I’ve joined Etch as Product Design Lead

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how my time in education, technology, and eCommerce gave me a strong understanding of how large businesses operate — experience that will serve me well in my next chapter.

I’m moving from the client side, where I’ve spent the past four years, to join a user experience design studio. It’s a shift that will let me work with more businesses, across more challenges, and put everything I’ve learned into practice.

I’ve joined Etch!

Who is Etch? Etch is a user experience design and marketing studio. We work to the mantra of “love what you do”, so you’ll find a lot of positivity and passion when speaking and working with us.

Who would want to use Etch? Ambitious business leaders looking to build, measure and learn with a user-centered design philosophy that is in line with their business strategy. We’ve recently partnered with businesses such as British Airways, Benefex and The Pig Hotel, so you’ll be in good company.

I’m now primarily located in my hometown of Southampton, occasionally visiting our studio in London and Cape Town.

My commute is a 15 minute bicycle ride. It ensures I start and end the day well.

Our studio has a family dining table, a dog called Bonnie, studio breakfasts on Fridays and finish at 3pm, scooters, pizza days and drinks at the launch of every new project, my own standing desk and a view overlooking the port of Southampton. Not going to lie, it’s the nicest place I’ve ever worked.

We also host a lot of events, including ShareUp Soton, Full Stack Hants, Etch Summer Summit and Young Digital Makers Coder Dojo. I took my children to the Coder Dojo a few weekends ago and within a few hours they had made a chatbot and an animated story.

What I am doing at Etch? As the Product Design Lead of the digital products team, I find myself doing a little of everything! From helping develop the digital product design process, to challenging everything we produce, to developing deep relationships with our partners, to putting users at the centre of all that we do, to building business relationships and cultivating team talent. Ultimately, I’m here to ensure that we deliver truly great experiences to users and our partners.

The team is thirty strong and lead by our managing director, Tom. He’s great. I’ve learnt in my career so far that I need to work with excellent leaders and I think I’ve found quite a few at Etch.

Why Etch? I believe that design needs to be faster, even more user-centered and data driven. The market is telling us that we can ideate, prototype and test with users within five days (with design sprints), and that in product design, we can build, measure and learn in a cycle. I’m working with the team to execute on that vision and so far, the conversations have been extremely positive.

I’m also personally looking forward to experimenting with a tonne of design and digital ideas that I’ve only read about over the past few years (and included in my weekly newsletter). Being able to execute upon them with both the team and with our partners is sure to be massively rewarding.

I’ll continue to curate my weekly newsletter. If you’re not on it and want to learn more, please subscribe and also find previous best practice in the past issues!