Top talent is on Pangea
You are viewing Nina's profile as a guest. Book a free call with our team to discuss your options for hiring fractional workers on Pangea's industry-leading talent marketplace.Nina McNamara
UX
Design
UX research
Software Development
Information Architecture
Agile
Communication
Ideation
Mentoring
Service design
Design Research
Creative Thinking
Strategy & Business Development
I’m a design leader who builds teams, creativity and culture to deliver people-centred experiences.
I have 12 years design and research experience across energy, finance, publishing, retail and luxury fashion in the UK and internationally. I primarily lead in-house, multi-disciplinary design teams in B2B and B2C settings.
As co-writer and producer of Bird Podcast, I explore the criminal justice system and prison reform and in my latest venture, 'UX of Sex,' I cultivate candid conversations about relationships, s*xual experience and desire.
Projects
New proposition launch for leading credit score provider, ClearScore
Product delivery and team building to enable alpha, beta and launch of a high-priority strategic bet as part of ClearScore’s 2023 strategy. User Focus: Customers who have missed three or more credit payments need guidance and tools to get back on track. Business Focus: The unsecured debt market is a multi-billion pound opportunity in the UK. ClearScore is trusted by their 13m+ customer base to connect them with the best financial products. In the cost of living crisis, it is vital that customers avoid unsafe credit. Methods & Process: Product Delivery, Service Design, Process Mapping, Alpha & Beta testing, Workshop design & facilitation, User Research, Product Design, team building, senior stakeholder management, design leadership. Outcomes: - Clear product direction and defined phased release plan - Alpha, beta and launch designs defined - 100% team trust (increased from 30% in team health survey)See MoreResearch strategy, delivery and coaching for green energy company, OVO
An energy company that aims to "fuel human progress with clean, abundant energy for all." A key project I worked on was the re-platforming of OVO’s Energy Retail website. User Focus: We wanted to understand how different types of people engage with their energy and try to squash some of people's embedded assumptions about user behaviours. Business Focus: Rely less on legacy third parties in the energy industry and bring OVO’s data in-house to be flexible to emerging energy needs. Methods & Process: User research, interaction design, visual design, product delivery, culture change, lean methodologies, agile coaching. Outcomes: - Design and build of product across web & native - Energy consumer research insights - Adoption of new research and design methodsSee MoreLeadership: Defined a cross-functional strategy to improve customer retention
SITUATION Given market signals around the cost of living crisis in the UK, ClearScore needed to re-organise teams to ensure focus on the things that serve customers' evolving financial needs RESULT Stream-aligned teams with clear objectives and understanding of mission direction as measured by our company survey An engineering company-wide initiative to address tech debt, resulting in 12% reduction in drop-off during sign-up, a positive onboarding has a direct impact on retention later on SEO improvements for the logged-out experience and specific targeting to customers who need to avoid unsafe credit most See MoreInformation architecture, flows and visual design for B2B portal
User Focus: Energy Retailers (especially Retailer developers/Agents) needed access to Kaluza’s services and a way to fact find out about technical capabilities. Business Focus: Kaluza needed a central place to house the services, capabilities, technical documentation of their Retail and Demand response platform. This was key in reducing repetitive work, lowering cost to serve and ensuring the Kaluza offering is clear to prospective clients. Methods & Processes: Information needs mapping, rapid prototyping, B2B research with expert users (Agent & developers), rapid prototyping, Wireframing, Visual design, Product delivery, stakeholder collaboration. Outcomes: - Clear vision-type for a unified ‘Kaluza experience’ - Ready for development designs - Implementation of the Kaluza ‘Portal’ See MoreExploratory research, ideation and feature design for iOS app, Peanut
User Focus: Investigate what competitors are doing in the ‘Trying to Conceive’ (TTC) community right now. Speak to the community to find out their needs. Identify how Peanut can meet the needs of the ‘TTC’ community within the current team structure and capacity. Business focus: Currently, the app supports women who are pregnant & new mothers. The team wanted to expand their offering to support women within the ‘Trying to conceive’ (TTC) community. Methods & Process: Writing discussion guides, user recruitment, In-depth interviews, qualitative analysis, research synthesis, identifying insights & opportunities, ideation workshop, quantitative desk research, competitor analysis, journey map, rapid prototyping and feedback, viable product solutions. Outcomes: - A succinct set of research findings, insights & opportunities - Customer journey map - Competitor analysis - A set of viable product solutionsSee MoreBusiness process mapping, field research & product design for BVLGARI, China
User focus: BVLGARI’s existing Client Advisor app has low adoption from Client Advisors. We needed to understand this to ensure future WeBVLGARI app iteration meet their needs. Business focus: BVLGARI wanted to empower their Client Advisors (CAs) to offer a bespoke experience to customers in any store they visit and extend the selling ceremony beyond the store to increase conversion. Methods & Process: Writing discussion guides, in-depth interviews, expert interviews, data analysis, store visits, mystery shopping, stakeholder management, business process mapping, low and high fidelity wireframes, agile delivery. Outcomes: Insight-led back end product re-categorisation, WeChat social integration, Re-design of most useful features: - Trays - Share products of interest alongside complementary products. - Improved checkout flow - there’s a big issue with trust and counterfeit luxury goods in China, so a robust and simple checkout flow is essential - Improved Search & Browse - CAs find it hard-to-type English names of products, we made top-selling products readily available and improved the back-end search service.See MoreService blueprints for an energy retail platform
Large-scale service blueprinting for an energy billing platform. This included a total of 58 maps spanning different altitudes and training and adoption of service design across the organisation. User focus: Energy retailers need to simplify the way they bill customers. All retailers are looking to reduce cost to serve with more efficient processes, tooling and tools. Business focus: Understand how the people, processes and technology work together across 60 teams to make sure we are lowering operating costs that can be passed on to retailers. Outcomes: Service design, Service blueprinting, mentoring, training, workshop facilitation, B2B research, stakeholder management. See MoreLeadership: Growing a team
SITUATION The organisation had 5 under-utilised designers embedded within teams. Since design awareness and influence was low, this had not yet been identified as a business problem. There was a minimal sense of community, job satisfaction and career growth. RESULT - Design headcount increased by 30, successfully hired roles across Service Design, Product Design, Content Design and Research with 90%+ retention rate A huge number of design success stories and measurable impact on company OKRS A thriving community of designers with a self-made library of toolkits, frameworks and documentation Consistent 9.2+/10 for team happiness (Source: Peakon) Increased design impact from a single team to organisation-wide. Notably; a retailer-facing portal, a research insights library, a 58-map service blueprint library and a multi-brand design system The majority of the design team had personal development goals, training and transparent paths for growth See MoreLeadership: Defined & created a new business unit for a B2B energy platform
SITUATION The organisation was facing regular high-severity technical incidents, time-consuming issue diagnosis, and an overall disjointed understanding of our key company offering. This led to error-prone practices, frustrated staff and clients and large time investment from leadership when pitching new business, contract writing or defining statements of work RESULT A CMS-powered retailer-facing portal with a golden thread connecting product features, technical documentation and working APIs. Reduction in high-severity incidents from multiple times a week to 1 per month in line with SLAs and faster diagnostic time A company-wide glossary of terms creating a shared language A collaborative effort between engineering, product and design who could leverage service blueprints, content design expertise and our multi-brand design system Reduced friction and less repetitive developer tasks (TOIL) The ability for retailers to test and try the platform as part of sales and new business pitches saving leadership and team time Clearer understanding of the platform offering specifics to assist in writing statements of work and contracts See MoreWork History
C
Principal Designer
ClearScore Aug 2022 - Mar 2023 • 8 mosI joined ClearScore to support with design leadership, product delivery and team building to enable the launch of a high-priority strategic betK
Head of Design
Kaluza Mar 2021 - Jul 2022 • 1 yr 5 mosKaluza is the intelligent platform powering the future of energy and part of OVO group I managed a team of 35 designers. My main focus was defining the design team strategy to build and embed practices of service design, product design, content design and research into the whole organisation to solve the world’s biggest problem, climate change.K
Design Lead
Kaluza Sep 2019 - Mar 2021 • 1 yr 7 mosKaluza is the intelligent platform powering the future of energy and is part of OVO group. In this role, I delivered design for agent tooling, design systems and grid flexibility solutions.L
User Experience Lead
LVMH Digital Apr 2018 - May 2019 • 1 yr 2 mosI collaborated with large and small brands within the LVMH group to help them understand the people behind the products. I mentored and coached teams in design, Lean UX and product strategy so that the things we built could positively impact customers and provide true value. My team and I were committed to identifying opportunities internationally within the group so we could improve the digital landscape of LVMH one project at a time. Clients: Dior, BVLGARI, Tag Heuer, Rimowa, PatouO
Senior User Experience Designer
OVO Energy Sep 2017 - Sep 2019 • 2 yrs 1 moLed product teams during OVO Energy's rebrand & launched carbon saving customer proposition, 'OVO Beyond.' I teamed up with design, product & engineering to build bridges between previously isolated teams. My main objective was to highlight by example that everyone benefits when these disciplines work in harmony. I met some truly incredible people, solved some fascinating problems and felt truly embraced into the OVO culture.Education
T
The Manchester Metropolitan University, England
BA (Hons) Design & Art Direction, Design Sep 2008 - Aug 2011C
City University, London
Human Rights Law , LawMar 2019 - Jun 2019C
Copenhagen Institute of Design
Turning People Into Teams, DesignAug 2019 - Aug 2019C
Copenhagen Institute of Design
People Centred Research, Design Research Aug 2016 - Aug 2016T
The Manchester Metropolitan University, England
Foundation Degree, Art & Design, Design Sep 2007 - Aug 2008How Pangea Works
Effortlessly discover top talent
We’ve distilled the candidate search from endless hours down to just a few minutes. Using Pangea’s AI-powered search tools, you can find top fractional talent able to take on your next project. Our system looks at your company’s niche and your needs to find the perfect match faster than any traditional hiring platform.Start working with talent today
The top talent on Pangea is ready to get started with you right now. You can message or hire a candidate right from their profile page and start assigning work as soon as they respond. And the best part? Pangea’s fractional contract structure lets you start small and ramp up as your needs change, keeping your costs manageable and your team’s capabliities flexible.Track work and invoices in one place
Assign tasks, track progress, and complete invoices all on Pangea. We’ve combined every part of the hiring process into one platform to eliminate the miscommunication that’s unavoidable on other freelance platforms. We even send out 1099s to your contractors at the end of the year!Talk with a Talent Expert
Members of our team are available to help you speed through the hiring process.
Available NowBook a Call
I’m a design leader who builds teams, creativity and culture to deliver people-centred experiences.
I have 12 years design and research experience across energy, finance, publishing, retail and luxury fashion in the UK and internationally. I primarily lead in-house, multi-disciplinary design teams in B2B and B2C settings.
As co-writer and producer of Bird Podcast, I explore the criminal justice system and prison reform and in my latest venture, 'UX of Sex,' I cultivate candid conversations about relationships, s*xual experience and desire.
Talk with a Talent Expert
Members of our team are available to help you speed through the hiring process.Available NowBook a Call
Top talent is on Pangea
You are viewing Nina's profile as a guest. Book a free call with our team to discuss your options for hiring fractional workers on Pangea's industry-leading talent marketplace.Nina McNamara
UX
Design
UX research
Software Development
Information Architecture
Agile
Communication
Ideation
Mentoring
Service design
Design Research
Creative Thinking
Strategy & Business Development
Projects
New proposition launch for leading credit score provider, ClearScore
Product delivery and team building to enable alpha, beta and launch of a high-priority strategic bet as part of ClearScore’s 2023 strategy. User Focus: Customers who have missed three or more credit payments need guidance and tools to get back on track. Business Focus: The unsecured debt market is a multi-billion pound opportunity in the UK. ClearScore is trusted by their 13m+ customer base to connect them with the best financial products. In the cost of living crisis, it is vital that customers avoid unsafe credit. Methods & Process: Product Delivery, Service Design, Process Mapping, Alpha & Beta testing, Workshop design & facilitation, User Research, Product Design, team building, senior stakeholder management, design leadership. Outcomes: - Clear product direction and defined phased release plan - Alpha, beta and launch designs defined - 100% team trust (increased from 30% in team health survey)Research strategy, delivery and coaching for green energy company, OVO
An energy company that aims to "fuel human progress with clean, abundant energy for all." A key project I worked on was the re-platforming of OVO’s Energy Retail website. User Focus: We wanted to understand how different types of people engage with their energy and try to squash some of people's embedded assumptions about user behaviours. Business Focus: Rely less on legacy third parties in the energy industry and bring OVO’s data in-house to be flexible to emerging energy needs. Methods & Process: User research, interaction design, visual design, product delivery, culture change, lean methodologies, agile coaching. Outcomes: - Design and build of product across web & native - Energy consumer research insights - Adoption of new research and design methodsLeadership: Defined a cross-functional strategy to improve customer retention
SITUATION Given market signals around the cost of living crisis in the UK, ClearScore needed to re-organise teams to ensure focus on the things that serve customers' evolving financial needs RESULT Stream-aligned teams with clear objectives and understanding of mission direction as measured by our company survey An engineering company-wide initiative to address tech debt, resulting in 12% reduction in drop-off during sign-up, a positive onboarding has a direct impact on retention later on SEO improvements for the logged-out experience and specific targeting to customers who need to avoid unsafe credit mostInformation architecture, flows and visual design for B2B portal
User Focus: Energy Retailers (especially Retailer developers/Agents) needed access to Kaluza’s services and a way to fact find out about technical capabilities. Business Focus: Kaluza needed a central place to house the services, capabilities, technical documentation of their Retail and Demand response platform. This was key in reducing repetitive work, lowering cost to serve and ensuring the Kaluza offering is clear to prospective clients. Methods & Processes: Information needs mapping, rapid prototyping, B2B research with expert users (Agent & developers), rapid prototyping, Wireframing, Visual design, Product delivery, stakeholder collaboration. Outcomes: - Clear vision-type for a unified ‘Kaluza experience’ - Ready for development designs - Implementation of the Kaluza ‘Portal’Exploratory research, ideation and feature design for iOS app, Peanut
User Focus: Investigate what competitors are doing in the ‘Trying to Conceive’ (TTC) community right now. Speak to the community to find out their needs. Identify how Peanut can meet the needs of the ‘TTC’ community within the current team structure and capacity. Business focus: Currently, the app supports women who are pregnant & new mothers. The team wanted to expand their offering to support women within the ‘Trying to conceive’ (TTC) community. Methods & Process: Writing discussion guides, user recruitment, In-depth interviews, qualitative analysis, research synthesis, identifying insights & opportunities, ideation workshop, quantitative desk research, competitor analysis, journey map, rapid prototyping and feedback, viable product solutions. Outcomes: - A succinct set of research findings, insights & opportunities - Customer journey map - Competitor analysis - A set of viable product solutionsBusiness process mapping, field research & product design for BVLGARI, China
User focus: BVLGARI’s existing Client Advisor app has low adoption from Client Advisors. We needed to understand this to ensure future WeBVLGARI app iteration meet their needs. Business focus: BVLGARI wanted to empower their Client Advisors (CAs) to offer a bespoke experience to customers in any store they visit and extend the selling ceremony beyond the store to increase conversion. Methods & Process: Writing discussion guides, in-depth interviews, expert interviews, data analysis, store visits, mystery shopping, stakeholder management, business process mapping, low and high fidelity wireframes, agile delivery. Outcomes: Insight-led back end product re-categorisation, WeChat social integration, Re-design of most useful features: - Trays - Share products of interest alongside complementary products. - Improved checkout flow - there’s a big issue with trust and counterfeit luxury goods in China, so a robust and simple checkout flow is essential - Improved Search & Browse - CAs find it hard-to-type English names of products, we made top-selling products readily available and improved the back-end search service.Service blueprints for an energy retail platform
Large-scale service blueprinting for an energy billing platform. This included a total of 58 maps spanning different altitudes and training and adoption of service design across the organisation. User focus: Energy retailers need to simplify the way they bill customers. All retailers are looking to reduce cost to serve with more efficient processes, tooling and tools. Business focus: Understand how the people, processes and technology work together across 60 teams to make sure we are lowering operating costs that can be passed on to retailers. Outcomes: Service design, Service blueprinting, mentoring, training, workshop facilitation, B2B research, stakeholder management.Leadership: Growing a team
SITUATION The organisation had 5 under-utilised designers embedded within teams. Since design awareness and influence was low, this had not yet been identified as a business problem. There was a minimal sense of community, job satisfaction and career growth. RESULT - Design headcount increased by 30, successfully hired roles across Service Design, Product Design, Content Design and Research with 90%+ retention rate A huge number of design success stories and measurable impact on company OKRS A thriving community of designers with a self-made library of toolkits, frameworks and documentation Consistent 9.2+/10 for team happiness (Source: Peakon) Increased design impact from a single team to organisation-wide. Notably; a retailer-facing portal, a research insights library, a 58-map service blueprint library and a multi-brand design system The majority of the design team had personal development goals, training and transparent paths for growthLeadership: Defined & created a new business unit for a B2B energy platform
SITUATION The organisation was facing regular high-severity technical incidents, time-consuming issue diagnosis, and an overall disjointed understanding of our key company offering. This led to error-prone practices, frustrated staff and clients and large time investment from leadership when pitching new business, contract writing or defining statements of work RESULT A CMS-powered retailer-facing portal with a golden thread connecting product features, technical documentation and working APIs. Reduction in high-severity incidents from multiple times a week to 1 per month in line with SLAs and faster diagnostic time A company-wide glossary of terms creating a shared language A collaborative effort between engineering, product and design who could leverage service blueprints, content design expertise and our multi-brand design system Reduced friction and less repetitive developer tasks (TOIL) The ability for retailers to test and try the platform as part of sales and new business pitches saving leadership and team time Clearer understanding of the platform offering specifics to assist in writing statements of work and contractsWork History
C
Principal Designer
ClearScore Aug 2022 - Mar 2023 • 8 mosI joined ClearScore to support with design leadership, product delivery and team building to enable the launch of a high-priority strategic betK
Head of Design
Kaluza Mar 2021 - Jul 2022 • 1 yr 5 mosKaluza is the intelligent platform powering the future of energy and part of OVO group I managed a team of 35 designers. My main focus was defining the design team strategy to build and embed practices of service design, product design, content design and research into the whole organisation to solve the world’s biggest problem, climate change.K
Design Lead
Kaluza Sep 2019 - Mar 2021 • 1 yr 7 mosKaluza is the intelligent platform powering the future of energy and is part of OVO group. In this role, I delivered design for agent tooling, design systems and grid flexibility solutions.L
User Experience Lead
LVMH Digital Apr 2018 - May 2019 • 1 yr 2 mosI collaborated with large and small brands within the LVMH group to help them understand the people behind the products. I mentored and coached teams in design, Lean UX and product strategy so that the things we built could positively impact customers and provide true value. My team and I were committed to identifying opportunities internationally within the group so we could improve the digital landscape of LVMH one project at a time. Clients: Dior, BVLGARI, Tag Heuer, Rimowa, PatouO
Senior User Experience Designer
OVO Energy Sep 2017 - Sep 2019 • 2 yrs 1 moLed product teams during OVO Energy's rebrand & launched carbon saving customer proposition, 'OVO Beyond.' I teamed up with design, product & engineering to build bridges between previously isolated teams. My main objective was to highlight by example that everyone benefits when these disciplines work in harmony. I met some truly incredible people, solved some fascinating problems and felt truly embraced into the OVO culture.Education
T
The Manchester Metropolitan University, England
BA (Hons) Design & Art Direction, Design Sep 2008 - Aug 2011C
City University, London
Human Rights Law , LawMar 2019 - Jun 2019C
Copenhagen Institute of Design
Turning People Into Teams, DesignAug 2019 - Aug 2019C
Copenhagen Institute of Design
People Centred Research, Design Research Aug 2016 - Aug 2016T
The Manchester Metropolitan University, England
Foundation Degree, Art & Design, Design Sep 2007 - Aug 2008How Pangea Works
Effortlessly discover top talent
We’ve distilled the candidate search from endless hours down to just a few minutes. Using Pangea’s AI-powered search tools, you can find top fractional talent able to take on your next project. Our system looks at your company’s niche and your needs to find the perfect match faster than any traditional hiring platform.Start working with talent today
The top talent on Pangea is ready to get started with you right now. You can message or hire a candidate right from their profile page and start assigning work as soon as they respond. And the best part? Pangea’s fractional contract structure lets you start small and ramp up as your needs change, keeping your costs manageable and your team’s capabliities flexible.Track work and invoices in one place
Assign tasks, track progress, and complete invoices all on Pangea. We’ve combined every part of the hiring process into one platform to eliminate the miscommunication that’s unavoidable on other freelance platforms. We even send out 1099s to your contractors at the end of the year!Talk with a Talent Expert
Members of our team are available to help you speed through the hiring process.Available NowBook a Call
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