Nice to meet you
Hi there, I’m Rob
I’m a Product Design Leader with over 15 years experience leading teams and creating impactful experiences in financial services and tech
Background story
Break it till you make it
Growing up I was building websites before there was an Web to host them on. Though I eventually studied digital communications in university, I kept teaching myself design on the side.
After completing an internship at BlackBerry and learning from some amazing user researchers and mobile interaction designers, I booked my ticket into UX - starting with user research.
While doing my Master’s thesis on ideation communities, I got the chance to redesign a platform called BlackBerry Beta Zone: one of the first online user engagement platforms.
When the platform wars hit and the writing was on the wall for BlackBerry, I made the jump over to financial services. This was back in 2012, and let me tell you: there wasn’t much appreciation for UX.
"We're not a software company," a Marketing VP once told me after reviewing a list of usability issues I documented after a $16 million(!) dollar web project launched, "we don't do user testing."
After picking my jaw back up off the floor, I set to work trying to help teams understand the value of good user experience - one user test at a time.
That wasn’t all I did, however. If so, I might have gone insane. Around the same time I also formed a video production company with a couple of good friends. We created explainer videos for startups and tech companies for a few years, which was a ton of fun.
The quest to stop sucking
Hearts and minds, one test at a time
In the early days a lot of people in financial services were downright hostile about bringing a user-centered lens to decades-old problems: as though asking customers to help identify issues with an application or process was an affront to the arcane art of…pension legislation?
However, with time and a little patience (admittedly not my strong suit) we managed to evolve to the point where user research became part of our day-to-day at Manulife...just in time for me to head back to tech where I found similar challenges waiting.
Reflecting on the past 10 years, it’s been really rewarding to see the shift in mindset across many industries toward a more user-centered design mindset. Finance and healthcare applications are used by millions of people every day, and there’s still a ton of opportunity for technology, design, and increasingly AI to improve their lives.
"We're not a software company," a finance executive told me a few years ago during, "but we'd like to be."
What’s next?
Designing organizations, not interfaces
Today I spend a lot more time designing organizations than I do interfaces, which is equal parts challenging and rewarding: often on the same day.
Most recently I’ve helped scale Sun Life’s experience design organization, building out our design operations and quantitative user research practices in the process. To-date we’ve been able to launch an enterprise-grade design system, establish an industry-leading DesignOps practice that has generated millions in efficiencies, and improved team engagement scores across the board.
I also spend a lot of time developing content to help grow the next generation of design leaders, and (hopefully) empower them with the skills they need to navigate complex organizations, tell compelling stories, and show executives how systematic experience design drives business outcomes.
For a bit more about my background, what we’ve been able to accomplish at Sun Life, and some musings on AI and the future of design leadership, check out this podcast I did with Kuldeep Kelkar from UX Ignite:
If you'd like to know more about me or chat about an opportunity, feel free to send me an email.