👋🏼 Hi, I’m Lily
I’m a freelance Creative Director with over a decade of experience helping companies make their products and services look good, work well, and make sense. My mission is to create designs that not only function seamlessly but also have a positive impact on the world.
With a strong foundation in industrial design and a focus on user experience (UX), I bring a unique perspective to every project. I believe in the power of research-led design, rapid prototyping, and a minimalist approach. I aim to identify the core value we offer end users and deliver practical solutions that work for my clients’ capabilities and budgets.
My extensive experience across three continents and working alongside top-tier creatives at renowned consultancies sets me apart. This background instills in me a sense of professionalism, craftsmanship, and a high bar for success. I am constantly learning from my clients and their customers, adapting my approach to meet their specific needs.
I specialize in optimizing customer touchpoints, be it websites, apps, software, or other digital platforms. By employing standardized UX best practices, I ensure that your products and services function at a high standard. Improved user experiences translate to better conversion rates, enhanced brand experiences, reduced customer service calls, and often improves internal systems and brings a sense of harmony and shared purpose for your organization.
✨ Top-Requested Services
I offer a range of services including:
Heuristics audit of your UX: Identifying areas for improvement and recommending actionable solutions.
Advisory role for your startup: Providing design direction and strategic guidance to help your brilliant ideas come to life.
Spare design lead or creative director for agencies: Stepping in when your workload exceeds your resources, ensuring seamless project delivery.
Research-to-design projects: Crafting comprehensive design briefs, conducting user research, and mapping out effective strategies for design and build based on that research.
UX Training: If you're looking to enhance your in-house or agency's UX capabilities, I offer specialized UX training to empower your team. With custom-designed workshops, I can provide comprehensive training sessions tailored to your specific needs. From user research methodologies to design thinking principles, I'll equip your team with the knowledge and skills to deliver exceptional user experiences.
Additionally, I offer the option of coming in on a retainer to provide ongoing support and guidance. As an experienced professional, I'll work alongside your team, sharing insights, best practices, and industry expertise to help you continuously improve your UX capabilities while on the job. Together, we'll foster a culture of user-centric thinking and elevate your organization's design maturity.
Investing in UX training not only enhances your team's skill set but also translates into improved product quality, higher user satisfaction, and ultimately, business success. Let's collaborate to cultivate a team of proficient UX professionals who can drive your organization's growth.
If your business is facing chaos behind the scenes, I'm here to straighten it out. Think of me as a design mercenary, tackling big problems and leaving you with an organized and smoothly functioning end result.
Let's collaborate and create design solutions that not only meet your goals but also have a lasting impact.
✍🏼 My process
I follow a proven and adaptable process that forms the foundation of my project planning. This process serves as a framework to identify gaps, generate innovative ideas, and deliver exceptional design solutions. It's a reliable approach that ensures we create meaningful and impactful experiences for users.
My foundational process
Observations: I start by gathering observations, through extensive research or existing information provided by the client. These observations are objective and state the facts. By immersing ourselves in user data, market trends, and industry insights, we gain a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. This step sets the stage for uncovering valuable insights.
Insights: Next, we identify patterns and meaningful connections within our observations. These insights reveal the underlying behaviors and motivations of users. By recognizing recurring patterns, we gain valuable insights into the needs, desires, and pain points of your target audience. These insights serve as a compass, guiding our design decisions and ensuring a user-centered approach. It’s the process of finding what is significant in the data and where do our goals overlap with our user’s goals.
Imperatives: Building upon our insights, we define the principles that define success for your product or service. These imperatives are the core guiding principles that shape our design direction. By establishing clear imperatives, we ensure that our work aligns with your business objectives and resonates with your target audience. These imperatives serve as the foundation for our design solutions and define our vision for the user’s experience of our brand.
Solutions: Armed with our insights and imperatives, we start to brainstorm. We generate a multitude of ideas, building upon them, and combining them to create innovative and impactful solutions. I prefer to collaborate during ideation sessions as good ideas can come from anyone. The more the merrier. By refining and combining ideas we get our first designs.
The beauty of this process is its circular nature. While we progress through the steps of Observations, Insights, Imperatives, and Solutions, we never truly reach an endpoint. We continuously circle back to Observation, testing our ideas and solutions, and refining our work based on real-world feedback. This iterative process ensures that we deliver designs that meet your objectives and evolve and improve over time. That is also why this process is so adaptable. It works equally for very early blue sky concepts as it does for improving existing and complex products and services.
By embracing this design thinking process, we tap into the power of research, insights, and creative problem-solving to create exceptional user experiences. My work is driven by a commitment to continuous improvement and a passion for making a positive impact through design.
🙅🏼♀️ What Not to Hire Me for
While I have a diverse skill set and experience across various design disciplines, it's important to understand what I specialize in and how I can bring unique value to your projects. Here's what not to hire me for:
Visual Design and Production Design: While I have a solid background in visual design and production design, my role as a Creative Director goes beyond these specific domains. Instead of focusing solely on creating visual assets or design systems, my expertise lies in strategic decision-making, design leadership, and guiding the overall creative direction of a project.
Coding and Development: Although I have worked closely with developers and possess a solid understanding of front-end development principles, coding is not my primary role. I excel at collaborating with developers to ensure seamless implementation of designs, but I'm not the one who will be writing the code. My strengths lie in leveraging design thinking and user experience principles to create intuitive and engaging experiences that are easy for developers to implement.
Delivering Specific Metrics: While metrics and performance indicators are important for evaluating the success of a project, and I do use them for research and testing designs, my primary focus as a Creative Director is on the overall user experience and design strategy, which is notoriously difficult to quantify. While I consider user engagement and usability essential in my work, my role is not that of a marketer who specializes in specific metrics-driven campaigns.
👩🏼💻 What is a Creative Director even?
As a Creative Director, my role is to provide strategic direction, oversee the creative process, and lead a team of talented designers, researchers, and developers. I bring a holistic approach to design, combining research, strategy, and creativity to deliver exceptional user experiences. My expertise lies in crafting cohesive design visions, defining brand experiences, and ensuring that design solutions align with business goals and with your unique constraints and strengths.
I excel in working collaboratively with cross-functional teams, facilitating workshops and brainstorms, and fostering a culture of innovation and user-centric thinking. My role is to guide and mentor designers, identify insights, synthesize complex information, and deliver practical solutions that address your organization's unique challenges.
By hiring me as a Creative Director, you gain a seasoned professional who can navigate the design landscape, integrate diverse skill sets, and provide strategic guidance to elevate your projects to new heights. Please see my case studies for examples of my work.
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🙋🏼♀️ Thanks for reading. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you think I might be able to help with your next project or if you have any questions for me. ♥️