First 10 Months at Buildkite

I was immediately drawn to Buildkite because of the opportunity it presented. A profitable and well-loved product, but one that hadn't seen much involvement from designers until very recently. It's a familiar story, in order to scale and innovate — the tools, practices and cultural understanding of Design had to be established.

As Principal Designer I've had the opportunity to affect that change at a foundational level — from the bottom up — by introducing the tools and remote-first processes that facilitate change. It's the best way I know how. I aim to demonstrate good practice by serving as an example, by coaching and writing, by being an unblocking function to teams and by establishing effective customer-first practices. I’m your friendly face in design.

I have also been hands-on designing, with a primary focus on evolving the visual language and setting UX standards that will scale. I've also taken the opportunity to pursue my own personal agenda — to create a more human-first and inclusive product — something that is at odds with the 'tech standard'.

Proof in the Pudding...

Here are some of the landmark achievements in my inaugural year — implemented in parallel to the company tripling in size. I'm proud of what I've done, not least because the domain is so technically challenging!

👯‍♀️ Leadership

I'm an advocate for design, working across all teams to ensure we are creative, collaborative and customer-obsessed in our approach.

• Established collaborative design practices — both within product and the wider design org — to encourage creativity and consistency of output. Including the habit of regularly sharing work in progress and involving engineers early — a practice now used by all designers and contractors

• Created the visual structures and processes of a well-documented design system, integrated design as a part of the frontend working group and worked with front end engineers to implement the foundational elements of a Buildkite Design System

• Undertaken research to better understand our customers and product strategy — resulting in terminology, which has been widely adopted across the business and a standard we hold all feature development to

• Set up regular coaching with designers with PM — with the intention of elevating craft, supporting people through a challenging period of company growth and furthering career paths

• Built relations across Product, Leadership, Sales and Customer teams to better understand cross-functional work and to influence design thinking outside of the feature teams — such as how/when to involve customers, how to research and process feedback and seeing design as an enabler not a blocker

• Affected design strategy across teams by advocating for human-centred design practices — such as challenging visual density and embracing simplicity — strategies that have been particularly instrumental in the upcoming pipeline of work

🖥️ Craft

I strive to lead by example and set a high bar of creative excellence. I've been working cross-functionally to encourage consistency, customer-focus and the confidence to pursue unique and defensible product output.

• Designed and implemented the first visual refresh of the core product in recent memory — using the project as a baseline for accessibility and a step towards visual consistency across the app. Read the blog post

• Created a new navigation structure, colour system and custom iconography used across the entire suite of products. Including the creation, documentation and maintenance of the design system

• Worked with Marketing and Brand to elevate the visual tone of the product through a new illustrative style in 2023 — setting the foundations for a visually unique product

• Worked closely with Foundations and Sales teams to produce usage reporting tooling — which has already seen great reception from customers

• Designed various conceptual features to set an appetite for future work — such as a collaborative tools announced by the CEO at the 2022 Unblock Conference — a lot of which has gone into the roadmap, or has already been shipped

"You've had SO MUCH impact on the design culture at Buildkite, it feels like we are a proper team now. And you've influenced processes so that design actually feels like a proper thing we do in Product" — Designer

Above: Before/after accessibility improvements and a navigation refresh

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I draw professional satisfaction from enabling creative success — by providing the tools and services to help individuals and teams produce effective design solutions. I look for opportunities to affect long-lasting impact on a company... consider this a work in progress.