Consultant Profile: Sophie Curzon

As a continuation of the series where we talk to our UX experts, we spoke to a long-time UX Connections team member, and asked everything you’d need to know about their UX journey. 

Meet Sophie.

Okay, let’s start off with the basics – where did your interest in UX start, and how did you get to where you are today?

My interest in you UX started from having a general interest in the construction and the reasons behind product design.  I then moved into being an Ergonomics consultant, and from there I developed a passion for digital products, before eventually switching to UX design. 

What was the most challenging part of your first project for UX Connections? What did you learn from this experience that has helped you improve your work?

In my first project, I came in as UX consultant, but the client wasn’t really clear on what UX deliverables they wanted, which was very different to my past as an Ergonomics consultant. However, once I realised this I just began to work through the UX process and suggested some deliverables which would help them tackle the problems they were having, and give them more clarity to their rough concept.

What would you say is your expertise within UX and UI?

Within UX design I would say my expertise lies in developing innovative solutions aimed at streamlining a process, and also producing rapid concept designs to communicate these ideas to stakeholders and during user testing.  Coming from a background in research, I pride myself on my effort to always push for user research and instil best practices to avoid any bias we may encounter.

What industries have you worked in so far?

So, I’ve worked across a range of different Industries from Healthcare, Betting, Journalism, Consumer Goods, Automotive and also Marketing. 

What has been your favourite project so far?

I worked on a project for the NHS which was very challenging, but extremely rewarding because we were able to provide solutions for issues being encountered in such a safety critical environment of a hospital. When testing the designs with users, it was great to work through many iterations with them, and produce something that would actually be really beneficial to them. 

How do you perfect your ‘design thinking’?

Being a consultant, we’re constantly working with new teams who already have their own defined approaches to design thinking, but this creates a space which encourages mutual sharing  of design processes. I try to continually develop my own personal design thinking process, and I’m constantly testing out new activities to approach the various stages.

What’s the best thing about working at UX Connections?

I think definitely the breadth of industries we have exposure to, I feel like having this range of projects has really allowed me to develop such a broad range of UX skills at a much faster pace than I would have working in-house. 

Where do you find your inspiration? 

I like to keep up with research and design on websites such as Dribble, Nielsen Norman Group, and blogs like you UX Collective. However, my inspiration can literally come from anywhere, such as  conferences I attend, conversations I have, and generally any other design work. I’m constantly screenshotting nice bits of UX and UI to save and use as inspiration in the future. 

One thing you’d improve the UX of, if you could?

One thing I’d improve the UX of would be the Garmin Connect app, which is used to monitor your Garmin activities.  The main issue is just how unintuitive it is.  Despite how long I’ve used it for, I find myself having to Google ‘how to change miles to kilometres’ because I can’t figure it out myself.  It’s a good  example of a technically great app, but it just has a lack of UX,  meaning the users are really unaware of its capabilities.  To start with, it could definitely benefit from some sort of card sorting exercise to regroup the features and products in a more logical way for the user. 

We’d like to say a huge thank you to Sophie for taking the time to talk to us about her time as a UX consultant, as well as those who have taken the time to read this – feel free to leave us any questions!