Anita Mernagh

I’m a senior product designer with a proven track record in UX / UI design and research for enterprise software solutions. As a design lead I guide multi-disciplinary product teams (both local and global) through the phases of product design & implementation across agile sprints.

Design Thinking methodology is at the core of all my projects, ensuring my focus is always client centric, enhancing the users ability to achieve their goals, and deliver business results.

My passion and curiosity lies in the connection between design, people, cultures, and innovative technology. During my 8+ years delivering within the design industry, I have built a diverse and balanced range of competencies which I am ready to bring to a new organisation.

Design Practice

I have designed for vision & blue-sky projects, brand new products from scratch, and updated & improved older software.

Regardless of the type of project, I really enjoy applying my design skills and working on my craft. With new projects, I typically start by writing down my initial reaction to the proposed problem and sketch out ideas. During this exploration phase I gain a deeper understanding by doing some market and competitive research to identify ways in which we can differentiate from competitors and provide new value to our users. I share my ideas, sketches, and research findings with my design team to open up discussion, encourage debate, and build up concepts based on everyone’s feedback.

From there I create low fidelity wireframes to refine the ideas and consider the interactions across web and mobile in more detail. These wireframes can then be turned into interactive prototypes and presented during user testing sessions to get further constructive feedback. Once there have been a few iterations on the wireframes I begin to apply visual styles and move toward creating high fidelity specs for development to implement. Through-out the process I consult with accessibility experts to ensure any proposed designs are inclusive so that all users can comfortably benefit from them.

Agile Leadership

As a UX / UI design lead my responsibility is to guide our team through the phases of product design & implementation.

I facilitate the exchange of information & ideas, empower individuals, and work to remove any blockers that may arise. I provide advice and contribute to sketching, wire-framing, prototyping, user testing, design reviews, iterations based on feedback, sponsor user interviews, research analysis, creating hi-fidelity specs for development, and workshops.

Working remotely with an international team, I organise agile sprints by running scrums, backlog grooming, retrospectives, and sprint planning for our team in Europe and the US.

I support managers and other senior members of our team while I also mentor junior designers. And I work closely with offering management and development to ensure everyone is aligned on goals & priorities to reach solutions that are informed & validated by user research.

Design Thinking

I have years of experience using the Design Thinking framework from professional training to day-to-day product team work.

In my role as a design lead, I encourage our team to utilise a range of Enterprise Design Thinking exercises for every project. Running these exercises helps us to understand the scope of the work and identify what is expected at incremental releases to ensure we successfully meet user needs and business goals.

We endeavour to repeat the phases of the loop - Observe, Reflect, Make - as this flow holds us accountable for reflecting on our work and pushing ourselves to keep making it better.

To find out more, check out the Design Thinking page in my project work.