Alexander Stevens
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Toulouse, France
Toptal member since December 23, 2019
Alexander is a designer and manager with 20 years of experience working in agencies and in-house in London. He has worked with a multitude of clients from startups to FTSE 100 companies. Al’s working style is easy-going, open, and inclusive. He likes to work in fast-moving teams where he can design, ship, learn, and iterate quickly from research through to detailed design and delivery.
Portfolio
Work Experience
Head of User Experience
Auderli
- Served as head of UX, delivering the first MVP of the app into the hands of users in the first six sprints. Oversaw 100% of the design and research, including prototyping and testing.
- Collaborated with a small startup team of eight consisting of the founder, VP of engineering, engineering team, product, marketing, and sales.
- Created and documented numerous design and UX deliverables to support the initial MVP and ongoing initiatives, including high-level flows, user needs analysis, persona documents, and user story maps.
- Created hundreds of Figma app designs for handoff to engineers. Breaking them down into small deliverable chunks and producing clickable prototypes to communicate design intent where necessary.
- Designed large number (40 - 60) of low-fidelity sketches, collaborating with primary stakeholders and iterating ideas rapidly before moving towards higher-fidelity designs.
- Created 30+ pages of design documentation, including style guides, brand guidelines, writing guides, and competitor research.
- Launched payment and plans in four sprints. Launched professionals plan in five sprints.
- Used ProdPad and Miro, collaborating with the product owner, and formulated user story maps based on high-level objectives to help organize and prioritize stories.
- Directed and designed a unique brand and developed and evolved the brand through the app and style guide.
- Designed and built all pages and content on the marketing website initially in Gatsby (static site generator) and later in Webflow, including blog, help sections, pricing, and partner landing pages.
UX Design Consultant
UX Consultancy
- Collaborated closely with the client and agency to formulate ideas and turn them into detailed designs and prototypes.
- Produced prototypes and mid-fidelity designs in Sketch for features for discussion between the client delivery team and agency.
- Produced high-fidelity designs in Sketch, contributing to the continuous delivery of roadmap features.
- Documented work packages in Notion, Miro, and Loom, including interactions and design walk-throughs.
Branding/Web Designer (via Toptal)
Hocking Hills
- Redesigned and documented 13 booking flow screens for a US State Park accommodation website.
- Created an end-to-end clickable prototype to communicate the screens and interactions.
- Created and documented a style guide, color palette, new brand typeface, 60 icons, and brand photography.
- Recorded an end-to-end demo, walking through every interaction and detail of each screen.
UX and UI Designer
Click Travel
- Provided design expertise and assistance to the Product and Engineering teams as a solo designer. The Click Travel (acquired by Travelperk in 2020) B2B SaaS app handled £300 million worth of business and 2,000 B2B clients.
- Owned and implemented incremental improvements to Click's design pattern library, working with a team of front-end engineers, delivering value directly to the 2,000 clients and 10,000 (B2B2C) end users.
- Worked across seven independent engineering teams of 28 engineers and 5 product managers, collaborating with a larger team of 150 remotely across Europe and in Birmingham, U.K.
- Provided research, conceptual design, prototyping, testing, and high-fidelity design across two larger re-design projects and one re-platform-level project.
- Contributed to the team's achievement of a two-fold NPS improvement/increase over my time making improvements with the team.
Lead UX Designer
TUI Group
- Managed a team of 3 – 5 designers within a UX team of 12 at TUI Travel, overseeing a portfolio of specialized businesses, including Travelopia and Crystal Ski, the UK's largest ski operator.
- Acted as a lead designer for a multimillion-pound eCommerce re-platform initiative of the TUI/Travelopia specialist tour operators responsible for 15 million pounds in sales.
- Organized and facilitated workshops with the business across five departments and 100+ individuals. Collaborated with senior stakeholders from six key departments to deliver business objectives and sign-off designs.
- Produced user journeys, screen flows, prototypes, detailed visual design specifications, heuristic analyses, experience maps, and user research to explore, define, and evolve the design for re-designing the eCommerce platform.
- Led the design for the Sovereign brand Design Sprint. It included user research, ideation, a fully clickable prototype (Axure), and multiple moderated research with customer sessions. This resulted in a fully tested prototype that was ready for specification.
- Worked closely with the CRO team, analyzing data and forming hypotheses. This allowed us to create CRO tests using Qubit and VWO to improve the conversion rates of the various brands.
- Organized, attended, and ran tens/hundreds of moderated and unmoderated usability tests, gaining feedback on prototypes, designs, and completed websites.
Lead UX Designer
Crystal Ski, Thomson Lakes and Mountains
- Created a suite of 15 – 20 high-fidelity designs for their eCommerce re-platform project, working from wireframes for the UK's number one ski tour operator. The result drove consistent double-digit growth in online revenue in a tough market.
- Assisted the commercial product owner in designing and developing the UX and UI for a snow report feature, working from wireframes to detailed design.
- Collaborated with commercial teams to design tactical campaigns and A/B testing for landing pages, as well as on-site advertising for tactical eCommerce campaigns.
- Coded and redesigned the suite of HTML marketing templates for Crystal, the UK's number one ski tour operator.
Senior Web Designer
First Choice Holidays
- Was responsible for the art direction of the photographic style used for a new eCommerce platform.
- Improved the flexibility of offer deliveries on the merchandising pages through the use of JavaScript and JSON.
- Collaborated with product on the delivery of key tactical campaigns.
- Designed the seat maps UI screens for the flight only platform Thomson Fly based on supplied wireframes.
Interactive Designer
Designate
- Developed the UI for an award-winning eCommerce platform for P&O Ferries.
- Created email designs and build for many clients including Best Western, P&O Ferries, Welsh Tourist Board, and Transavia.
- Developed the online advertising design for Best Western, P&O Ferries, Welsh Tourist Board, and Transavia.
- Created the full design and coded HTML of various projects including Best Western Hotels, Wales in Style, and Sunstar leisure.
Senior Web Designer
Ardent Creative
- Delivered projects as a full-stack designer for clients.
- Initiated the use of server-side database driven technologies.
- Produced and designed front end and back-end admin systems for clients.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Product Design
Bournemouth University - England
Skills
Tools
Adobe CC, Sketch, Axure RP Pro, Illustrator CC, Adobe Photoshop, InVision, Principle, Lookback, Balsamiq, OmniGraffle, Photoshop CC, Affinity Diagrams, Tower, Sublime Text 2, WebStorm, Framer X, UX Tools, Marvel, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch 2, Miro, Whimsical
Languages
HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript 5, HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Platforms
Axure, Figma, Webflow, Web, Mobile, WordPress, iOS, Android
Industry Expertise
Travel & Leisure, Aircraft & Airlines, Hotels & Lodging, Banking & Finance, Consumer Products, Real Estate, Social Networking
Other
User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Mobile Design, User Flows, Heuristic Analysis, Heuristics, Task Flows, UI Audits, UX Audits, Web Design, Responsive Web Design (RWD), User Interface Engineering (UIE), Human-centered Design (HCD), HCD, Product Design, MVP Design, Design Thinking, Ideation, UX Research, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Conversion, Conversion Rate, Web App UX, Web App UI, Responsive Web Apps, B2B, UX Prototyping, UI Prototyping, Usability, B2C, Mobile UI, Mobile UX, UX Strategy, High-fidelity Mockups, High-fidelity Prototypes, Pen & Paper, Web Animation, Collaborative Design, Co-design, Journey Mapping, Heuristic Reports, Design, Design Systems, Booking, User Testing, User Validation, Validated User Research, Website Redesign, User Journey Maps, Mobile First, Mobile-first Design, UX Design, UI Design, User Research, Information Architecture (IA), Content Strategy, Interaction Design (IxD), Visual Design, UI Style Guides, Style Guides, Component Libraries, SaaS Design, SaaS, Software as a Service (SaaS), Enterprise SaaS, Enterprise, eCommerce, eCommerce UX, eCommerce UI, Responsive, Responsive UI, UI Branding, Typography, Travel Design, Travel, Tourism, Checkout, Empathy Mapping, Wireframing, Typefaces, Jobs to be Done (JTBD), Heuristic Evaluation, Heuristic Review, Usability Heuristics, Usability Testing, Usability Analysis, Mood Boards, Expert Reviews, User Interviews, Stakeholder Interviews, Task Analysis, User Journeys, Mental Model, Personas, User Personas, Persona Design, Prototyping, Rapid Prototyping, Rapid Interactive Prototyping, Email Template Design, Email Design, Luxury Industry, SAP Hybris, Web App Design, App UX, eCommerce Design, eCommerce Web Design, Web UI, Web UX, Mockups, Direct to Consumer (D2C), App UI, Apps, Graphic Design, Websites, Web UI Design, Web UX Design, Presentation Design, Web Application Design, UX Wireframes, Design Leadership, Customer Interviews, Interviews, Qualitative Research, Bootstrap 3+, Semantics, Web Accessibility, Residential Real Estate, Project Estimation, Accessibility, Animated Prototypes, Ideation Workshops, Stakeholder Management, App Design, Mobile App Design, Card Sorting, Story Mapping, Responsive Coding, Responsive Email Templates, Email Templates, UI Animation, jQuery, Bootstrap, Semantic UI, Service Design, Lean Canvas, Affinity Mapping, Angular, AngularJS, AngularUI, Intercom, Google Design Sprints, Design Sprints, Banner Ads, Workshop Facilitation, UX Branding, Branding, Search, Faceted Search, Software, Discovery Workshops, Newsletters, Blogs, Fintech, Optimization, Pitch Deck Design, Presentations, ASP.NET, Photography Styling, Gatsby, Wellness, Finance, Estate Planning, Death Tech, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C), Industrial Design, Engineering Design, 3D Modeling, Azure RP, Loom, Notion, HubSpot, Auth0, MUI CSS, Bulma, Heap, Dashboard Design, Brand Design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Logo Design
Experience
- UI Design - 15 years
- HTML - 15 years
- CSS - 15 years
- Travel - 10 years
- UX Design - 10 years
- Information Architecture (IA) - 7 years
- User Research - 5 years
- Enterprise SaaS - 2 years
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