About my Journey
Product Design Lead with over 12 years of experience in human centred design. I help companies research, craft and build world class experiences for their internal, B2B and/or B2C customers. I’ve worked across e-commerce, social media, agency, mar-tech, health-tech and recently, more specifically, building experiences to surface AI/ML models within the R&D space.
A Curious Dabbler.
I started out in web design back when I was a teenager, dabbling with different books, magazines and online tutorials, teaching myself HTML, CSS and PHP. So that I could not only design but build what I crafted in Adobe Photoshop/Fireworks/Illustrator (my weapons of choice back then). Experimenting with these tools pushed me towards studying Multimedia at UWE University in Bristol, where I achieved a 2:1.
The E-com Starting Point.
Role: Design & Usability Executive
Since leaving university, I spent a decent bit of time at Photobox, an online photo print e-commerce, there I went from a being graphic designer and web developer to carving myself out a position in UX and usability, the first of its kind at Photobox. My passion in human centred design continued and always curious, I began honing my skills in research & analytics, where, with some help of some colleagues I taught myself, Google Analytics and Adobe SiteCat. After 4 years at Photobox, I was yearning for a challenge and that’s when Sticky9 came along (RIP).
The Social Media Experience.
Role: Lead UX Design
Sticky9 was a little startup that I joined in its infancy and continued to lead the user experience design on as User Experience Architect. This was a new adventure into the Instagram world enabling me to develop my creative leadership as well UX abilities. Working closely alongside engineering, product, commercial and marketing, we developed and expanded the product fast. This was where I had my first experiences of agile development and learnt the merits of crafting and building small pieces of product fast. 2 years on, having advanced and developed my skill set at Sticky 9, I had a taster for startups and felt a real desire to build something from scratch.
The Agency Life.
Role: Director of UX
I had a brief stint at the agency side of things, something i’ve always wanted to explore from when I was a kid. After having worked on multiple projects with multiple clients as a UX Director for several months, I decided agency life wasn’t for me. Main reason being, the love of owning a product from start to finish, knowings it customers inside out, nurturing the design and the business for pure and continuous value creation.
The Surprising Enterprise.
Role: Product Design Lead
I joined Salesforce in winter 2015 and after a long interview process, I hopped into Marketing Cloud’s, Advertising Studio. Where I led the user experience for four different product lines. Lead Capture, Journey Builder Ads, Advertising Audiences and Advertising Campaigns. Working as sole designer, researcher (sometimes) and leader certainly has its challenges when spread across 4-5 different scrum teams but out of pure necessity and survival, I learnt the importance of why. See some of the work in the link below.
A Startup within a Corporate Healthcare.
Role: Director of Product Design
Joining GlaxoSmithKline in 2018 was a tough decision, as anyone else, I had my reservations about joining a multinational pharmaceutical company. The mission and reason for our semi acqui hire from Salesforce, however, was too tempting and the purpose completely aligned with my newest focus, tech in health. So here I lead a small team of designers and researchers in a pseudo startup within this mammoth company to create purposeful value for our HCPs, scientists and patients.
AI/ML in a new GSK, BioPharma
Role: Director of Product Design
At the close of 2021, our team took a big shift towards a completely new org, AI/ML for R&D. Our well versed and cross functional skillset was to be utilised in creating products and experiences that serviced and surfaced the value of AI/ML models for scientists in research units in the R&D org. An incredibly amazing purpose and an even tougher challenge to work with big data and genetics.
Password protected due to current and sensitive nature of the work
You Crazy Thing.
If you have been patient and/or crazy enough to read through all of the above, I commend you! If you have gotten this far, then perhaps there’s a reason, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to me via LinkedIn, i’m always open to having a chat. www.linkedin.com/in/paul-salter-2044671a.