Simon Taylor

About

My name is Simon, I’m a UX/UI Designer living and working in Toronto. I have a professional background as a digital producer, project manager and content designer. 

My passion in life is solving problems and finding ways to make things better.

Connecting with people, empathising with them, understanding their needs and finding a creative solution, or uncovering a new insight, approach or point of view are the very things that fuel this passion.

Background

Creative thinking has always been a part of my life. 

My educational background in music and visual art opened me up to a world of non-verbal communication. It taught me how to convey ideas without words, solve problems intuitively, and deliver design solutions that spoke for themselves.

Content Designer

Working as a content designer for a UK ecommerce startup allowed me to apply and develop my visual communication and design skills.

The benefit of working in a small, agile company was that I got to wear many hats (graphic design, UI design, branding, product photography, information architecture & copywriting) and take full ownership of my creative output.

Most importantly, I gained insight into how a business works.

I quickly learned that designers need to understand not just user-centred design, but also data-driven design, process-centred design and designing for the business objectives of the company.

Digital Producer

As a digital producer, I lead the design and creation of multiple video-based online learning products, managing a team of graphic designers, web designers, video producers and content designers.

I quickly found that though everyone excelled at their work, when all the pieces were stitched together something was absent. Each unit had focused on their work, but what was missing was the bigger picture understanding of how the user would be interacting with all the elements once they were combined.

We had an opportunity to shift human-centred design to the core of our process. 

The Aha! Moment

As I worked to promote user-centred design thinking across the teams I earned the informal title of ‘Guardian of the UX’.  

This was my ‘aha! moment’; where I fully grasped the potential of user experience design. 

I was just beginning to scratch the surface and I knew I wanted to fully immerse myself. This lead me to the full-time User Experience Design course at Brainstation, which I completed in 2017. 

Next

I’d love to work as a UX/UI Designer with a team that is obsessed with crafting incredible user experiences. 

If you have a passion to craft amazing experiences for your users, let’s collaborate!