Rebecca Forbes

Senior User Experience Architect and Digital Product Designer with over 16 years of experience creating inclusive, user-centred digital products and services. 

 Accessibility and inclusive design is not extra, it’s a given; the digital world is for everyone. 

(Aug 2019 to Nov 2022)

Product Lead - Clinical trial portal:  Project managed and lead a UX team in the research and creation of a clinical trials platform architecture blueprint. 

UX Lead on a Software As a Medical Device (SAMD) gaming technology to restore stereoscopic (3d) vision in patients with amblyopia: Worked on the proof of concept for clinical trials and the end product for patients and healthcare professionals (to prescribe, track and administer the game treatment).  Worked closely with ophthalmologists, the inventors of the technology, UbiSoft, and the creators of the initial concept. Managed external teams of researchers and UI designers. 

New gold-standard stereoscopic vision digital assessment (FDA approval and patent pending); On-prescription portal of specially adapted computer games (in collaboration with Ubisoft), to be played wearing 3D glasses for 1 hour per day for eight weeks; Patient portal: games, kids’ mode, therapy tracker, stereoscopic measurement tool, 3d glasses.; Healthcare practitioner portal: Patient view of where patients are in their therapy and their patented stereoptic measurements (also recorded by the software). 

UX Lead on a Multiple Sclerosis symptom tracker: Redeveloped a tool for doctors to assess, track and compare an individual patient’s MS symptoms over time to make appropriate treatment decisions. 

UX Lead on connected autoinjectors: Goals: to improve patient adherence and reduce use errors when self-injecting for two separate biologic drugs. Managed external UI design team. Worked on research and experience mapping to determine attitudes, behaviours, barriers and opportunities around self-injecting. Ran Design Thinking workshops to innovate around solutions. Commissioned research to further explore and develop solutions to take into prototyping. Connected app development (including UI design, information architecture, user access (e.g. app store, QR codes), stakeholder management and managing sign-off workshops, copywriting, and processing for translation.

Project Manager & UX Lead - New translation tools and processes.  Workshopped pain points of language translation on several projects. Authored a new language translation process for all software and packaging.   Managed a pilot project to test the process and capability of the top vendors. 

UX Expert  - Novartis Design System: Contributed modular Whitelabel components and journeys for reuse in Figma. Developed guidelines for use and application to ensure accessible, consistent design that can mature and incorporate learnings from regulations (e.g. data storage and security) of usage patterns and user testing optimisation, changes in device operating system capability (e.g. differences between IOS and Android). 

Focusing on the mortgage value stream, making mortgages easier for customers to understand and find what’s right for their circumstances.  Ran stakeholder workshops to understand the impact of Brexit on the markets and align on our growth goals. Aligned with sales and marketing teams to achieve growth objectives. Achieved goal of increasing market share of UK mortgages through reducing time and effort to get a remortgage quote through Lloyds and their brands (Bank of Scotland and Halifax. (Nov 2018 - March 2019)

Managed the UX&D team. Created content-driven frameworks and pattern libraries, visual and language style guides and libraries to be used throughout Accenture on every platform.  I worked on applications to be used by Accenture employees (over a million, worldwide).  Projects worked on (primarily for Accenture staff — over a million worldwide) include: An application to control IoT (smart) office buildings, a time and expenses application,  an employee recognition scheme that contributes towards bonuses, recruitment software, and employee profiles for internal reference and for external clients. (Nov 2016 - Mar 2018.  Contract)

Leading on translating research into user needs and architecting content-driven systems.  Lead on secure sign-in project and online onboarding for new customers and the mobile app.   (Jan - Oct 2016.  Contract)

Working on the future Williams & Glyn bank. Lead a team of UX and content designers (both vendors and internal) responsible for architecture and production using Agile methodology to capture content requirements driving atomised build of the CMS (Adobe Experience Manager). Continual validation of the architecture, design and content through research cycles. (June - Nov 2015.  Contract)

Lead a team of UX and designers to produce a brand new responsive digital banking platform (web and app). Information architecture, wireframing, user testing and iterative design, accessibility consultation.  (Sept 2014 to March 2015. Contract)

Research and development for a new suite of research software for conducting global qualitative research.  (March 2014 - Oct 2014)

User Experience Lead for one of the UK’s ‘Big  6’ energy companies. Working on digital transformation for online accounts, smart metering, and a major rebranding. 

Major rebranding and rebuilding of the custom Content Management System to be fully responsive.  I drove continual optimization through research and testing.  (June 2013 - March 2014 - Contract)

Freelance feature writer for the largest independently organised TED event; TEDx Salford. (March 2013 - 2016) 

Lead UX Consultant  - Coats PLC industrial portal & Coats Crafts

Principal UX consultant for a global client, Coats PLC; working on their first industrial portal, used by clients like NASA and Prada. Coats Industrial is the world's leading thread manufacturer and the second largest zip manufacturer.  Migrating data from SAP to Tridion.  Architecting the Tridion CMS to hold the industrial portal and be maintainable and updateable by the client.  

Lead UX Consultant - The Co-operative Group induction portal

I created the strategy, branding, tone of voice. Site architecture, using The Co-operative Group’s Episerver CMS.  Reusing existing templates and components where possible, reconfiguring components to hold scalable and maintainable content changes.  Wireframes, content strategy, tone of voice and copywriting, functional spec, design and  usability testing.  (While contracted to Amaze - Nov 2011 - Nov 2012)

UX manager and digital content owner on the Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland public sites and internet banking platform website and app for four products: Loans, Insurance, Share-dealing, and Wealth Management. Responsible for driving improvements measured in sales volumes, and for architecting solutions for new products and campaigns. User research, accessibility and usability testing on new product development, leveraging existing research and using multivariate testing to drive a program of continual improvements.  (Dec 2010 -  Nov 2011)

Education

• Foundations of Project Management. Google. 2022.
• Writing in the Sciences.  (Distinction).  Stanford University. 2015.
• Teaching English as a Foreign Language Diploma (Grade A with Distinction) .London Centre for Teacher Training. 2003.
• W3Schools certified web programmer. Grade A with distinction.  2005. 
• Law LLB (Hons) Lancaster University. (Undergraduate minor subject in Psychology.) 2001.

Other

PEGA CMS systems training (2018). A Levels in Psychology, Sociology and Economics. 1998, Lloyds Banking Group digital copywriting training.(2011)  In-house SEO training  NHS Choices.(2007)