Personal Statement and CV. Dennis Chirwa. Senior User Experience Designer. 12+ Years of Industry Experience.

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1 Personal Statement and CV Dennis Chirwa Senior User Experience Designer 12+ Years of Industry Experience

2 Personal Statement I am a UX Designer, a visual thinker, a pixel perfectionist with a strategic mind-set in User Experience Design and Development. I see design as the art of considered creation. I aim to satisfy the diverse spectrum of human needs and as those needs evolve, so too should our designs, practices and philosophies. I always challenge myself in creating a visual language for our users that unifies classic principles of good design with innovation and technical possibility in today s on-line industry. In my current role as Senior UX/UI Designer it has become my job to be the user, to augment their on-line experiences into easy to use digital work flows and translate that into a usable product with limited problems or confusions. I have worked in the Web Design industry for over 12 years, achieving valuable experience in Design, Development, Agile Scrum, Project Ownership and Coordination. I have worked with international corporations like Vodafone, Renault, Cellstar, Northumberland Tourism Board, One North East and Turnitin who have a passion for working in User centered and product focused environments. In 2006 my journey began as a Junior Web Designer, Liaising with customers at the design stage to ensure visual accuracy and User Experience by producing a design that will be attractive to their target audiences, as well as accessibility, digital optimization and presentation for the web. In 2008 I won a Design and Development contract 1 of 6

3 building a content management system that was stylish modern and most importantly easy to use for a North East Tourism board utilising their internal Content Management System as a baseline platform to develop on. In 2009 I started working for nlearning as a Flash Web Designer and Content Management Expert. Here I introduced the open source content management system, Joomla! with which I designed and built sites such as plagiarism.org, I2PC.org and IAAIC.org. In 2010 our company was acquired by iparadigms LLC for which I became Project Lead in the development and migration of the Turnitin s Marketing site from a static state to a dynamic CMS. With the exceptional work that our team was creating, I was asked to take lead of the product design team and help improve the product in its aesthetic and usability. By laying the foundations of the product using User Centred Design I expanded the Design team and began to instil the mentality of product design from a user s mind-set. With the acquisition of a start-up in 2014 the product team acquired an exceptional talent in UX research and design and with her leadership the business is able to fully understand the potential of working with a user centred approach. Creating great User Experience comes from having a team of likeminded evangelistic designers, developers and researchers that are able to build thoughtful products through user research prototyping and testing. Clarity, Digestibility, Trust, Familiarity and Delight highlight the key principles to getting user satisfaction correct and they are the principles I follow in getting positive results in User Experiance Design. 2 of 6

4 Experience Senior UX Designer Turnitin, October Present (4 Years) Managing a team of 6 designers globally to create a Design System that can be used across multiple product lines. Experience working in and Agile scrum environment Introduced User Centered Design to product development with added focus on Ethnographic User Research. Created Designs and work flows for the Turnitin Evaluation Viewer. Created the Turnitin Assignment Manager Designs and work flows to the technical restrictions that we were bound to. Assessed and redesigned User Interaction work flows and introduce animation as a new element to User Experience Design Beginning User Centered observational studies with Beta testers. Working in collaboration with Cross functional team across multiple countries. Presented on the importance of Design Systems at UX/UI Innovation Summit, London Lead Web Designer Turnitin, 20th June 09 October 2013 (4Years 7 Months) (Previously NLearning LTD) Designed a brand new content managed website for plagiarismadvice.org. Developed the website using the Open source Joomla! Content management system. After a company takeover, new projects arose including redevelopment and internationalisation of the Turnitin.com website 3 of 6

5 to use a CMS and development of new brands such as IAAIC, I2PC and plagiarism.org. Continually designed brochures, leaflets conference marketing material, banners, conference stands and invitations which were all in high demand and were considered important in business development. As a highly integral member of the Design team, I gave, what is considered important and vital design and CMS suggestions to which has helped the company grow as a whole. Designing and Developing DM (Direct Mail) and EDM (Electronic Direct Mail) ads for marketing campaigns. Helped with Business Development in Eastern Europe with the eye on creating a market in the region. Contracted Lead Project Web Designer & Project Co-ordinator. Northumberland Tourism Ltd, 7th May th Jan 2009 (1 Year 9 Months) Won the Design and Development contract for the new Kielder Water and Forest Park Website on behalf of Northumberland Tourism, with that brought in a substantial amount of added income. Designed a brand new content managed website for made-innorthumberland.co.uk, visitnorthumberland.com and visitkielder. com. Developed the website using the One North East ECMS system created by New Mind and used by all Tourism Associations and Networks. 4 of 6

6 Organised content copy writers, photographers and data collectors to help populate websites. Designed leaflets and invitations which were distributed to all food and drink businesses in North East. Edited and updated imagery on their site, as well as co-ordinated Image audits for external sites such as Designed and Developed DM (Direct Mail) and EDM (Electronic Direct Mail) ads for marketing campaigns. Designed full page ads for magazines such as Country File, Country Living, Living North, etc, in order to increase online traffic to the Visit Northumberland website. Web Designer Switchmedia Ltd, Sep 2006 Sep 2007 (1 Year) Liaised with customers at the design stage to ensure accuracy and good service. Produced a design that will be attractive to the target audience, and has all the features required. decided on how images and other materials would be digitally optimised and presented for the web ensured that material on the web site were accessible to all groups including those with disabilities Tested sites for functionality in different browsers and at different resolutions Error handling and using languages to create websites: XHTML and CSS. 5 of 6

7 Achievements and Skills BSc (Hons) Multimedia Studies Liverpool John Mores University, Liverpool, Course involved computer games development, multimedia development, Web Design, 3D Animation, Database development and prototyping and a final project of which I chose 3D Character Animation and implementation. HND Computer Science South Bank University, London, Involved Java Programming, SQL+, Javascript, Object Orientated Design, Project Management, Database Design, Computer System Architecture & Networking. A Levels Turton 6th Form, Russian (A), Information Technology (C), Physics (D) GCSE s Turton High School, GCSE s including: 1 (A*), 3 (B s), 7 (C s) I have a strong understanding in a wide range of computing technologies and UX methodologies as well as Agile Scrum environments. 6 of 6

Freelance UX Design / Front-end Dev Consultant

Somme Sakounthong Freelance UX Design / Front-end Dev Consultant Linkedin: Website: Email: www.linkedin.com/in/ssakounthong www.dragondrop.co info@dragondrop.co SUMMARY I bridge the gap between visual