Rob Scherer

Design Leader

Greater Melbourne Area

About

I am passionate about leading teams through the creation of great products that delight the people who use them. Over the past 20 years I've been influential across the sales, service, product development and IT functions at leading Australian companies. A pragmatic, commercially focused and goal oriented designer, I blend customer need with technology capability to craft useful, usable and pleasurable experiences. As a design leader, I focus on coaching and growing the capability of my team as well as educating others on the value and importance of design. Always learning and often wrong. I have strong opinions but I hold them loosely. In 2012 I co-founded Magitest, the first iOS application for mobile usability testing. We released the Magitest browser and native app SDK in February 2013 and completed a successful sale of the company in 2015. Specialties: leadership, coaching, interaction design, form design, information architecture, mobile design, content strategy, web analytics, A/B testing, copywriting, contextual enquiry, user evaluation & testing, wireframing, prototyping, SEO, XHTML, CSS, web standards, facilitation, collaborative design.

Experience

  • SEEK (11 yrs 5 mos)
    • Design Lead
      Sep 2020 - Present · 5 yrs 11 mos

    • UX Design Team Lead
      Mar 2015 - Sep 2020 · 5 yrs 7 mos

      Lead the UX team, strategy, and vision for SEEK's advertiser products.

  • User Experience Manager at Betfair
    Mar 2011 - Mar 2015 · 4 yrs 1 mo

    Responsible for Betfair Australia's multi channel user experience design strategy and delivery.

  • Co-Founder at Magitest
    Oct 2012 - Feb 2015 · 2 yrs 5 mos

    Magitest is mobile usability testing software for mobile sites and native apps. www.magitest.com Magitest was sold in October 2014.

  • SEEK (11 yrs 1 mo)
    • Experience Designer
      Sep 2006 - Mar 2011 · 4 yrs 7 mos

      Develop a deep understanding of SEEK's jobseeker and advertiser needs and design interfaces that ensure they have great experiences when using our products. Adopt a user centered design approach and champion the user to aid the business in the creation of outstanding, innovative, world class products. Interaction design – design and documentation of user interface and experience requirements Form design – design for completion and error reduction/recovery Information architecture – Develop affinity diagrams, site maps and card sorts to ensure optimum depth and breadth of navigation Content strategy – define, gather and create content required by products Web analytics – define success metrics, monitor performance with Omniture Site Catalyst and Nielsen Netratings SiteCensus and tweak designs as required A/B testing – design and implement tests using Omniture Test & Target (T&T). Managed the implementation of T&T at SEEK Process mapping / business analysis – define, document, communicate and manage ongoing website enhancement process Copywriting – create content and micro copy Contextual enquiry and persona development – developed jobseeker and advertiser personas User evaluation & testing – develop testing materials, conduct user research sessions, document & communicate results and continuously iterate the design Wireframing & prototyping – paper, Visio, Axure, and OmniGraffle SEO – Define SEO requirements and lead the implementation of friendly URLs, decoupled HTML/CSS/JS, HTML document structure and META data improvements

    • UI Development Team Lead
      Mar 2004 - Sep 2006 · 2 yrs 7 mos

      Leadership and direction for a team of 7 UI Developers. The UI Development team is responsible for taming the complexity of SEEK's web applications and delivering an efficient, user friendly interface.

    • UI Developer
      Feb 2002 - Feb 2004 · 2 yrs 1 mo

      Front end web development, search engine optimisation, information architecture, prototyping, usability testing, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET

  • Real Estate Sales Consultant at K + P Smyth Pty Ltd
    Apr 1997 - Feb 1999 · 1 yr 11 mos

    Listing and selling real estate