Ryan Whitmore
Product Design in Canberra • Remote, He/Him
About
Heya, I'm Ryan, a Product Designer in Australia with 7+ years of experience. I love experiencing new things and wrapping my head around something I don't understand. I've worked as a Dancer, a Dance Teacher, an Escape Room designer and manager, a UX design consultant in government sectors, Product Design in the B2C pet sector, and more recently in the B2B EdTech sector.
I have a natural affinity towards leadership and enjoy finding ways to empower and enable my friends and colleagues to do their best work. I love a good system and think about how we can create the scaffolding and infrastructure to set people, teams, and projects up for success.
As a designer my roots are in problem understanding and definition. I cut my teeth in human-centred-design, undertaking digital transformation projects. More recently I've really focussed on other areas of my craft and uplifting UI design skills, while undertaking and managing research-ops and design-ops pieces.
I'm an extraverted fella, love to bring a light-hearted but passionate energy to the table. I'd consider myself a soft-core adrenaline junky, MTB, snowboarding, bouldering, and sim-racing are my current hobbies of choice!
Have two gorgeous Shetland Sheepdog puppies and am the father to a gorgeous little girl (who was taken too soon).
I'm a wear-me-on-my-sleeve kinda guy, where I believe honesty is the best policy.
Work Experience
Leadership
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Manage a team of 5 designers
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Established regular design rituals to drive co-design. Peer design, low and high confidence design crits.
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Establish, refine, grow, and own the Ready Student Design system
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Oversight of all projects and initiatives with team members working on them
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Product Strategy advisor
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Design Strategy owner (design vision and system implementation)
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Design process creation and oversight
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Core design contact for clients and key stakeholders
Delivery
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Run design thinking and ideation workshops
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Belong to a squad and Product Trio delivering product improvements and new products to meet the needs of the Apprenticeship and Traineeship sector within Education
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Established new design process
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Established Product Design tool suite to enable effective design process
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Supported designers with improving user research methods
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Mentored designers with UX & UI design work, pushing for craft improvement
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Mentored Product Trios on pragmatic decision making within the framework of feasibility, viability, and desirability.
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Helped to establish Product Trios and Squad models for completing work
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Began the design system
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Supporting delivery work across three streams
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Responsible and accountable for maintaining Continuous Discovery research practices
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Line manager for 1 UX Researcher
Delivered
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Service Preferences
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Paid Cancellations redesign
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Login and Signup flow redesign
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Search algorithm improvements
Delivered
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Dinner Bowl landing page redesign
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Dinner Bowl Kibble landing page design and build, and supported the release of a new product
Delivered
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Centrelink fraud checking process improvements
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Telstra product improvements project
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Supported multiple internal pitches and presentations
Delivered
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APVMA digital transformation project
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Department of Education Adult Migrant English Program class management tool
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Augmented Reality engagement app for the Australian Airforce
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Service design and research work for a confidential client
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Mental wellness app for the Australian Defence Force
Speaking
It was a massive pleasure to speak at the LAST Conference Canberra 2019. My passion for Game Design and Human Centred Design were overlapped to look at Using Service Design and Gamification to solve complex business problems.
Features
We placed second in Sydney for creating a solution to a real world problem for NASA, awarding us a Nomination for the Global NASA Space Apps competition.
We created a Virtual Reality Data Visualisation and Learning Tool that took NASA data about our planet and projected it on a 3D VR globe of Earth. Different data sets were able to be layered to provide a unique and engaging method for data digestion and learning.
Education
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Activities and societies: I have joined up with a group of classmates which regularly get involved in the Game Jams held at AIE. This involves us coming together and creating a game which fits a theme in the space of 48 hours.Activities and societies: I have joined up with a group of classmates which regularly get involved in the Game Jams held at AIE. This involves us coming together and creating a game which fits a theme in the space of 48 hours.
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Studying at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment has embedded many design skills, philosophies, and approaches into my everyday practice as a games designer. The courses have seen me exposed to the conceptual and prototyping stages of game development, all the way to full production of titles.
Classes have educated me on a plethora of design principles, some are:
- UX and UI design
- Holistic game design
- Mechanic design
- Storyline integration
- Pacing
- Level design
- Economy design
- 3D Modelling and texturing
- Unity and Unreal 4 development
- Java and C# coding, as well as Unreal Engines blueprint system
- Project management, planning, and organising
- Product pitching and presentations
- Documentation
- Interpersonal skills
- Wireframing
Certifications
Awards
A Head of School Award for Most Outstanding Game Designer in my cohort, recognising outstanding design skills, knowledge and teamwork in a game development environment.