au67in

Product Design Director

Over the length of my career in design, I've worked with multi-disciplined design teams of varying sizes, interviewed thousands of designers, and studied how design operates and matures within companies worldwide. During this time, I've noticed the lack of education supporting design storytelling, nurturing individual growth, and modern design recruitment.

My role as a leader, mentor, and designer is to balance thoughtful guidance with diverse levels of empowerment to support individual decision-making. Working with me means working transparently and inclusively, sharing in-progress work early and often, and framing problems as opportunities within a set of yet-to-be-understood contexts. I prioritise collaboration over independence. The best way to deliver meaningful outcomes is through shared responsibilities.

As a leader, I focus on achieving unique ideas with proactive action by creating authentic relationships that encourage deliberate measurable outcomes. If a team I'm working with fails, I don't see such situations as finite or defining but, instead, see failure as a chance for us to learn something and adapt to what we achieve next. 

I strive to build a respectful yet playful culture built on the concept of strong view, loosely held to challenge our thinking and praise curious questions about how something fits into the big picture. Support comes from helping connect ideas, projects, and individuals or providing nudges on varied or alternative outcomes. I align myself with company values by routinely using them as tie-breakers or evaluation methods.

My strengths are primarily in having and encouraging a growth mindset based on self-awareness, creating a work-life balance where ideas can incubate and thrive, encouraging creative thinking, and acting authentically in everything I do. These strengths are my own and what I work to incorporate into the teams I work alongside. Through this, I hold my team big while supporting them ruthlessly to achieve success.

I've championed the coexistence of product, design, and engineering throughout my career, using agile processes and lean UX methodologies. Through partnerships with executive-level stakeholders, I have helped mature design within companies and deliver value in unlocking innovation through design.


Experience: 11 years

Yearly salary: $200,000

Hourly rate: $150

Nationality: 🌏 Remote

Residency: 🇦🇺 Australia


Experience

Director of product design
Xero
2022 - 2023
Director of platform design
Kraken
2021 - 2022
Program design manager
Telstra
2020 - 2021
Principal designer
Kayo Sports
2019 - 2019
Program design lead
DOJ
2017 - 2018
Principal designer
Westpac Bank
2015 - 2017
Program design lead
CommBank
2014 - 2015
Experience design leader
Deloitte Digital
2013 - 2013
Creative/experience director
M&C Saatchi
2011 - 2013
Creative/experience director
WhiteGREY
2010 - 2011

Skills

design-manager
lead-designer
product-lead
ui-ux-designer
design
english