OET Day in the Life

As a Senior UX Lead my role is to develop and maintain the UX design language as well as a product roadmap of features and enhancements that will progressively uplift the digital experience and deliver value to CBLA (OET) .

“I was first UX professional in the organisation, and it's been both a rewarding and challenging experience to establish UX frameworks, approaches, and a user-centered mindset across the company.”

Projects Involved

  • Web Transition is the project which involved redesign & develop OET Website to cater to the global customer base and create relevant user experience for each segment while improving overall accessibility .

  • This project is dedicated to the comprehensive overhaul of the booking and results management user journeys. It elevated Oet.com to a seamless user experience and integrated platforms catering to every user needs..

  • As a UX Lead I heavily involving VoC to gathering, analyzing, and integrating customer feedback into the design process to ensure the product meets user needs and expectations ( This involves mainly B2C, B2B ).

  • The goal of this project was to expand our focus beyond our core product, the test, by connecting healthcare professionals with recruiters, particularly in the UK and USA. As the Lead Designer, I guided my team from the ground up—beginning with market research and user interviews. We successfully completed Phase 1, delivering a functional system after several rounds of user testing.

  • Collaborated closely with the marketing team to update the website’s branding while ensuring a seamless user experience.

  • This project primarily focused on enhancing the user experience for our external-facing B2B platform, including Test Day, Venue Management, and Candidate Registration

  • The main goal of this project is to enhance the candidate's test-taking experience. Additionally, it aims to improve accessibility through multi-stage adaptive testing technology.

  • This program was recently launched, and I am involving as the Lead UX Designer, supporting early-stage research and explorations. My focus is on ensuring that solutions are designed with the user in mind, striking a balance between innovation and usability.

Process

In a world of abundant analytics gathering tools such as; HotJar, Google Analytics, and Semrush, Designers and Product teams have almost endless amounts of insights data. These products sell that it’s just like sitting next to someone using your product - “See where they click, and know what they think.”

But in reality - it’s just not! I do use these tools a lot, and I make it a habit to sit down and get comfortable with my notepad for a 2-hour HotJar binge session, however relying on these recordings alone can leave open a lot of assumptions. Why did someone not complete this booking form? Did they find it too long?

Did they not have all the information with them to complete it? Was there a distraction outside of what we can see on the screen? And as designers and product people, are we confident enough to make a decision without knowing the full picture?

The objective of these being “Gain clearer empathy of customers to understand their environment and tasks they need to perform”.

Their laptop is just a small part of their environment. It’s the workplace with sticky notes, drop-in meetings, phone calls, and jammed printers. Without seeing how people use products in real-world scenarios, we aren’t getting the full picture.

As a Senior UX Lead, the process for overseeing a project from initial research to completion involves several key phases: Research, Analysis, Design, and Testing. Below is a detailed breakdown of each phase.

Initial Research

  • Stakeholder Alignment: Most of the projects I involved last three years I need to start from begin by meeting with stakeholders to understand business goals, project scope, and success metrics. Clarify key objectives and target outcomes.

  • User Research: I conducted qualitative and quantitative research to gain deep insights into the target users. This methods includes,

    User interviews - with real user across different countries (candidates who were in different OET journeys ( Who book exam, who passed exam) with different demographics and professions), B2B partners

    Surveys - Gain insights from marketing surveys, Facebook surveys, post test surveys, focus groups, and contextual inquiries.

In most of these research efforts, I utilized my leadership skills to guide the team in obtaining the necessary access from the Data, Security, and Legal teams. I created various versions of the Privacy Impact Analysis to ensure that every approach we took was secure.

  • Competitive Analysis: Research competitors and industry trends to understand market positioning, UX standards, and opportunities for differentiation.

  • Persona Creation: Develop detailed user personas based on research findings to represent the primary user types. These guide the team in designing with the user’s needs in mind.

  • Journey Mapping: Create customer journey maps to visualize user pain points, motivations, and opportunities at each step of their interaction with the product.

Analysis

  • Synthesizing Research Findings & define problem statement: Analyze the data gathered during research to identify common themes, user needs, and key pain points. Highlight opportunities for improvement or innovation and articulate clear problem statement.

  • Prioritising Features: Collaborate with stakeholders and the product team (PO & BA) to prioritise features based on user needs, business value, and technical feasibility.

  • User Flow & Information Architecture: Develop user flows and the information architecture (IA) to organize content and tasks logically, ensuring a smooth user journey. I used Maze tool for conduct card sorting campaigns for different user groups (Indian candidates, Philippine Candidates).

  • Outcomes & Succes Matrics - To determine the most effective design, we implemented an A/B test featuring the current state and a version incorporating the conversational quote and marketplace concept.

Design

  • Wireframing & Prototyping: Start by creating low-fidelity wireframes to outline the structure and flow of the user interface and conduct brainstorming session to get feedback. As the design progresses, develop high-fidelity wireframes and interactive prototypes to visualize and test functionality.

  • Design Iterations: Iterate on designs based on feedback from stakeholders, team members, and users. Ensure that each iteration refines the user experience and aligns with the project’s goals.

  • UI Design & Visual Style: Apply visual design principles to create aesthetically appealing, functional interfaces. Collaborate with branding or marketing teams to ensure consistency with brand guidelines.

  • Design System & Documentation: Create or maintain a design system that ensures consistency across the product and ease of scalability. Document design decisions and provide guidelines for developers. While we were working on the “Web Transition Project” I led design team to create component Library for CBLA and most of the reusable component especially for Figma (We used same strategy to agility which is our front end system).

Testing

  • Usability Testing: Conduct usability testing with real users to observe how they interact with the design. Identify usability issues and areas for improvement.

    I have used “User Interviews” platform for recruitment and user management.

  • A/B Testing: For certain design decisions, run A/B tests to evaluate which variations perform better in terms of user engagement, satisfaction, or conversion.

    I have used Recording, heat maps, Funnels to identified user Behaviours.

  • Feedback & Refinement: Analyze feedback from usability testing and other evaluations to refine the design. Make necessary adjustments to ensure the solution meets user needs and improves the overall experience.

    To collect the feedback I used “Hotjar” tool mainly. Especially for the booking journey we setup Hotjar survey to collect feedback.

  • Accessibility Testing: Ensure the design complies with accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG) to provide an inclusive experience for all users.

Development Hand Off & Support

  • Collaboration with Development: Collaborate closely with developers during the handoff to ensure they have all the assets, specifications, and documentation they need to implement the design accurately.

  • Design QA: Review the implemented design to ensure it aligns with the intended user experience and design specifications. Provide feedback or necessary adjustments during development.

Post- Launch Evaluation

  • User Feedback & Analytics: Post-launch, gather user feedback through surveys or interviews, and analyze data from user analytics tools to assess how well the design meets user needs.

    I’m generally using Hotjar, Google Analytics tools to Gather feedback. Apart from that we are using surveys B2C and B2B. In some cases I’m closely work with Customer Experience team to analyse inquiries and etc.

  • Continuous Iteration: Based on feedback and analytics, iterate on the design as needed to improve functionality, performance, and satisfaction.

Challenges & Solutions

Lack of Awareness - Many stakeholders within the organisation (out of digital team ) lack a clear understanding of the value that UI/UX brings to both the user experience and overall business outcomes.

Educate and Advocate for UX

  • Conduct workshops and presentations to explain the value of UX and its impact on business metrics -lunch & learn sessions.

  • Share case studies or success stories from similar organisations.

    Undefined Processes and Frameworks - When I joined the organisation, there were no established processes or structures for UI/UX. I developed workflows, implemented tools, and established best practices from scratch, including conducting regular stakeholder awareness workshops.

Start with a UX Strategy Document

  • Define a clear UX vision, goals, and roadmap aligned with business objectives and KPI’s.

  • Use customer insights and data to justify my approach.

  • Introduce foundational UX tools and frameworks like design systems, user research guidelines, and iterative testing.

  • Ensure these processes are flexible and scalable

Balancing Quick Wins vs. Long-term Strategy - Define proper margin for ux strategic long term goals vs tatctical goals
Identify and execute small, impactful projects to build credibility and demonstrate immediate value.

  • I worked closely with the CX team to establish a “Voice of Customer” forum, enabling us to define tactical goals through an iterative approach based on user feedback.

    Handling conflict feedbacks - As UX lead I often face the challenges of dealing conflicting feedback from different stakeholders specially early process. Some prioritise business goals over user needs and some focus on design aesthetics within the organisation.

  • As Lead UX I stay mediate, prioritise, make data driven decisions to ensure user’s needs are still met. Sometimes, arranging quick brainstorming workshops, rapid design sprit based on the necessity.

    Collaboration Challenges

Establishing seamless collaboration with cross-functional teams like product, engineering, and marketing while introducing more pragmatic team argumentation approach.

  • Established transparent Jira board instead of traditional approach, including different stages of design “Select for development, emphasis, define, ideate, prototype, test, measure, Done”.

  • Established design review sessions that included developers to foster a collaborative culture, identify opportunities, and discuss technical feasibility.

  • Detailed Confluence page

  • Conducted formal handoff walkthroughs before delivering designs to developers and arranged Design QA sessions to identify and address any gaps.

  • I act as a facilitator, not just a designer, to integrate UX into the product lifecycle.

  • Documentation & reporting

Managing tight deadlines with existing resources - Define the roadmap in early stage, meeting deadlines while ensuring high-quality user experience.

Scaling the Team

I advocate for hiring additional designers or researchers once the value of UX is recognized

  • Define clear goals for ux team.

  • Created and maintained transparency through confluence page.

DesignOps Practices

Established end to to end design process

  • Defined a structured approach with Double Diamond to guide the team through discovery, ideation, prototyping, testing, and delivery.

  • Established relevant tools and frameworks,

    Design tool - Figma

    Collaborative Tool - Miro, Figjam

    User Analytics tools - Google Analytics(GA4), Hotjar (behavioural analytics)

    User Research & testing tools - User interviews (recruitment and management), Zoom, Teams( Meetings), Maze (card sorting, A/B testing, Concept testing), Otter (transcript tool).

User-Centered Design:

  • Ensuring all designs prioritize user needs and are informed by user research, personas, journey mapping, and usability testing.

  • Established a centralized mechanism to gather the Voice of the Customer in collaboration with the CX team.

Design Systems:

  • Created and maintained a design system to ensure consistency in components, patterns, and interactions across products.

Given the dynamic nature of my current organisation, where design teams change rapidly based on the projects, I established a standardised onboarding process for designers. This was essential due to the complexity of our system's domain knowledge, which often takes time for new designers to fully grasp.

The onboarding process includes:

  • Detailed documentation of the current system & access to demo logins.

  • Detailed information about design systems, component libraries, reusable components and reference to figma and Miro

  • Contact information for responsible designers or product owners for each project.

  • Comprehensive project details, including involvement, current status, and success metrics.

  • A directory of key contacts for addressing specific challenges.

Additionally, I created templates for various tasks, such as:

  • User testing templates, including NDA, PIA, screening questions, and consent forms.

  • Interview question templates and guidelines for conducting high-level research workshops.

Previously, I worked with junior team members and found these resources invaluable in helping them quickly adapt and contribute effectively.

Feedback & Collaboration

Encourage real-time feedback using the commenting feature, tagging team members as needed.

  • Use branching to create experimental design versions without impacting the main file. This is especially useful for testing ideas or collaborative work on large projects.

  • Project Organization: Structure projects into clear folders, and use naming conventions for files, frames, and layers to improve collaboration.

Facilitated cross-functional collaboration with product managers, developers, and stakeholders through workshops, design reviews, and regular communication.

Established Design Reviews, Design QA sessions.

Scalability and Adaptability:

  • I conducted fortnightly one-on-one sessions with design team members to collaborate, understand their needs, and provide support.

  • I established fortnigtly design catch up practices, that scale with team growth and adapt to evolving business needs and technological advancements.

Usability Practices

Understand landscape and define usability

  • I conducted deep analysis to identify usability gaps in existing products/processes through usability audits or heuristic evaluations.

  • Define Usability goals align usability practices with business objectives and key performance indicators ( Increased NPS, reduced task time, or improved conversion rates) while educating stakeholders.

Develop a Usability Framework

  • Create a framework that outlines usability principles by defining guidelines for user-friendly designs, such as simplicity, clarity, and intuitive navigation.

    • Usability guideline for designers, developers

    • Usability guideline for non technical staff (marketing team including content creators, operation team member)

  • Adopt and standardise Double Diamond approach, ensuring usability is considered throughout and integrate it in to agile (design sprint planning, grooming and retros)

  • Guide team members to follow user centred approach, ensure all projects begin with user research to deeply understand user needs and behaviours.

Develop a Design System:

  • Built a design system with reusable components and patterns to ensure consistency in usability across products.

    Centerlised CBLA Component Library - Shared component library, Inherit component properties project basis

  • Variants - Use variants to group related component states (e.g., default, hover, disabled) into a single component for better organisation and scalability.

  • Define break points -

    • Defined breakpoints based on needs system needs

    • Ensure key UI components (e.g., navigation bars, buttons) are functional and visually consistent across sizes.

  • Auto Layout in Components: Add auto layout to components for responsive behavior, making them adaptable to content changes.

  • Version Control: Regularly update and document library changes to keep the design system relevant and consistent.

  • Nested Layouts: Combine multiple layers of auto layout for complex, responsive designs.

  • Padding and Spacing: Leverage auto layout settings like padding, alignment, and spacing between items to reduce manual adjustments.

Conduct Training and Advocacy

  • Provide sessions on usability principles, usability review sessions, best practices, and tools (e.g., usability testing platforms).

Incorporate Accessibility Standards:

  • Ensure compliance with WCAG and other accessibility guidelines to make products usable for diverse audiences.

Maintain Usability Practices

Document and distribute usability standards tailored to the organisation’s needs (Include examples, templates, and checklists for easy reference like how to check colour contrast).

Test and Validate

Cross-Device Testing:

  • Test designs on multiple devices using browser developer tools, emulators, and physical devices.

Sample Works

Rewards