About me

Published in

Portfolio Bjorn Amherd

4 min readJun 5, 2018

My main goal is to transform the needs and requirements of users and stakeholders into meaningful experiences for intranets, websites or mobile applications. My specialisations are user research, usability testing, rapid prototyping, interface design, and information architecture.

My specialisation

User research

Analysing user behaviour — especially in the field in the form of contextual enquiries — is always an eye-opener. Gathering insights that then inform product strategy is part of my repertoire. It’s the combination of user and business needs that makes every project an interesting challenge.

I frequently conduct interviews or usability tests in-house or remote, organise and analyse online surveys, interpret secondary research or ride shotgun to be in the field to confirm — or disprove — my research hypotheses.

If the project setup allows for it, I like to own the research piece by defining research plans, writing recruitment specs, and conducting the activities (incl. involving the wider team and stakeholders). Collating insights and opportunities and presenting research reports to stakeholders is also part of my skillset.

Information architecture

Organising and structuring information into user-centric experiences for web and apps is part of my skillset. My work is used to inform navigation, wireframing and all further phases of the project.

I am very comfortable in analysing an existing IA and optimising it with inputs from user research, analytics and SEO. Creating a new IA from scratch and to validate it with people is no problem for me and part of my repertoire.

On the UI side, all my mockups usually list page goals and prioritised jobs to be done. This ensures us that we’re actually building the right things, and keeps us focused on business and user goals.

Usability testing

The best way to validate a concept or an existing solution is with real users, either in a lab-environment or remotely.

I want to fail fast, and I want to learn as early as possible. In the past, I’ve built complete applications in Axure to test and validate my thinking; I’ve defined experiments on live websites to validate product decisions.

Depending on project budget, there should always be room to conduct at least a remote usability test to verify a concept with a prototype or an online card sort to challenge a new navigation.

I’m very comfortable to plan, recruit, conduct and analyse usability tests in an ethical way.

Interface design

Creating highly detailed UI designs for web and apps are a crucial part of my expertise, and I’m very much guided by my mobile-first approach. My designs for the web are 100% responsive and created in strong collaboration with frontend and backend engineers.

Check-ins with business analysts, product managers, and engineers ensure that my interfaces can be built in a reasonable way and time, and I make sure that they deliver on business and user goals.

Presenting wireframes or UI designs to wider audiences, or just in a 30/60/90 environment is no problem for me.

In my toolbar: Figma (since 2019), Sketch (since 2016), Zeplin/Invision (since 2016), Axure (since 2008)

Work experience

2016 — NOW

Senior Experience Designer at REA Group, Melbourne

Senior User Experience Designer for Australia’s leading residential property website realestate.com.au. I started in the media team and helped to launch the Lifestyle content experience. After that, I was asked to join the Financial Services team and launched the Home Loans product. In this team, I designed tools and services that support Australian home buyers in getting their first (or refinanced) home loan. My tasks involved planning and executing user research activities, development of calculators and tools, and content experiences for the Australian market.

I am currently working with the Rent team, where I am supporting the relaunch of 1form under the realestate.com.au brand with my expertise. My tasks here involve full UI design for responsive web and iOS/Android apps, planning and conducting user research activities, liaising with the wider business to inform the direction and ensure alignment on design and business priorities. Besides my project job I also co-lead the REA ‘School of Design’ working group and am establishing a training and learning curriculum for designers.

Major Experiences I influenced and supported with my expertise:

2013–2016

Lead Experience Designer at DT, Melbourne (now AKQA)

User Experience designer for large companies such as Fisher & Paykel, Optus, Bunnings, or Myer. In addition to that, user research and requirements engineering for large replatform initiatives, mainly for Adobe Experience Manager projects. For twelve months, I was the Experience Lead on the Bunnings account, and coordinated junior and mid-level UX designers. Besides this role, I delivered UX artefacts and user research outcomes for +60 projects.

Major Australian websites I helped to relaunch and supported as UX Lead:

2007–2013

Senior User Experience Consultant at Namics AG, Zurich

User-centered analysis and concepts of intranets, websites, web applications and mobile solutions for companies such as Swiss Federal Railways SBB, ABB, UBS, Schindler, Baloise Group or Phonak.

Company-wide expert for prototyping methods, incl. training courses for the software Axure RP.

Established speaker covering UX topics at internal and external conferences and symposiums.

2002–2007

Product Manager at Bluewin AG / Swisscom AG, Zurich

Product manager webhosting for retail customers (Swisscom HostCenter, Swisscom HomepageTool). Development of business cases, project manager for service improvements.

2000–2002

Founder, Creative Director at ELEET, Berne

Webdesigner for Swiss SMEs and founder of a startup dealing with the two main problems that students have: book exchange (studibooks.ch) and the crowd-sourcing of non-official notes (studifiles.ch).

1998–2002

Research assistant, webmaster at Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik, University of Berne

Webmaster and designer for new/existing web presences for the department of information management at the University of Berne. Support for research projects.

EDUCATION

2006–2008

University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich. MAS in Business Consulting (while working full time).

1997–2002

University of Berne. Master of Science (M.Sc.), Business Administration.