About Me: A Passion for UX Design
Hello! I’m Thomas Strandebø, a UX designer passionate about crafting exceptional digital experiences. My journey in the world of UX design is driven by a commitment to understanding users’ needs and translating them into intuitive, engaging, and impactful solutions.
Background
I am a passionate and dedicated Junior User Experience Designer with Twenty years of experience in webdesign and graphic design. My journey in UX design began with my fascination for how technology and design intersect to create meaningful user experiences. This fascination quickly became a career path driven by my commitment to making technology accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
My web design and graphical design background have provided me with a unique perspective that I bring to my UX work. I believe that understanding users goes beyond just the digital interface; it’s about empathizing with their challenges, aspirations, and experiences in the broader context of their lives. This belief has been a guiding principle in my approach to design.
What inspires me the most in this field is the endless opportunity for innovation and improvement. Whether it’s simplifying a complex process or enhancing the usability of a product, the impact of thoughtful design on users’ lives is profoundly rewarding. I am particularly passionate about specific areas of interest within UX/UI, e.g., web design, accessibility, user research, and interaction design. I continuously seek to grow my skills in these areas.
As a UX designer, I pride myself on being a problem-solver and a team player. Collaborating with cross-functional teams has honed my design skills and ability to communicate effectively and incorporate diverse perspectives into my work. My portfolio showcases a range of projects that reflect my ability to translate user needs and business goals into compelling design solutions.
Outside of work, I am doing digital illustrations and painting. These activities keep me creative and balanced, fuelling my professional work with fresh ideas and perspectives.
Who I am?
As a UX designer, I am passionate about creating user-centric and meaningful digital experiences. My approach to design is holistic, considering not just the aesthetics and functionality but also the emotional impact and accessibility of a product. Good design is invisible – it feels natural and intuitive to the user.
My journey in UX design is driven by a curiosity about human behavior and a desire to solve complex problems. This has led me to develop strong skills in user research, empathy mapping, and usability testing. Understanding the user’s perspective is at the core of my design process, ensuring that the solutions I develop are innovative but also practical and relevant.
Collaboration is another crucial aspect of my identity as a UX designer. I thrive in environments where I can work with cross-functional teams, believing that the best ideas come from diverse perspectives. My communication skills enable me to effectively bridge the gap between users, designers, and stakeholders, ensuring that the final product aligns with user needs and business goals.
I am also committed to continuous learning and staying updated with the latest trends and technologies in the UX field. This eagerness to learn keeps me adaptable and open to new challenges, allowing me to bring fresh and informed perspectives to my work.
Lastly, I see myself as an advocate for the user, ensuring their voice is heard and considered in every stage of the design process. As a UX designer, I aim to create visually appealing products and design experiences that improve people’s lives in tangible, meaningful ways.
What can I do?
As a UX designer, I can offer a comprehensive range of skills and services that contribute to creating effective, user-friendly digital products. Here’s a breakdown of what I can do:
- User Research: Conduct thorough research to understand users’ needs, behaviors, and motivations. This includes creating user personas, conducting interviews, surveys, and usability testing to gather valuable insights.
- Problem Solving: Identifying and defining user problems and creating creative solutions. My focus is on addressing real user challenges through innovative design thinking.
- Wireframing and Prototyping: Creating wireframes and prototypes to visualize design concepts. This step is crucial for testing and refining ideas before moving to more detailed designs.
- User Interface (UI) Design: Designing visually appealing and intuitive interfaces. This involves choosing color schemes, typography, and layout while ensuring consistency across the design.
- User Experience (UX) Design: Crafting the overall experience of a product, focusing on how users interact with it. This encompasses everything from navigation flow to the ease of completing tasks.
- Usability Testing: Conducting tests with real users to identify any issues or areas for improvement in the design. This iterative process helps in refining the product to better meet user needs.
- Accessibility and Inclusivity: Ensuring that designs are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. This involves following best practices for accessibility and designing for a diverse user base.
- Collaboration with Cross-Functional Teams: Working effectively with developers, product managers, marketers, and other stakeholders. Collaboration ensures the design aligns with technical capabilities and business objectives.
- Responsive Design: Creating designs that work seamlessly across different devices and screen sizes. This is essential in a world where users access content on many devices.
- Design System Development: Developing or contributing to design systems to ensure consistency across a brand or product. This includes creating style guides, design patterns, and reusable components.
- Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Keeping current with the latest design trends, tools, and technologies. The UX field constantly evolves, and staying informed is crucial for effective design.
- Strategic Thinking: Aligning the design with the broader business strategy and goals. Understanding the market, competition, and business context is essential for creating designs that are not only user-friendly but also commercially successful.
In summary, as a UX designer, I can bring a blend of creative, technical, and analytical skills to the table, all focused on enhancing the user experience and meeting the strategic objectives of the project or organization.
How do I work?
As a UX designer, my work approach centers around a user-centric design process, collaboration, and continuous improvement. Here’s an outline of how I typically work:
- Understanding the Project Scope and Objectives:
- Before starting any design work, I fully understand the project’s goals, target audience, and business context. This involves discussions with stakeholders, reviewing project briefs, and aligning on the desired outcomes.
- User Research and Analysis:
- Conducting comprehensive user research is a fundamental step. This might include user interviews, surveys, market analysis, and persona creation. The aim is to gather insights into user needs, behaviors, and pain points.
- Analyzing this data helps identify critical user problems and opportunities for design improvements.
- Ideation and Conceptualization:
- When I clearly understand user needs, I move to the ideation phase. This involves brainstorming sessions, sketching initial ideas, and creating storyboards or user journey maps.
- The goal is to explore various solutions and narrow down to the most promising concepts.
- Wireframing and Prototyping:
- I create wireframes to lay out the basic structure of the user interface. These low-fidelity representations focus on functionality and user flow rather than visual design.
- Developing interactive prototypes follows, allowing for a more realistic representation of the final product. This step is crucial for testing and refining the design.
- User Interface Design:
- Once the wireframes and prototypes are refined, I focus on the visual aspects of the design. This includes selecting color schemes, typography, iconography, and creating a consistent and aesthetically pleasing interface.
- Usability Testing and Feedback:
- Conducting usability testing with real users is integral to my process. This helps identify any usability issues and gather user feedback.
- I analyze this feedback and make necessary iterations to the design. This is often an iterative process involving multiple rounds of testing and refinement.
- Collaboration with Development Teams:
- Working closely with developers is crucial for turning design concepts into functional products. I ensure that my designs are feasible and align with technical constraints.
- I provide detailed design specifications and collaborate during development to implement the design as intended.
- Monitoring and Iterating Post-Launch:
- After launching the product, I monitor its performance and gather user feedback. This helps in identifying any areas for further improvement.
- Continuous iteration based on real-world usage and feedback is crucial for maintaining and enhancing the user experience.
- Professional Development and Learning:
- I continuously seek to learn and grow to stay effective in my role. This includes keeping up with the latest UX trends, tools, and methodologies and seeking peer feedback and learning.
In summary, my work as a UX designer involves a balanced mix of research, design, collaboration, and continuous improvement, all aimed at creating products that are not only visually appealing but also intuitive, accessible, and delightful to use.
Scrum is an agile framework designed to facilitate teamwork on complex projects. It provides a structured yet flexible way to organize work and manage projects, typically in the software development domain but increasingly applied across various fields due to its effectiveness in managing complex tasks. Scrum emphasizes collaboration, continuous improvement, and the ability to adapt to changing requirements, making it a popular choice for teams seeking efficiency and agility in project execution.
Scrum is built on the empirical process control theory, or empiricism, asserting that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is observed. This underlies the principles of transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Transparency ensures that aspects of the process that affect the outcome are visible to those managing the outcomes. Inspection refers to regularly examining the Scrum artifacts and progress toward goals. Adaptation involves adjusting the process whenever the team senses the current process deviates outside acceptable limits.
By focusing on delivering tangible, valuable product increments in short, manageable cycles, Scrum enables organizations to adapt to change quickly, improve productivity, and deliver higher-quality products that meet user needs.
Let’s Connect!
I’m always excited to connect with employers, clients, designers, developers, and anyone passionate about UX. Together, we can create experiences that make a meaningful difference in users’ lives. Feel free to reach out—I’m just an email or message away.
Here’s to the fascinating journey of crafting user experiences that inspire, delight, and leave a lasting impact.
