Feb 2021 - Current

The Audience Agency

Senior Product Designer

Services

User experience
User interface design
Front-end development
Strategic thinking
Design systems
Usability testing & user research
Working in an Agile environment

Responsible for the end-to-end delivery of the UX and UI of a complex data-rich application, Audience Answers, in a fast-paced environment with a distributed team.

About The Audience Agency

The Audience Agency is a mission-led charity: their purpose is to provide knowledge, data and insight enabling cultural organisations to increase their relevance, reach and resilience. Audience Answers is the next generation of audience insight tool for the UK cultural sector and international partners, designed with users to help them to achieve their audience development goals.

My role

As a dedicated advocate for user-centric design, my role is centered on integrating user perspectives throughout the product definition and development journey. My responsibilities can be categorized into key phases that span from initial ideation to continuous enhancement.

Ideation

During this phase, I collaborate closely with the product team to solidify the conceptual groundwork before any coding takes place. By translating business strategies into feature concepts, often through collaborative workshops involving clients or client-facing teams, I ensure alignment with user needs.

Sketching

Once an initial concept takes shape, I create wireframes and then detailed sketches that map out feature functionality, user flow, and information display. This stage marks a pivotal moment when abstract ideas crystallize into tangible design elements. Feedback from client-facing teams, acting as user proxies, is invaluable at this stage. Iterative design revisions are conducted based on this feedback.

Additionally, I collaborate with other team members to craft feature-related copy, engaging user proxies and Marketing / Communications when necessary to ensure accuracy and effectiveness.

A map with navigation between different Audience Spectrum Segments, showing the percentage in each area — A map to explore the Audience Agency's segmentation system, Audience Spectrum

Static Build

I code my designs into HTML and CSS prototypes. These prototypes provide a visual representation of the final product, and ensure the production ready CSS is in place, laying the foundation for back-end development.

A UI to categorise productions showing a table of production names such as 'A Midsummer Night's Scream' with checkboxes next to them in order to select multiple productions and categorise them into an artform. — A UI to allow categorisation of productions into artforms

Design System

As I design and code the functionality, I reference and update our design system to ensure that I am always working in a componentized manner.

This has also become a central place for the rest of the organisation to look for the correct versions of logos, brand colours and icons.

Screenshot showing The Audience Agency Design System with sections Philosophy, Foundations, Content, Components, Patterns and Prototypes — The Audience Agency Design System

Usability Testing

Throughout the process, usability testing is a critical component. I orchestrate and define test scenarios in collaboration with my colleagues. Following the tests, I analyze outcomes to implement actionable refinements in design and functionality.

Development

As the feature evolves, I collaborate closely with developers to address inquiries about functionality and optimize design elements for efficient development. My role often extends to layout refinement within the production environment, ensuring visual consistency and coherence.

Portion of a dashboard showing relative figures for this year and last year's bookers, income, tickets and average ticket yield against a benchmark, with bars representing the different amounts — Sales overview section from a dashboard on Audience Answers

Iteration

Post-release, I leverage data insights from Google Analytics and conduct additional usability testing to identify areas ripe for improvement.

Evidence Hub and Marketing Support

My involvement extends beyond feature development. I have independently built a new home for our sector research on the Kirby CMS platform. I've also collaborated with marketing and other teams to enhance cross-product user experiences. Supporting marketing initiatives includes creating supporting materials, curating and adapting illustrations, and refining templates.

Outcomes

Successfully managed end-to-end UX and UI delivery for a sophisticated data-rich application within a dynamic distributed team setting.
Embedded user-centric design principles throughout the product development lifecycle, ensuring alignment with user needs and goals, and am beginning to extend that mission to the rest of the organisation.