The long story

A designer at my core I have spent the last 5 years uncovering customers’ needs after a lifetime of creating objects that appeal to the best aesthetic possible for the medium intended.

I firmly believe in following a customer centric approach to achieve the right outcomes for customers and using design systems to achieve outcomes for business and the customer alike. From starting at the beginning of the “why” with discovery workshops through sketching and prototyping for customer testing to working with developers to deliver the right customer experience.

I have always felt the needs of the business’ for customer adoption of products as well as how those products are used by the customer directly are equally important and can be a delicate balance. Building and working with design systems are key to delivering efficiency and cost savings, these are a passion of mine and I have seen at first hand the benefits that can be delivered by allowing CX to solve the big challenges facing customers.

Whether working on a re-imaging of what banking can be for a customer to implementing features to products that will simply improve customers basic tasks, I have worked to bring better outcomes for the customer.

With 20+ years professional design experience across consumer finance, superannuation portals following strict government guidelines, onboarding experiences for clients new to digital as well as print collateral from essential communications to magazines and newspapers.
I have 8 years management experience of small and large teams across publishing and digital.
With 7 years working in the corporate space and 5 years consulting experience working directly with a range of clients across various industry segments from banking and utilities to insurance and retail.
The last 3 years specialising in customer experience for corporate clients and their customers, following UX methodologies to find the best customer outcomes possible.

Applying these skills to clients has enabled me to delivery successful experiences for customers whether creating an oboarding tool for clients customer with a mobile first approach with significant decrease in abandonment rates from 21% to 13% to migrating a client to an online communications strategy reducing clients print cost through call to actions and improved digital communications. Introducing first to marketing superannuation clearing house solution as a white label solution to be scalable across bank clients which was challenging due to business following an offshore development model.

Not all projects are simple, a client in the debt consolidation space wanted to improve the customer experience by reducing the time taken to close accounts and the number of letters sent. After a number of workshop with diverse stakeholders it was discovered the complexity of the output was the problem with each department holding their own versions of letters, a new matrix of letters was created taking it from 90 letter types to 5 with dynamic paragraphs for each stage of the letters cycle, adding to this a full digital cycle from initial comms through payment portal and to final letters. This result in clear improvements for clients collections with updated comms with a 18% increase in payments by first letter.

Some projects can have external needs that have to be aligned with Brand and Marketing with the need for careful consideration to apply the design to not only the direct client but follow a design system approach to ensure two other brands could maintain the essence of their individual brand personalities and the expectations of the different brand and marketing stakeholders. With a strong background in brand + visual design, I was able to ensure the project adhered to the Graphic Experience Library, GEL, established by Westpac to allow for maximum production efficiency.

Specific essential criteria:
Minimum 5 years professional career experience, at least 2 in a senior role. As you can see from my resume I have been working in collaborative design roles for well over a decade including experience at a senior level as a team leader. I am results-oriented with demonstrated success in delivering user experiences in several platforms and across differing industries. I consider myself a design champion and have presented at Adobe design seminars, written articles and have contributed to thought leadership on social media. Throughout my career I have mentored junior designers, explained creative design and UX principles to stakeholders and am a participant in the UX start-up community.
I have managed teams of several designers, developers and technical experts cultivating productive working relationships and nurturing talent. An example of this can be demonstrated in several roles, including at News Limited as Deputy Art Director, Nation Wide News, I managed a team of creative designers to deliver time dependent visual graphics and data visualisations for The Australian, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Mail and allocating designers to achieve deadlines. Workflows were improved after considering individual skills and development needs, and undertaking on the job training where required. This resulted in a 32% reduction in the use of contractor and casuals.

Demonstrated problem solving skills.
As a Design Consultant for Computershare it was my role to be the champion for Computershare’s clients customers. I did this by using all the tools of user experience, user centred design, user interactions, workshops and visual design skills. Our clients often had significant challenges from poor digital strategies to legacy platforms that needed complete revamps.
I would work closely with the sales teams at the initiation to use workshops to uncover customer problems through journey maps these would form the basis of what could be the best outcome for the customer inline with business objectives. This would then lead into working with developers to convert the solution designs into deliverables.
On a smaller scale as a customer experience designer for Westpac Online Banking a simple requirement from the regulator to better allow customers to understand the details of their interest only loans needed a quick solution with minimum impact on technology. To do this I used a 5 day design sprint approach to discover the details with a wide group of stakeholders to allow me to quickly iterate options which could be discussed with architects to find the right solution that both meet regulatory requirements and was achievable in the size of the trains release.

Strong self-management skills.
From a manager of a nightly newspaper to delivering a banking website to tight deadlines, working with and collaborating with others is key to success. Understanding the capacity of others can be the difference of a project delivering on time or not. Sometimes what is required is to take on increased responsibilities such as stakeholder management whilst other designers are working to deliver a sprint. At other times it can be finding a solution that is beyond the scope of the project team but will have knock on effects to the rest of the banking site.
Having strong reliance on Lean UX and design thinking can be the best way to solve the problems at hand. Using physical spaces is key from card walls to ideation sketching is a way I have delivered complex projects quickly.

Practical experience with Agile and Lean development methods including design sprints and rapid prototyping.
During my time at Westpac as a Customer Experience Designer I worked on the public website for the Bank of Melbourne re imagined banking project known as Project Simple.
I was tasked with representing CX for all the Agile rituals with a focus on tight delivery deadlines to go from customer journeys to detailed design, whilst sustaining CX intent throughout production. We managed to do this by having fortnightly sprints with design, prototyping, customer testing, ideation, high fidelity designs followed by operationalisation of designs for delivery. This allowed my team and I to take on the task of redesigning the Bank of Melbourne’s website portfolio by portfolio delivering in 6 months what had taken 2 years for St George.

I look forward to speaking with you further to outline my suitability for the role, please see attached my resume and case studies for more details.

Regards
James Earnshaw