After climbing the industry ladder into a management role, Elle felt an urge to step back into design practice. Find out how the Service Design: Elevate course is helping Elle approach her role with newfound creativity and optimise the accessibility of a university’s student services.
Can you tell us about your career and how it led to Service Design?
I took a TAFE course in the early 1990s, which covered film, television, multimedia and graphic design. When I graduated in 1995, the web was starting to become a big thing and I was working in graphic and interface design, producing interactive content. By 1999, I had moved into a leadership role as a Digital Creative Director.
After the dot-com bust, I set up my own digital interactive and graphic design company in Perth. We completed projects for advertising agencies and companies who were starting to embrace digital. This included award winning work for a number of premium wineries in the Margaret River Region and co-founding a web2.0 startup. Once I had kids I changed my priorities and left the start-up life. Instead, I started working at digital agencies in project management and client account management.
From 2013-2020, I held a managerial role at a university which focussed on digital transformation to improve the accessibility of student services. I managed a talented team that developed and maintained front-line peer-to-peer support services and a large portfolio of digital products, from portals and apps to social media.
About a year ago, I found myself at a crossroads and realised that I could continue with management, or return to design practice. I decided to step back into design, but the industry had radically changed since I’d been involved creatively. To bring myself back up to speed, I decided to take a post-grad degree in design, which gave me a big picture understanding of current design theory.