What I do. What I love

I am a Customer Experience Director. I help agencies and clients set up design teams and processes of working, and ensure that customer experience principles are embedded into the DNA of the organisation. I mentor designers and researchers from discovery to delivery. I enjoy getting my hands dirty and I'm hands on in solving design problems with my team.

Currently available for consulting work, product discovery workshops, mentoring and training in London and San Francisco. Visit the About Me page to learn about the services I offer.

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Experience design

Over 15 years of design experience, working closely with clients on defining the problem and sketching out the solution across all touch points.

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Strategy

Experience strategy and conceptualisation are integral to what I do. The best way to describe my approach is remaining human-centred throughout data driven design.

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Design Leadership

I strive to create flexible, supportive environments with as little hierarchy as possible. I have led diverse, very talented teams of designers and researches. 

 

My clients

 

Browse through my work and tell me what you think. If you like the look of it, get in touch.

 
 

Below are some highlights of my last year's work

What I've achieved

 

This is one of the most challenging and enjoyable projects in my recent years. Working with the team in Karmarama, heading the experience and design team of 6 brilliant designers, I launched an MVP for a major client in the energy sector. I joined at the discovery phase, ran workshops with Product owners to help set priorities and requirements, led the research and testing, and the agile development programme. I am very proud of this piece. The work involved a lot of design and product strategy that was the backbone behind all design decisions. 

 

 
 

What I've achieved

 

My most important achievement over the course of my 15 month consulting contract as the Head of Experience design at Travelex was establishing Experience Design not only as the main differentiator for our products, but also within the organisation by educating different teams about the importance of quality and coherence from a customer perspective. This involved a great deal of communication as well as hiring the right design team and structuring it in a way that supported what we were trying to create. 

 

I managed the team of Interaction, Service and Visual Designers, User Researchers, and Content Strategists and restructured it, shifting from a 'designer per product' to a 'designer per work stream' model. This gave each team member the opportunity to bring their acquired knowledge to all products and improved consistency and speed.

 

I led the Experience Design team through the launch of new and major products updates. Supercard and the Money App were launched/updated in June-September 2016, showcasing our team's world class design thinking and innovation. Wire was launched early 2017. 

 

 
 

Travelex Wire


 

 
 
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Read some testimonials below

 
“Ruby is an excellent team director: enthusiastic for the craft, encouraging of talent and insight, clear-eyed about her purpose. More important still, she is a fierce proponent of user values and reaches beyond the best-practice decisions to design a more fulfilling experience. I would be lucky to work with her again.”
— Jenny Wrobel, Experience Designer @ Infusion New York
“Ruby joined us at Travelex at a time when we were undergoing significant change. Having hired a diverse set of disciplines to help take Travelex in new directions, the Experience Design team needed a dedicated leader and manager, and clarity of thought to structure design thinking. We needed to raise the bar to ensure a coherent customer experience across products and channels.

Ruby restructured and led the team, instilling solid practices to unite thinking, introduced the right tools and re-shaped ways of working that have significantly increased quality, speed and decision making - all of which will help define Travelex as a brand that is current and knows how to speak to its customer.

Ruby is generous with her time for the team, whilst always demanding the best. She is clear in her vision, doesn’t compromise on quality and is always willing to challenge and question decisions to make the product better. It never ceases to amaze me how she can retain so much detail and effortlessly piece elements of a puzzle together articulately - to turn complex concepts into simple and compelling outcomes.

She has an incredible eye for detail and an unmatched ability to provide logical thought that always puts the team a step ahead. Ruby’s approach to work is highly collaborative, bringing together relevant stakeholders from across the business to help define the customer journey by creating a common language and refined approach.

With Ruby on the team, the team works better and the products are better. I am thrilled that she continues to be a significant part of the change we are championing at Travelex.”
— Rakhi Rajani, Digital Transformation, Innovation and Omnichannel Customer Experience Executive
“Ruby is awesome. I’ve had the pleasure of working with her over the past 9 months at Travelex. Her passion in creating the right customer experience, her diligence in the detail, and her leadership of the design team has changed how Travelex build and launch new experiences and products.

Ruby has the right character, right attitude and right presence to make customer experience really matter in any organisation in which she works.”
— Colin Swain Head of Money Transfer at Travelex
“Ruby is able to totally reframe complex products & services and make them simple and well considered.

She has a very open mind to Change and can be a very compelling catalyst for doing things better, especially when dealing with large teams and client organisations.

The inherent challenges in building effortless user-experiences across web and mobile interfaces are a normal-day at the office for Ruby and I’d recommend her very highly to anyone looking for a passionate, hard-working and creative UX-er.”
— Marc Giusti, Founder @ Pivot. Business Transformation. CDO. CXO. Non Exec
“It has been a pleasure to work with Ruby, she is very helpful as a manager and mentor to guide me on personal development. She is also a very experienced designer, who has strong strategic thinking and vision in terms of product design and development, and great attention to detailed design.”
— Xi (Rosie) Zhu, Senior interaction designer at Travelex
“Ruby joined the Platform Design team at Canonical at a critical point in a very complex project with tight deadlines and in a hostile environment. She was very professional and her outcomes were excellent, well thought through and executed. Ruby delivered always on time. She is a great addition to any team.”
— Yolanda Martin Olivas, UX & Design Director
“Very much enjoyed working with Ruby, she is hard working and always tries to create the best product for the customer. She has a strong eye for detail and good logic to back up her decisions. Am looking forward to working with her again in the future.”
— Alex Ward, Freelance UX/UI Designer
“I had the privilege to work with Ruby for a three month long redesign project. She is very passionate and hard working with a first-class eye for detail. None of my minute mistakes made it past her! She is also highly articulate about her work when talking to clients and very able to translate her ideas into sketches and those into prototypes. Her wide experience in media gives her a really good vision of how user experience fits in the big picture of digital projects. As a manager she is demanding yet understanding and sympathetic, making her a really good mentor.”
— Oscar Lozano, User Experience Designer at Burberry
 

What I am looking for

 

I am available for consulting contracts at the moment. The kind of roles I consider are heading customer experience teams where I can bring my knowledge in setting up and advocating customer centricity to the DNA of organisations and businesses. If you are an agency or a client who wants to transform their teams and products, and implement a coherent experience for your customers across all channels and touch points, get in touch and let's discuss over a cup of coffee.

 
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
John Maeda

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