Alexander McIlwraith

Curriculum Vitae

Connect with me on LinkedIn

UX Certification Badge from Nielsen Norman Group

Profile

I make lives better by creating digital spaces for people to interact. Expressed digitally, through a passion for UX design and attention to detail for best-in-class user experience, I give people time by allowing them to efficiently complete their tasks.

Technical Skills: Balsamiq Mockups, Figma, PHP, MySQL, HTML, JavaScript and CSS

Professional Experience

January 2013–Present, Agricorp, Canada
Role: Web Communications Consultant

Responsibilities

  • Provide brand and product design strategy, customer insight, industry trends research, qualitative and quantitative research and implementation of evidence-based, end-to-end user experience design for sites serving 50,000+ external B2B clients.
  • Communicate user needs generating user empathy, delivering findings and collaborating with 100+ colleagues and stakeholders to create high-quality digital experiences.
  • Design planning and implementation, including ideation, prototypes and wireframes, usability testing, ensuring consistency and using business data to recommend customer journey improvements throughout the product lifecycle.
  • Head a team of five, maintaining 7,500+ pages of web content, manage multiple projects and provide analytics research and customer segmentation across digital products and print channels.

Results

  • Implement visual design and responsive user experience design, process flows for underwriting data collection and provincial Farm Business Registration system, reducing mandatory fields by 75%, leading to a 20% increase in conversions and an 86% user satisfaction rating.
  • Aid product development engaging 500+ staff in design thinking, develop and document organisational accessibility and UX best practices and build collaboration providing coaching and mentoring to develop a UX culture in an Agile environment.

November 2004–January 2013, University of Guelph, Canada
Role: Digital Communications Lead, Department of Psychology

Responsibilities

  • Lead web technology change, including providing training and support to guide staff through complex organisational digital transformation.
  • Manage servers to support a production web environment including content management system (CMS), web applications and research data collection systems.

Results

  • Mentor 120+ researchers in survey and project UI design, assisting in creating custom research solutions, ensuring accurate completion by participants.
  • Development and user testing for bespoke resource management application using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and CSS, allowing faculty, staff and graduate students to efficiently request department resources on a common system.


Role: Change Analyst, Central Computing (CCS) (Secondment 2006 –2009)

Responsibilities

  • Facilitate and lead professional development training for software products, including campus-wide workshops for 1,500+ staff demonstrating excellent presentation and verbal communication skills.
  • Manage project to transition of a campus-wide software distribution service from an analyst-supported to call centre-supported model.

Results

  • Author 100+ procedures and support documents to guide a small team through change and facilitate transition of support calls to call centre staff.
  • Coaching staff to decrease support response times and maintain escalations despite a 50% increase in support requests.
  • Monitor and handle digital media procurement ensuring all orders are processed within 24 hours of receipt.

May 2004–August 2005, Flavours of Canada, Canada
Role: Digital Consultant (freelance contract)

Responsibilities

  • Develop a culture of engagement by coaching and mentoring partner agency staff to engage visitors, using an authentic, honest tone of voice, who interacted with the site.

Results

  • Develop and pitch organisational digital vision and strategy, using excellent communication and relationship building skills
  • Supported online presence and digital strategy for a national campaign, attracting than 2,000+ registrations from across Canada during the annual campaign.

Education

  • 2021 Bachelor of Professional Arts Communications Studies Athabasca University, Canada
  • 2021 UX Certificate, UX Research and UX Management Specialty (Certification ID #1004329) Nielsen Norman Group, United States
  • 2015 Certificate in Business Communications University of Waterloo, Canada
  • 2002 Bachelor of Arts University of Guelph, Canada

Volunteering and Advisory Roles

  • June 2016 –Present Programme Director, Alpha Central Church, Cambridge, Canada
    Executed outreach programme leading a team of 20 volunteers, responsible for all aspects of programme leadership programme administration.
  • September 2013 – August 2018 Director of Communications, Clan Donald
    Developed and maintained communications strategy, resources, and web presence for chapter of around 100 members, including display materials used at 10+ events annually.
  • January 2003 –Present Web Advisor, Central Church, Cambridge, Canada
    Visioning for web presence, content strategy and information architecture including weekly podcast attracting visitors and worldwide donations.
  • October 2011–September 2013 Advisor, International Association of Business Communicators, Canada
    Designed communications strategy for event expansion, solved technical issues for web and social media integration, ensuring 100% uptime and easy usability.