Alexander McIlwraith
Curriculum Vitae
Hello!
I solve problems to create desirable, innovative, customer-centric omnichannel and unified customer experiences creating best-in-class solutions and driving UX design through attention to detail.
Technical Skills: Balsamiq Mockups, Figma, PHP, MySQL, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and WCAG 2.0
Professional Experience
January 2013 – Present, Agricorp, Canada
Role: Web Communications Consultant / Senior UX Designer
Responsibilities
- Product design strategy, market trends and customer research and implementation of end-to-end, evidence-based user experience, developing user research, interaction design and brand strategy for a government insurance company serving 50,000+ external B2B clients.
- Translate research into sketching, wireframing and prototyping to articulate user needs to more than 100 developers, business analysts and stakeholders to inspire high-quality creative and intuitive digital experiences at speed.
- Research project planning and implementation, including qualitative and quantitative research, ideation, design concepts, prototypes, user flows, requirements, usability testing, journey mapping and analytical reporting of business data to make smart design decisions to the customer journey throughout the product lifecycle.
- Web design and content for more than 7,500 public-facing web pages, leading a team of 5, ensuring consistency with web standards, accessibility and design standards through creation and maintenance of the design system, use of design tools and coaching.
Results
- Strategic direction, user experience design, process flows and visual design with responsive design for mobile, for in-house and SaaS products, including the Farm Business Registration system, reducing mandatory fields by 75%, with 86% user satisfaction, increasing conversions by 20%.
- Defined and implemented research approach, analysed results, and proposed data-driven upgrades to a 15-year-old corporate intranet, implementing a fresh design and new to the site features, such as search, to enhance information architecture, site usability and user productivity.
- Build a company-wide community of practice providing hands on mentoring and feedback for 500+ staff in design thinking to aid in product development and build collaborative cross-functional teams, creating an efficient and more mature UX culture in an Agile environment.
- As senior UX designer, develop organisational usability and accessibility best practices, web standards and design standards, to implement high-impact applications and content, scoping and deprioritising features to ensure speed and timely delivery of digital products to meet client demand.
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 project data collection systems.
Results
- Introduce a content management system, providing web design coaching, documentation and video training, to allow 30 faculty to communicate research areas, leading to an increase in enrolment figures.
- Mentor 120+ researchers in survey and project UI design, assisting them to create custom research collection solutions, building UI to enable research participants to provide information in a consistent manner and allow accurate data analysis.
- Software development, UX design and user testing for bespoke resource management application using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and CSS, allowing 150 faculty, staff and graduate students to efficiently request department resources on a common system.
Role: Change Analyst, Central Computing (CCS) (Secondment 2006–2009)
Responsibilities
- Manage the transition of a campus-wide software distribution service from an analyst-supported to call centre-supported model.
- Facilitate professional development training for software products, including campus-wide workshops for 1,500+ staff demonstrating excellent verbal communication skills, leading and demonstrating the ability to collaborate with internal and external trainers.
Results
- Author 100+ procedures and support documents to guide a small team through change and facilitate transition of support calls to call centre staff.
- Coach staff to decrease support response times and maintain escalations despite a 50% increase in support requests, while 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 providing feedback to mentor partner agency staff to engage visitors, using an authentic, honest tone of voice, who interacted with the site.
Results
- Designing digital experience, delivering and supporting online presence, copywriting and digital strategy and testing for a national campaign, attracting than 2,000+ registrations from across Canada during the annual campaign.
Education
- 2025 Bachelor of Professional Arts Communications Studies, Athabasca University, Canada
Courses in corporate communications, media relations, digital communications, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and leadership - 2024 UX Master Certificate (Certification ID #1004329), Nielsen Norman Group, United States
- 2021 UX Certificate (Certification ID #1004329), Nielsen Norman Group, United States
UX Research and UX Management Speciality - 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 supervising 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.