I keep getting handed the version of the problem that doesn't have a product yet.
Apparently I have a type.
I'm Jess, a product designer based in Melbourne with 15 years in design, the last nine of them spent as the founding or first design hire at four companies in a row.
A GP's frustration with how little his patients could tell him between appointments became CareMonitor. A founder's bloated, hard-to-use MVP at EngineRoom became something business analysts could actually work with. A Monash spinout with no product yet became n0de, where I built a research practice from nothing. And now at TeamHiiv, I'm the design lead on an agentic collaboration product, working alongside two founders who handed me a vibe-coded MVP and told me UX would be a strategic lever.
I'm at my best as a founding design voice
Someone who can hold the strategic frame, build the research practice from scratch, and still be the one doing the hands-on design work. Across four companies I've had to get fluent in genuinely different kinds of complexity, healthcare data, workforce and skills data, business analytics, sustainability data, and now agentic AI. That range is the evidence it's a transferable method, not a lucky fit in one industry. I also have an unquenchable thirst for learning, so new industries, new subject matter and new takes on a problem space really excite me.
I’m drawn to problems that are still being defined, not already scoped down into a checklist.
Products that need to turn complex, high-stakes information into something a non-specialist can actually use and trust. I've found that kind of work in climate and energy transition so far, and I'm eager to be in that space again, working in an AI-native product, to help solve for a meaningful and critical problem of our time.
I use AI daily, for research synthesis, for prototyping, and for building actual AI-assisted product experiences.
At n0de in 2023 I was manually chaining ChatGPT steps together to speed up how we built climate action plans, before agentic was a word anyone used for that. Now at TeamHiiv I'm designing an actual agentic collaboration product, so that thread runs three years deep.
I build research practices where none exist.
I've done it twice now, at n0de and again at TeamHiiv, and I run continuous discovery across enterprise and SME audiences. I've designed everything from zero to one product concepts through to board-ready presentations for leadership teams.
Currently
I'm open to founding, lead, principal, or staff product designer roles, ideally somewhere the problem is still being defined rather than scoped down to a checklist. Based in Melbourne, open to remote. If that sounds like what you're building, I'd love to hear about it.
I love to be a full-spectrum human
Outside of the product design life, I lead a femme-run art collective called Aunty Maria’s, co-founded an immersive music and events collaborative, Flavius, I'm an LED hoop performer, a crochet artist and community builder.
I love a challenge, am deeply curious and enjoy pushing myself out of my comfort zone to continually grow.