📋 TL;DR

Former lead Digital Product Designer at Norsk Global. During this time, I oversaw the end-to-end design of global platforms, redefined the company's digital brand, and established a scalable design processes - helping transform ideas into impactful, user-driven products.

📝 Background

This chapter in my professional career holds a very special place in my heart. Its 2020, and the world as we knew it at that time was very different. We were going through the global pandemic, and there was so much uncertainty as we didn't know what was going to happen tomorrow.

All of my job applications were either being ignored, or I was receiving the standard "Thank you so much for taking the time to apply..", you know those emails..

Then in the October of 2020, a good friend who I went to BU (Bournemouth University) with reached out and asked me what I was up too career wise, and after a brief conversation, the prospect of a career opportunity as a Digital Media Designer at Norsk Global was presented.. without any hesitation, I said "what do I need to do" and just like that, after a couple of interviews I joined Norsk Global on November 2nd, 2020.

My journey at Norsk Global lasted for 5 incredible years. Throughout this time, I was fortunate enough to work with very talented individuals across all domains, and through the work we created and delivered as a team, we were able to release these pieces of work to the world for real-world users to experience and enjoy.

The projects that I was either responsible for or contributing towards allowed me to develop both personally and professionally. Throughout each year of this career journey, I was taking on more responsibilities and being trusted to deliver more impactful work, and in return I went through three promotions, those being: Digital Media Designer → Digital Marketing & SEO Specialist → Digital Product Designer (you can find more details about each of these roles, responsibilities, and milestones on my Experiences section here.)

📐 Design System

As part of my Norsk journey, I had a opportunity to work closely with the Senior Applications Architect, Chris (who is now a very good friend of mine), and together, we put together the companies first ever design system. With this close collaboration, the Norsk digital brand identity scaled at such a rapid rate that we were able to transform the way the entire business approached digital products. This rapid change brought tremendous value as we were able to reduced the overall turnaround time that it takes for projects to not only be spoken about, but how quickly projects can undergo planning, design and development iterations, and then released to the world.

As seen in the snippet images above, the design system was made up of a combination of: layout grids (thinking how content is structured - top/side navigation), typography (font families, sizes, weights, and styles), colour palettes (primary, secondary, neutrals, and accents), iconography (the style of icons that are used across the digital products), and components (buttons, form fields, cards, modals, etc). With all of these elements combined together in a single source of truth, we were able to create a consistent and cohesive digital brand identity across all of our digital products.

We worked closely with the marketing team to make sure that the design system we created for all digital products was also aligned to the overall brand identity that was being used across all marketing channels. This close collaboration allowed us to create a seamless and unified brand experience for our customers, whether they were interacting with our digital products or engaging with our marketing campaigns.

🖥️ Norsk Website

The face of Norsk Global.

This was my first big project at Norsk. The original website was designed and built within Wordpress, and at this time it wasn't overly managed and the amount of security risks was.. frightening. So collectively, we decided to move the website away from Wordpress and build the new website in-house, something that was tasked for me to not only design, but also build.

After a year of: user feedback, understanding website traffic and analytics, design iterations and countless hours of development, we were able to carry out a successful launch campaign and the website was released in June 2022.

The key factor that allowed this project to be successful was all down to close collaboration. The fact that we were able to manage the individual personal preferences by making sure that we were all aligned to the same project goals and objectives, whilst at the same time being respectful to each other's opinions and ideas, allowed us to accelerate the development process and deliver a successful project. This close collaboration allowed us to create a customer facing website that not only met the needs of the business, but also the expectations of the users/customers whilst retaining the heritage and legacy that Norsk Global was (and still is) known for.

🖥️ Gateway - Customer Portal

Your view of everything Norsk.

The customer portal was, and for the foreseeable future, will be the biggest project in the history of Norsk. From the moment I joined, there was always conversations around the customer portal needing a major overhaul, but there was never a "right time" for this project to go through the entire process that was required and deserved.

This all then changed in November 2023. A project team was brought together and the journey for the customer portal to go through the true TLC it deserved finally happened. The project team consisted of: Key Business Stakeholders, Project Manager, Business Analyst, Lead Designer (me), Senior Applications Architect (Chris), Frontend Developer, and other key members from Marketing, IT, Sales, and the Operations Team.

This was the first project that we could start from scratch and put the design system (seen above) we created to the test, but also create one of the most detailed projects plans I've ever been a part of.

Within the project planning phase, we wanted to cover and document everything we could potentially think of, and from this we captured: business goals and objectives, customer feedback and expectations, roles and responsibilities of those within the project team (and when to be involved), design and development iterations (accounting for contingency time to allow for any unforeseen circumstances), a time for which we can go back to the business and customers to gather feedback, annuals leaves and public holidays, and additional delays based on team members working on other projects.. you name it, we wanted to capture this within the overall project plan.

Without giving too much away due to the air of secrecy, there was a lot of work that went into the design and development of the customer portal. What I can tell you is that the project team carried out a lot of internal investigating to understand what the core business focus and goals of this application was to deliver, e.g. what to expect, what not expect, MVP vs MVP (Minimum Viable Product vs Maximum Viable Product). We as a small team carried out user research through the use of interviews (on Teams), surveys, and analytics to understand the needs and pain points, but also better understand user behaviour and patterns. This research was then used to inform the product roadmap, and allow us to prioritise the features and functionalities that were going to be designed and developed for the customer portal.

Of course with every project plan, there will always be the element of surprise that cannot be accounted for in the initial planning phase.. however, due to how well the project team worked together as individuals that made up the overall team, we were able to go through from start to finish and rebuild the entire customer portal!

A key area that myself and the Senior Applications Architect worked closely together on (aside from the design and development aspect of the project), was the way in which we would undergo the release of this application. We put together a release strategy with the help of Marketing that would allow us to carry out an internal release first to gather feedback from those that would be using this to support customer on a daily basis, and then from this we would carry out a 'pilot' release to all of those customers that were in the initial project planning sprint. This was key as these customer were the ones that provided the most insight into all of the "greats and not greats" of the customer portal, and as they felt part of the project life-cycle, they were more than happy to provide us with honest and constructive feedback.

Through a meticulous release strategy from all of those involved, we were able to successfully release the customer portal and the overwhelming feedback from both internal and external users was a truly humbling experience. The customer portal is now the face of Norsk Global's digital products, and it has been a key factor in the overall success of the business.

I can provide more detailed information about the customer portal project, but these would have to be in-person/online calls out of respect to the confidentiality of the project

🤫 Unannounced Projects

Under the Norsk Global digital umbrella, there are many more applications that are being used at scale each day across the world. However, there are some that are yet to be released into the world... Prior to me leaving, me and Chris spent many hours going through and taking "old" but fully functional applications and bringing them to where they deserve to be. All of those applications have gone through rigorous design and development tests, account for old and new features, whilst aligning them to the latest brand guidelines (using the design system we created).

I truly hope that each of those projects get the green light in the future to be fully developed and released for the world to see.

Until then, here's a snippet of those projects.. 🤫

✅ Outcome

As mentioned at the beginning is this project space, Norsk Global holds a very special place in my heart. I'm very proud of all the work that was designed, developed, and released during those 5 years. The fact that I can now sit on the outside and see the impact that the work I was involved in has had on the business and customers is truly an an humbling experience. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to join Norsk, and who knows where this journey in life will take us down the road..

If any chance you happen to be at Norsk and are reading this, please continue my signature '🫡' emoji for me in your Teams messages!