2010 - 2013

I completed my first Degree in 2010 with a BSc in Architectural Technology from the University of Ulster, followed a year later with a BA in Architecture from the University of Lincoln. Despite the combination of these 2 disciplines, and 2 years of work experience on projects with clients such as the Ulster Museum and Royal Victoria Hospital, I was unable to gain paid employment in the UK Construction industry.

I did however get to work as a Kitchen Planner at IKEA Belfast from September 2010. After a fun and successful year of alan keys and flat packed furniture, I decided to take one of the many advantages of working for a multinational company and moved to IKEA Salzburg - this was the starting point of my German journey; stage 1 - learn the lingo!

After a year of yet more alan keys at IKEA Salzburg, and having at least made good improvements with learning the language, I moved north into Germany and to the former capital, Bonn. My first position based in the german construction industry was working as a technical Consultant for Garaventa Lift in Cologne. As a point of contact for customers, architects, builders and our own installation team, I co-ordinated the production, delivery and installation of a variety of lifts.

After leaving this postion I moved to FSH Ingenieurplanung in Meckenheim, to work as an Architectural Assistant. Here my responsibilites revolved around technical drawings relating to Laboratory installations, across a variety of institutions all over Germany. Despite enjoying my time in the Engineering Office, I had learned that my architectural studies would not be recognised in Germany. That's when I decided to go back to Uni to learn something new...

2013 - 2016

I was surprised and motivated by how many of the methods and practices within (MSc) Software Development were similar to those I already experienced in my time in Architecture. There was however one big difference; instead of producing technical or presentation drawings, I was outputting lines of code in a terminal (and sometimes UIs too!). I quickly realised how different the working world of IT is compared to that of construction; with 2 months left of my studies I had already received several offers for a graduate development job, and was very happy to be heading to Liberty IT in Belfast - a development department of Liberty Mutual of Boston, America.

At Liberty I was placed on the Usability Team for Commercial Insurance Products. I learnt a lot during my time at Liberty about Usability concepts, using the company's Style Guide and the Products' already established patterns (in Bootstrap) to continually improve on the service offered to Insurance Agents all over America. Despite the great team I had at Liberty, I always regretted moving away from Germany. As a perfectionist, I devided to make my knowledge of the German language official by taking German lessons at the Goethe Institute in Dublin. At the same time, I looking for my next position back in Germany - for a number of reasons I had limited my search to the regions surrounding Bonn, Hamburg or Berlin.

2016 - present

I left my home town for the second time in May 2016, heading to Bonn to work as a Java Developer for cronn GmbH. Cronn attracted me as it was a small company, and I had struggled at Liberty with the big company thinking and politics that come with it. My first project at cronn was a Web GUI for SIM Cards used by call center agents for the Deutsche Telekom. The project was replicated for several countries; I was mainly involved with the Netherlands, and Germany.

After a successful release of the initial application, including Accessibility accreditation, a redesign to improve the general usability and to modernise the design for the next iteration of new features to the product, I was asked if I would like to take on a new challenge as a Designer for a small team to produce a Proof of Concept for a new product within the Telekom. I started the position of Team Designer in September 2017 and have remained in this position as the project has grown from 7 people to around 150 today. During this time, I have been able to pull from my experience right from the beginning of my architectural work, to what I learned on the Usability team in Belfast at Liberty IT, and including my front end experience gained as I developed the WebGUI project I started at cronn.

2019 + ?

Having spent nearly 2 years working on design, I feel the time is right to step out of my comfort zone once more and use all that I have gathered in my experience so far to transition into a UX Engineer position. Not only does this merge my experience with Front End Development and Design, but it also makes me a very flexible tool for any team wanting to deliver results fast.