“As my Irish cultural heritage has taught me, I believe storytelling is a very important aspect of sharing ideas with others. As a User Experience Professional I value these stories as they can provide us glimpses into how others view the world. A story can be a gemstone that shines a light on a new idea. We can share a story to help convey an emotion that is immediately tangible by others around us. Stories can transcend the different boundaries between people. Therefore I want to share my story with you.
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I am a passionate person who has now lived on four of the world's continents. I am an Irishman with Australian sensibilities. My passion for the user has steamed from my necessity to change my own cultural understandings of the world as I have become more sensitive to human differences in the corners of the world where I have lived. Having lived in five countries across the world I have had the first-hand experience of how the human and cultural context ensured some things worked and others didn't. I have seen how different cultures adapt to the world around them and how I have had to adapt to the different cultures I have lived in.
These experiences have heightened my interest in seeing how humans adapt to technological change. Utilizing research to help us understand how humans interact with technology I believe we can always find human-centric ways to ensure that technology empowers people, rather than enslaving them. Designing technology from a humanist perspective will provide significant opportunities to disrupt the status quo and create a brighter future.
I strongly believe that we need human-centered design thinking as a driving force to identify opportunities for the future. From a professional standpoint, I know that working together as a multi-disciplinary team of business, development and user experience professionals we have the opportunity to work collaboratively and create innovative solutions. Simplicity of use can equate to very complex underlying technology that has intuitive design. Removing perceived complexity can result in the user feeling empowered.
Moving to the United States has been another chapter in my life, itself full of great surprises. Mixing that with the satisfaction I get from working in an industry in the midst of a massive technological revolution is a privilege.
