Meaning & Purpose

Design is a big part of my life. I enjoy observing products, spaces and interfaces to deconstruct and understand how they were built and, most importantly, why they exist.

I started my career over 10 years ago. My background in industrial design kicked off my interest in shapes, materials, colours and human behaviour. My interest in art, aesthetics and functionality made me curious to explore more areas within my practice.

Throughout the years, I have experienced projects with different challenges and levels of complexity. I was lucky enough to have some great mentors in the studios I worked in who encouraged me to have confidence in myself and my design decisions.

Don’t get me wrong, imposter syndrome is a real thing. I doubt my design skills constantly. However, I’ve learned to use processes and systems to validate my assumptions. Furthermore, collaborating with other disciplines reduces the risk of designing in a vacuum.

My journey led me to service design. My masters at PolyU allowed me to pause and reflect on my design philosophy and agency. It enabled me to identify the levels of depth designers can influence in business, ecosystems and society.

Service & Strategic Design

Think about your favourite restaurant, airline or app — why do you like it? Or else, why is it adding value to you? The answer is not simple, but it involves a product, strategy and experience that makes you tell your friends about it, right? That’s Service Design!

When I learned this, it blew my mind! I realised anything could be improved; not just from a customer’s point of view, but also from the people who work hard to make us happy, the employees. An end-to-end experience involves every touchpoint and stakeholder involved to make a business more successful than others.

I advocate for a service design approach. After joining Xccelerate 2 years ago, I was delighted to learn that everyone in the senior management understood the value of good UX and customer experience. “Use Design Thinking”, our CEO Lavine Hemlani has always encouraged me to embed this mindset in our colleagues and processes. I’m thankful to him, Steve Safarowic and Resham Hemlani for their trust since day one.

As Head of Design, my responsibilities allowed me to collaborate with marketers, developers and designers to improve our products and meet our business needs while providing a great customer experience. My contribution as an instructor, workshop facilitator and manager gave me clarity in the details that drive our platform and operations. Now after 2 years in this role, I’m moving on to a new exciting position.

Chief Experience Officer (CXO)

“In the future, service designers could evolve from an operational service design team and possibly sit in the C-level within the company and make directional decisions from top-down.” Martin Sistig, a contributor to The Future of Service Design (Mager, 2020, p. 27), predicted the progression of design roles we are seeing in companies today.

In the last 3 years, I heard many people say, ‘When will design get a chair at The Table?’. During this period, the pandemic made a lot of companies realise that design is important at a macro-strategic level.

I’m honoured that the senior management team at Xccelerate allowed me to drive my design practice at C-Level. As Chief Experience Officer, I want to contribute to the company’s KPIs, evaluate risks, and find opportunities to make our business scale.

The new role allows me to contribute in more areas of the company and collaborate on all sides of the products we’re building. For example, I work closely with the course instructors to develop a curriculum that is used in our pre-recorded content. The same content helps other trainers develop workshops for our corporate clients. Some of the exercises in these workshops are re-used in student challenges which helps them improve their profile. Consequently, we connect them to potential employers on our job board. Ultimately, we want to create a mentor network with our alumni to scale our product offering to other learners around the world.

I need to zoom in and out constantly, this allows me to connect the dots using strategic design. My ultimate goal is to design a cohesive and holistic experience across the front and backstage of our value proposition. Yet, none of this is possible without the right team, from the bottom-up and the top-down.

Businesses driven by Design will Thrive.

It’s exciting to read case studies of other companies that started like us. Airbnb, Invision, or a monster like Apple were once small but used similar design principles. I’m positive that our startup will set an example in Hong Kong.

Many companies are still struggling from the ripple effects of the last 3 years. The mission to educate and train new talent in tech is helping us evolve. We’re experimenting in our training programmes with bite-sized pre-recorded content, live interactive workshops, and a network of experienced mentors.

We are creating partnerships with corporates, Big 4 companies and Web3 environments to develop job-ready professionals in various industries. Our Train-To-Hire model involves training candidates to fit perfectly into the workforce of our clients. Think of Recruitment 2.0 mixed with EdTech.

We’re integrating exciting features and concepts into our products with technology that is helping us automate a lot of tedious tasks. Tools like AI are making wonders and optimising our time. Yet, we believe hard skills mean nothing without the human touch. Our hypothesis involves a series of steps to create the right cultural fit and help organisations thrive by design.

As mentioned, we’re using design to identify the sweet spot of innovation. We’re reducing uncertainties by testing and iterating fast. We’re telling stories every time we modify an element of the train-to-hire model. We’re experimenting with games and interfaces to make learning more engaging.

We’re having fun. There are rainy days, but the grass is always greener on the other side. We understand the challenge is big, but we’re taking firm steps to solve it.

Reflections as a CXO & Next Steps

I’m excited to execute my new role to its full potential. I’m enjoying the process of feeling uncomfortable not being an expert but seeing every day as an opportunity to help my teammates grow.

I’m looking forward to the future of design and how I can pioneer as a C-Level designer. This article is a reflection and proposal to myself on how to operate as a CXO:

• Experiment like a scientist, and play like a child: Data-driven processes help to make difficult decisions. When in doubt, create testing environments to de-risk affecting your customers, and ultimately, the business. However, don’t forget to enjoy the process and make it pleasant for your team as well.
  
  

• Speak your stakeholder’s language: Growing is becoming wise by staying informed and absorbing new information. Stay hungry, stay curious. Read more, go to galleries, travel and speak to people. Understand different behaviours, appreciate other cultures, and please, stay secular.
  
  

• Be a nice person and stay firm in your values: Nobody wants to work with an asshole. Be kind, generous and genuine. Give a hand whenever you can, that’s what brought you here and that’s what will continue to take you forward.Lastly, be social, even if it’s hard sometimes. Make a conscious effort to stay connected with old friends. Don’t forget to smile often, it’s contagious and the world needs it.

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That’s it. Thanks again to my brothers and sister in business for your trust and support. We’ll keep rolling with the punches; good things take time.