I am a user experience designer, digital strategist, service designer and tech enthusiast. This is my resumé.
If you are the intended reader I am going to assume we are on the same page about some terms and concepts, but I’ll try to be as clear as possible.
This is what I do and what I don’t
Having worked in the industry for close to 20 years, and with experience in a broad number of disciplines in software and service development, I am fairly certain about what I want to, and should, do. This is where you will get your money’s worth and where my passion will benefit your projects.
I design digital services to solve problems which I’ve helped define, for users I’ve gotten to know, and for businesses I’ve come to understand.
In my process, I put a lot of focus on leveraging the stakeholders’ business problems with the business problems of the users of their service, and my work tends to spill over into business development since a digital service is just one part of the total experience of a brand.
Over the last six or so years I’ve worked more strategically and less with managing teams and projects, while still working operationally and hands-on with users, clients and team members.
Typically my deliverables are:
- One or more documents about the stakeholders, and their current situation and business problems.
- One or more documents about the users, and their business problems, behaviours and attributes.
- One or more documents with insights, risk and conclusions about the solution.
- A wireframe or prototype of the solution.
- One or more documents about the content model to which a design system can be applied.
- One or more documents about the content architecture.
Together this makes up the conceptual design of the service, which other roles implement. I work interdisciplinary, but I know my limits in each field.
I do not make things look beautiful, I make them useful.
I do have experience as an illustrator, web designer and animator, but I’d rather leave the visual design to someone more skilled than me.
However:
- I create conceptual designs and deliver wireframes, prototypes and documentation.
- I give weight to different pieces of information which a designer can take into consideration in information design.
- I can describe the appropriate tonality of the design based on the personas and the context of the user stories.
- I work with usability reviews and WCAG compliance of implemented design systems and their parts.
I do not create content, I define recipients and purpose.
I love content. And I can distinguish good content from bad content, but I am not a copywriter.
But:
- I create information architectures through card sorting and other exercises defining the overall sitemap and how information should be grouped, defining which questions needs to be answered, and in which context
- I write content strategies outlining how to work with current and future continuous editorial content such as news posts, articles, etc.
- I write drafts for microcopy in interactions to fit the different user stories.
I do not write code, I specify what the code should accomplish.
I code regularly, but only in personal projects in PHP, JavaScript and LUA (!).
I am not a trained developer and my experiences as a project manager close to the technical layer has led me to greater understanding about architecture, data models and API design than programming syntax, coding patterns and techniques.
I can probably tell you if your model or logic supports the ideas of the concepts, but I should not be the one to spawn these models.
Although:
- I write documentation and use cases detailed enough to act as a specification or as test cases.
- I attend meetings with developers and architects to find the best solutions in all possible scenarios and edge cases.
- I can understand the limitations and conditions for a technical solution.
I do not manage people, I just make them more passionate.
I have managed projects and teams in the order of $300 000 and 8 team members, but I am really not the one who should answer the question “how’s the project coming along?”.
In any venture with the vectors of time, cost and quality, I am an advocate for quality and will always strive for the best solutions for the defined problems. I need someone else to be the one who says no to me for budget and release schedule reasons.
Even so:
- I can help define and estimate the overhead of concept maintenance.
- I can act as a product owner and work with quality assurance in all the areas mentioned.
- I can (and will) advocate user-centric design throughout all parts of a the development cycle, and to all participating roles.
- I can help motivate costs, plans and priorities towards stakeholders and clients.
- I can, and prefer to, present conceptual designs, and defend design decisions towards the stakeholders.
These are the skills I use to do this
Self-assessment is hard. My everyday activities in my current environment range from strategic brainstorming and user modeling to more operational tasks such as designing high-level representations of concepts, studio critique and prototyping.
Nonetheless, I have tried to map my experience in the different disciplines and soft skills involved in UX in these charts.
This is how I’ve acquired, and develop these skills
I am currently employed as a UX Designer and Strategist at HiQ in Västerås, working with pretty much what I think I should be working with.
I have a mix of responsibilities in strategic, facilitating and operational activities, and work with medium and large sized organisations, many of which are in the public sector.
Swipe/drag to scroll and explore my full career
This is what I’ve done with these skills
When your main deliverable is documentation it’s hard to build a visual and appealing portfolio, even more so when your work is internal and not free to share, but let’s look at some ventures and achievements which I think substantiates some of the claims I’ve made so far.
I led the design and content creation process on an award-winning webpage for Mälardalen University in 2018 to 2020
mdh.se
Reference: Roger Elverskog, Project Manager, +46 76-118 88 87, hej@rogerelverskog.se
I worked alongside a project manager with stakeholders to define purpose and goals, with users and user representatives to define user stories, and with developers and editors to design the solution.
The greatest challenge was with managing expectations and getting buy-in from the myriad of stakeholders for the simplified information architecture.
Continuous editorial content aside, the information architecture is kept simple enough for one person to know every page on the site.
I designed and implemented an award-winning service for Sporthyra in 2015 and currently serve on a board of advisors for the company.
sporthyra.se
Reference: Erik Liljeberg, Client, +46 72-327 93 80, erik.liljeberg@sporthyra.se
I worked with service design, lead a team of developers and acted as service owner. This effort is still ongoing.
The application handles sales, returns, customer service tickets, remote orders, equipment maintenance, stock management, and reporting.
Slim interactions and and a frictionless workflow is key in speeding up employee onboarding and increasing store throughput.
The greatest challenge was to define the changes to the business model and store praxis necessary for the solution to deliver on the defined goals.
I act as lead game designer and community manager of an open source game with a small community of developers and designers.
tunics.legofarmen.se
Reference: Mattias Päivärinta, Lead Developer, +46 76 093 98 78, mattias@paivarinta.se
Back in 2015 my colleague got into designing mathematical graphs and we thought it would be interesting to try to build a game on top of it.
The result was a randomly generated Zelda clone, using assets and game mechanics from ‘a Link to the past’.
Countless hours and nearly 1400 commits later, and with the help of a small community surrounding the project, we have released a number of major versions of the game. The project has been mentioned in PC Gamer magazine.
I would be happy to put together a tailored resume with some detailed and relevant case studies for your consideration. Storytelling is more powerful when you know your recipient.
Shameless client namedropping
- m4 group
- Frank restaurant group
- Melker Andersson
- RISE interactive institute
- Ciceron group
- Arvid Svensson
- HEA property partner
- Stadsrum fastigheter
- Headlight
- HiQ
- Hairtalk
- Sveriges Television
- Gymnastikförbundet
- Karolinska Hospital
- C1 Certification
- Engineering for Development
- Västerås Stadsmission
- Stiftelsen Våra barn
- Västmanlands Teater
- Mälarvillan
- Sporthyra
- ICANN
- Internetstiftelsen
- IIS (.SE and .NU DNS registry)
- AFNIC (.FR DNS registry)
- Kaktus Film
- ABB Industrial Automation
- Försvarsmakten
- Vetenskapsrådet
- Salute Hälsa & Rehab
- OnTee
- Create Business Incubator
- Västerås Science park
- Munktell Science park
- Mjärdevi Science park
- Clas Ohlson
- TB Screen
- Golfhäftet
- Schysst käk
- Guldkortet
- Luleå Kommun
- Jönköping Kommun
- Adda SKR
- Bombardier
- Spelinspektionen
These are some other facts about me which may or may not be interesting
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I am allegedly an export on internet infrastructure; EPP, DNS and WHOIS, and have worked with acceptance testing on behalf of ICANN during the new GTLD program.
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I once managed a restaurant and nightclub.
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I consider myself pragmatic, thorough, stoic, and sceptic.
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I live in Kolsva with my wife and three kids and spend a lot of time on improving our house.
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I am a nerd; the Star Trek, anime, gaming, natural sciences, lego building kind. Not the live roleplaying, board game, D&D kind.
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I once held the world record in spooning. It was a group effort.
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I trek to, and climb mountains, mostly the higher peaks in Sweden and northern Norway.