‍‍My Expertise:
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As Head of International Design was to drive strategic change, shiftingPEXA’s internal perception of design utility.Mycore expertise demonstrated included:
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• Strategic Reframing: Successfully challenging the internal assumption that API platforms were "purely technical." I reframed the challenge as a Developer Experience (DevX) problem, necessitating strategic design investment.
• Global Design Advocacy: Secured cross-functional buy-in to apply human-centred design (HCD) principles to technical infrastructure, setting a powerful precedent for design as a strategic imperative across all product types.
• Design System Validation: Strategically integrated the new API portal build with the nascent Design System, proving its value by reducing the design phase by an estimated 30% and ensuring brand consistency across a highly technical product.
• Mentorship & Upskilling: Guided a junior designer through the entire discovery process, providing hands-on mentorship in modern research techniques, data synthesis, and insight capture with external developers.

‍‍The challenge:
The primary challenge was cultural and strategic: to shift internal perception at PEXA and prove that UX investment in backend-focused products(like the API platform) delivers significant business value.

Key hurdles included:
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• Challenging Assumptions: Overcoming the Product Owner's initial belief that the API domain was purely technical, and demonstrating the measurable impact of DevX.
• External Alignment: Validating a key strategic decision, allowing unauthenticated API exploration which was against internal scepticism by aligning PEXA’s offering with global industry best practice.
• Efficiency: Finding a high-impact, visible use case to quickly validate and prove the value of the concurrently developed Design System.

‍‍The Approach:
My approach was anchored in data-driven advocacy and strategic product integration to ensure that every design decision served a dual purpose: product improvement and organisational maturity uplift.

‍DevX Discovery Blitz: I guided the team in conducting targeted developer research across the UK and Australia. This research provided definitive data that allowed us to successfully challenge internal assumptions, proving that an open, exploratory approach was vital for user experience and competitive positioning.

‍Strategic Mentorship: I leveraged the project as a key mentorship opportunity, guiding the  junior designer through every stage of research, synthesis, and presenting data-backed evidence to key global stakeholders.

‍Design System Integration: We deliberately utilised the API portal development as the first major use case for the new Design System. By leveraging its non-coded components, we tested and validated the system’s utility and scalability early in its lifecycle.
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The Outcome:
The project successfully delivered a superior technical product experience and established a powerful precedent for the strategic role of design within the International group. It also successfully laid the foundation for a customer-centric approach to technical product development, with clear evidence of impact on speed and product quality.
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