Hello,

I’m a User Experience Director, public speaker & wandering photographer based out of Seattle, Washington. Expertise in UX strategy, team management, and leading organizations towards ambitious visions.

Work & Experience

Full resume & portfolio on request

SENIOR DIRECTOR | HEAD OF UX

Lime

Senior Director leading UX Design, Research & Content Design for Lime's Rider Experience, Opperations and Global City Integration. All with a core mission to fight climate change in urban centers.

Google

HEAD OF UX DESIGN

Senior Staff Manager for an international, multi-disciplined UX team creating experiences to enable businesses to get onto Google Search & Maps. Led the wider product area of 300+ through a strategic pivot to allow Merchants to directly manage their Google Business Profiles on consumer surfaces. Manager of managers and UX partner to multiple Senior Directors. 

Senior Design Manager

Amazon

Manager and Design Lead for Amazon Video on TV platforms, including PlayStation, Roku, Xbox, and smart TVs, I led a cross-functional UX team to design high-quality experiences for hundreds of devices. Oversaw the design and development of Amazon Prime Video's rollout in 150+ countries and led the design team to successfully launch on Apple TV.

Senior Information Architect

The Guardian

Lead UX designer for the Guardian multi-platform mobile app and website. Responsible for UX direction of the product with in depth understanding of Android and iOS design and development patterns. Led the team to develop the Guardian for Apple Watch before the device was released in partnership with Apple. Frequent author on the Guardian Engineering Blog.

Creative Director

BBC News

Worked from Trainee up to Creative Director. Led and worked on a team of UX and visual designers creating hugely popular interactive experiences on tight deadlines. Revised the team approach to design mobile first and follow rigorous process.

Latest Blogs & Lectures

Kind words

“Helene is the best UX lead and manager I have ever had the pleasure of working with! I felt like I had a superpower in my team with her driving a large part of my organisation. Helene is incredibly user centric and successfully advocated so many times with her stakeholders to invest in a thorough UX process.

I cannot recommend Helene enough - she is honestly just one of the best UX leaders I have ever seen.”

— Melanie Yencken, UX Director at Google

“It was such a pleasure working closely alongside Helene at Google where we forged a strong Product-UX partnership. Leading highly complex workstreams across multiple simultaneous products (Google Search & Google Maps) Helene created a highly productive UX organization.

Helene was always highly praised by her team for her deep investment in their career growth and was recognised in the wider organisation for instilling a culture of wellbeing investment. I would love to have the opportunity to work with Helene again!”

— Tom Pritchard, Product Director at Google

“Helene was an inspiration and a delight to have as a colleague. She excelled at collaborating with xFN partners to create intuitive and engaging content. She always championed users’ needs, led the way in responsive web design and frequently taught herself new technologies to produce innovative solutions. Her projects were some of the most popular and engaging online features produced by the BBC News website. She also excelled in the pressured, deadline driven environment of online news.”

— Bella Hurrell, Deputy editor, BBC News