University of Melbourne

Senior Design Manager at Grab - We’re hiring!

SmartNews

Head of Design

Bearded Bella is a Melbourne inspired eatery located in Singapore's CBD.

It's a passion project of a few ladies who love good food and coffee. I'm really proud to be part of this amazing team.

I run brand and marketing for the business. You can also occasionally find me behind the bar or waiting tables. 

Come by, say hi, don't be shy.

Bearded Bella

Brand Director

I lead the design team at Grab that looks after our search, personalisation, and marketing efforts all across the platform. During my tenure, my notable achievements include:

Team Leadership: I successfully grew and mentored a high-performing design team, fostering collaboration and delivering products that customers love. Our team engagement scores consistently exceeded expectations, and we achieved zero regrettable attrition.

Self-Serve Marketing Platform: I led the design team in creating Grab's self-serve marketing platform, empowering food merchants and advertisers to drive business growth with superior ROI compared to industry alternatives.

Search Engagement and Conversion Improvement: I contributed to enhancing Grab's search products, resulting in improved conversion rates and increased monthly revenue.

Systems Thinking and Efficiency: I focused on creating scalable solutions within Grab's complex ecosystem, delivering customized experiences and efficient ad products.

Influencing Stakeholders: I elevated the role of design by articulating customer-centric visions and strategies, positioning the team as thought partners to drive product direction and user story development.

Grab

Senior Design Manager

Design Manager

Senior Service Designer

Working in the design studio under the fintech division, I led the service design practice across consumer banking products for the wealth and rewards space.

This involved educating senior stakeholders and team members about new ways of working, creating processes to support teams, as well as working on strategy to define the digital product roadmap.

Citi

Service Designer (contract)

Lead Experience Designer on Mazda Australia (www.mazda.com.au)
Lead Experience Designer on Australian Futures Project (www.mybigidea.org.au)
BandT's 30 under 30 awards finalist (2017)

Worked on clients across the automotive, not for profit, FMCG, insurance, and education space with amazing cross functional teams to deliver experiences beyond digital. 

Generated sprawling research insights that have informed design and brand decisions, created service blueprints and strategic roadmaps, collaborated with data specialists to marry qualitative and quantitative research into some beautiful magic, partnered with a visual designer and content strategist to create the best damn automotive site in Australia, prototyped/test/prototyped/test, and presented to clients and large groups of stakeholders comfortably.

And in the process rediscovered my great love for post-it notes and a well-organised trello board. 

Here's a non-exhaustive list of things I did:
- Collaborate with others within the Design & Planning teams to structure and plan service design work on projects
- Collaborate with Design, Content and Engineering teams to design applications that balance user needs, commercial interests and technological constraints
- Communicate and envision service concepts and ideas using methods & tools that illustrate all the components and touchpoints of the service.
- Define the service, proposition and create the roadmaps through qualitative and quantitative research
- Ensure alignment with the defined business goals throughout the design process
- Create design brief based on the service proposal as well as client feedback
- Be a storyteller – A critical element of all our roles is to deliver insights about people and behavior – in a way that generates empathy, emotion, and engagement from the client and design team
- Work to ensure strategic value and integrity of project proposals
- Train wider CHEP team in service/experience design methodologies, tools and best practices

CHE Proximity

Working across clients such as Curtin University, ARUP, Australian Red Cross Blood Service, St John of God Healthcare, and Bendigo Bank I've conducted:

- desk research (inc. competitor reviews, audience analysis)
- contextual inquiry and persona creation
- affinity diagraming/card sorts with clients
- usability testing
- workshops for internal client stakeholders, and externally with clients' clients
- one on one interviews

and other UX related activities that sound just strange (tree jacking anyone?) to understand users context, motivations, and actions better. I then translate the research into over arching principles that guide digital strategy, and can be translated into actionable/tactical wins for clients. It's been a crazy and exhilarating couple of months.

All the while working on pitches and proposals. And doing my timesheets dutifully, in a timely manner. Fun!

Precedent

UX Consultant

I've worked across brands such as Crown Casinos, Deakin University, Leggo's, Birds Eye, Little Creatures, NAB and Tupperware (to name a few) on digital and social projects.


This involved:

- Helping to manage the strategy, scope, budget and execution of multiple, simultaneous interactive projects

- Preparing budgets, timelines and project plans to manage client deliverables and expectations

- Monitoring the quality, performance and profitability of projects

- Translating strategy and brand requirements into actionable concepts

- Communicating effectively between vendors, technical development team members and non-technical team members and clients



I've also...

- Planned strategy and reported on social media marketing efforts

- Done research on client's competitors, industry landscape, best in class examples

- Defined KPIs and implemented measurement, analytics and reporting methods to gauge success


And in the spare time that's left,


I run Real Big Things for Hardhat Digital. This involved guiding speaker's, reviewing speeches, and researching on the topics of each event. RBT is a bi-monthly event series of short lectures designed to inspire and educate marketers about all things digital. We've organised topics that range from 3D printing, rapid prototyping, the future of tech in education, all the way to the joys of hacking. We've been featured in Springwise, Ad News, and other local publications. 
Find out more (and get a ticket!) at www.realbigthings.com



All of which has led to a pretty nifty knowledge of products like Google Analytics, Keynote/Ppt, Basecamp, Teamweek, Team Gantt, Bug Herd, etc. and how to make a decent slide pack.

Hardhat Digital

Junior Digital Strategist, Account Exec, Events Manager

Working with Professor Leslie Holmes on his research on comparative corruption. Collated information for literature reviews, and other sections of his study.

Research Assistant

Spent my time interning with the Digital Strategy team at DT and the Planning team at Badjar, learning from the likes of David Jenkinson and Athan Didaskalou. Worked on BMW MINI, and Honda, Cricket Australia, and LORETO Mandeville Hall

DTDigital/Badjar Ogilvy

Intern

Founder and Co-owner at Child Label.


We produce high quality customisable vinyl waterproof designer name labels for your kids, so their things never get mixed up with the other germy children in creche or school again. 


Find us at www.childlabel.com

Sarah Ling