the Moviegoer Value Segments feature
  . Lead designer and assistant front end developer to help build Movio's Sign-in kiosk
  . Lead Product Designer for the Campaign Goals Reporting feature
  . Lead Designer and Front End Developer for Movios internal weekly report generator project
  . Led the design and usability testing for the Top Clicks Campaign panel
  . Worked on multiple small UX and IA improvements for the Movio Cinema Platform
  . Establishing and contributing to Movio's internal Design System
  . Sharing UX Design processes with Product Managers and Engineering Leads
  . Working with the head of design to create show and tell sessions for our team
  . Introduced our team to Whimsical for improved wireframing and user flow maps

Worked alongside a small team of designers, backend developers and QA to produce a live and responsive marketing website for a donations charity over a single weekend.

Key responsibilities included: 

.  Front end architecture with HTML, CSS/SASS, Gulp.JS and JavaScript/jQuery
.  UI animation collaboration with the primary UI/UX designer 
.  Working with QA to ensure the most important bugs were fixed
.  Assisting the project management and that tasks were being completed in the limited time available

UX Auckland is a NFP that helps grow the UX Design community in Auckland by hosting networking and speaker events for designers to attend to learn, grow and develop their professional careers.

My role as co-organizer for UX Auckland involved: 
.  Working with staff on planning and organizing events monthly
.  Onboarding new staff members
.  Helping to establish a healthy culture amongst team members and the events themselves
.  Collaborating with different meetup organizers on shared events
.  Networking with senior designers for speaker sessions 
.  Assisting with financial budgets for events
.  Public speaking at events
.  Networking with the community

Key achievements include:
.  Hosting a UX Research Ops talk with Trade Me in 2021 where over 100 people attended
.  Hosting an event for Nick Bowmast, a well renowned design researcher in 2019
.  Establishing a team of 5 staff to host and organise events
.  Collaborating remotely to plan events 
.  Creating a meetup culture built with growth and support as top priority
.  Helping to keep the community alive online on social media channels like Slack and LinkedIn

You can sign up to the meetup here: https://www.meetup.com/User-Experience-Auckland/

Pushpay is a fast-growing international S.A.A.S company that specializes in mobile giving solutions for the faith and charity sector.

My role as a Product Designer involved:
. Interaction Design
. UI Design
. Responsive Web Design
. Rapid Prototyping
. Front End Development (HTML, CSS/LESS, front end Javascript, Gulp, Git, Git extensions and SVGS/XML)
. Contributing and maintaining Pushpay's Design System
. Collaborating with UX Designers, UX Researchers and senior Front End Developers
. Attending user interview and testing sessions

Key achievements:
. Leading the Interaction model, UI Design and future scope for the Quarterly Giving Statements feature.
. Designing the Interaction model and UI design for Pushpays Recurring Migration feature.
. Growing our design team up by assisting in recruitment and portfolio reviews.
. Completed UX Gym training on Usability testing and User Research.
. Lead Design mentor for 2016, 2017 and 2018 Pushpay and Summer of Tech hackathons.
. Designed the UI and prototype for the Transaction Import feature.
. Built the Front End Development for Pushpays Mychurch app promo page.
. Helped with the front end build and redesign of the Pushpay careers website.
. Built the Front end architecture for Pushpays responsive bill payments feature.
. Assisted the research team in the design and development of Pushpays internal userfeedback group for testing and research.
. Completed the front end development for multiple marketing landing pages to promote the Tax Statements feature launch for December 2016.
. Designed and developed Pushpays Daily Payments Summary Email.
. Mentored a UX Design intern through the Summer of Tech graduate program in November 2016 to February 2017.
. Worked as a Front End Developer for the Multi-Campus product experience.
. Designed onboarding emails for new churches signing up to Pushpay
. Front end developer for the bill payments app
. Web Designer and developer for Pushpays bill payments micro site with watercare

Through the graduate program Summer of Tech, I previously worked at New Zealand Post as an Interaction Design Intern. This was a full time position with the online digital team in Wellington.

Here I applied a number of skills including:
.  Interaction Design
.  Rapid Prototyping
.  Documentation
.  Helping to refresh nzpost.co.nz
.  Internal User-Testing
.  Front End HTML,CSS and JQuery

Flexitime is a SasS start-up based in Wellington that builds software to help companies better manage their payroll.

My role with Flexitime included
.  Web Design
.  Graphic Design
.  Wordpress content management 
.  Collaborating with the CMO of Flexitime to help improve the site usability

Lightning Lab is a 3-month accelerator/incubator program designed to help multiple startups gain seed funding, media attention, industry connections and more to eventually become ready to enter the workforce. The program itself is run by Creative HQ and VicLink.

I worked full time as a Design Lab Tech and used the following skills:

.  UI Design
.  Web Design 
.  Front End HTML and CSS
.  Usability Testing
.  Video-Editing
.  Motion Graphics
.  Photography
.  Working closely within a team of 6 to help the multiple starts in the program

Michael Szeto🇳🇿