👋 Hi, I'm Mike.
Experienced design leader with an entrepreneurial streak.
I'm currently building products for public good at Open Government Products.
Prior to that, I scaled the product design team at ShopBack, one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in Asia.
In a past life, I made business software simple at Zendesk with a focus on enterprise, machine learning, and growth.
Earlier in my career, I ran a design studio called Minitheory, and was also an early employee at a Y Combinator fintech startup.
💼 Design Work
More Zendesk projects
Growth team
Cross-Product Onboarding • Zendesk Suite Multi-Product Trial • Enterprise Upsell • Design Systems
Enterprise team
Roles & Permissions • Agent Productivity • Scalability & Reliability • Account Migration • Internal Tools
Chat team
Omnichannel • React Migration • Settings • Machine Learning • Integrations & Legacy
Global Metrics
Discovery Tool for Stocks
Global Metrics Case Study
inDinero
Accounting Software for Small Businesses
inDinero Case Study
🙌 Why you'll enjoy working with me
Mike is one of the smartest, deep-thinking designers I’ve had the pleasure to work with. Whether it’s complex cross-functional card sorting facilitation, driving design direction or documenting design principles, Mike takes it all in his stride.
I worked with Mike on a particularly challenging cross-functional growth project. His considered and methodical approach was very impressive.
Mike exudes the growth mindset and instills confidence in everyone he works with.
––– Mark Wallis, Senior Product Designer at Zendesk
Michael is an amazing designer who is committed to providing the best user experience. We often get glowing reviews of our software, thanks to his contributions. Michael's amazing work ethic, attention to detail, and expert design skills make him a dream to work with.
––– Andrea Barrica, ex-inDinero / ex-500 Startups
Mike is dedicated to the craft of design and continuous growth as a designer. He is inclusive in his design process and is always seeking feedback and input, and using that feedback to improve his designs and design process.
I worked with Mike on a complex information architecture redesign and was impressed with how he brought a wide range of stakeholders into the project, and took them all on the journey throughout the redesign.
Mike was instrumental in defining and documenting the design process we follow at Zendesk. His work on the design process has been used and referenced by many, including our product management partners.
––– Vedran Arnautovic, Senior Design Manager at Zendesk
👷♂️ Building teams
Building high performance teams is my speciality. At ShopBack, scaled a distributed team of designers, researchers and UX writers from 4 to 25 in 2 years. I work with cross-functional stakeholders to define the long term vision across multiple business verticals in 10 markets.
Relationship-based people management approach
Trust is important because it helps teams get through difficult times. It also allows teammates to be more direct and honest in their feedback without fear of damaging the relationship.
I build trust by investing time in one-on-ones with every team member. It becomes a struggle when the workload is heavy, but for the most part my managers and I try to keep this up.
It’s a good way to catch up, but to also hold a safe space to talk about any personal issues. I take the chance to understand my designers more – all their hopes, dreams and fears. And then, I plan out a programme to grow their career.
🧭 Design Strategy
From vision documents to design roadmap planning, a lot of my work is around showing designers and stakeholders which direction we’re heading. At the same time, I’m still comfortable diving into Figma to push pixels.
In 2021 we made a vision video for the company offsite, to inspire ShopBack employees what we are working towards. I drove the creation of the concept, worked with my team on storyboards and the script, and collaborated with a fantastic film director to explain ShopBack’s value prop in video format.
The reaction from ShopBackers was great. Sales folks started using it with merchants and marketing folks used it for paid ads.
💵 Entrepreneurship
In a past life, I was the co-founder of a design agency called Minitheory. As the CEO, I helped grow the company from 2 to 12 employees over a span of 4.5 years.
My responsibilities included:
- Hiring — creating the interview process, maintaining the hiring pipeline, and establishing a kickass onboarding process that new hires still gush about 4 years on.
- Sales — creating the sales process and maintaining the sales pipeline
- Design process — establishing the team culture and design practice
- Business operations — streamlined operations such as invoicing, expenses using modern tools like Xero
- Firefighting — because, startup 🙃
The biggest contract I won for the company was worth $400,000.
Sleeping on the couch, building our own IKEA furniture, bookkeeping etc. I’ve done it all.
🧘 What I care about
Shokunin spirit
I’m a big fan of cooking shows like Jiro Dreams of Sushi. There’s something to be said about being heads down working at something for years and years until you get good at it. That’s why I admire sushi chef Jiro Ono and what he stands for: grit, working hard and constant improvement.
Craft
Technical skills and mastery
Attitude
Work ethic and the endless pursuit of perfection
Social consciousness
Social obligation for the general welfare of the people
The Japanese word shokunin is defined by both Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries as ‘craftsman’ or ‘artisan,’ but such a literal description does not fully express the deeper meaning. The Japanese apprentice is taught that shokunin means not only having technical skills, but also implies an attitude and social consciousness… The shokunin has a social obligation to work his/her best for the general welfare of the people. This obligation is both spiritual and material, in that no matter what it is, the shokunin’s responsibility is to fulfill the requirement. —Tasio Orate
Team flow
To build great products, you need to work with smart people who will push you out of your comfort zone. I’m hugely influenced by the concept of Team Flow — when people come together and magic happens. We see it all the time in jazz improvisation and sports teams such as Phil Jackson’s Chicago Bulls and L.A. Lakers dynasties. I’m excited by the prospect of getting ‘in the zone’ with some of the best product managers, engineers and designers at Shopback.
Building people
When I started out, senior folks in the community were so kind to grab coffee with me and offer advice. As a self-taught designer finding my way, that meant a lot to me, and I owe these mentors a lot for what I have today. The best thing to do is to pay it forward.
These days, I get a lot of satisfaction from watching people grow – Giving a bit of advice, helping problem solve and unblock projects, career advice, etc. It can be even more gratifying than shipping designs. I believe it’s my calling.
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. —Atticus Finch, To kill a mockingbird
🎤 Speaking & Training
I have a confession: public speaking gives me the jitters. I’m also not what you would consider a smooth talker, but I challenge myself to do it time and again so that the community can learn more about UX.
I believe that designers have a responsibility to evangelise design.
Well, also because I can talk design all day long. 😅
Speaking at Various Meetups
Over the past few years I’ve given talks at these events:
- Design Thinking Workshop for Temasek Polyclinic’s lecturers
🍹 Community Events
Design Events at ShopBack
Over the past 3 years we’ve hosted the ADPList meetup, Friends of Figma, and events for students like General Assembly.
Singapore Dribbble Meetup
The Singapore Dribbble Meetup is a quarterly meetup that I’ve organised for fun starting in 2014. While there are other meetup groups such as the local IxDA chapter and UXSG, they felt like formal networking sessions. With the Dribbble meetups it feels more like a smaller group of designer friends catching up over pizza and beer.
UX Workshop Series
I helped to organise the UX Workshop Series with our friends at AlphaCamp. This initiative consisted of three workshops to help new designers build solid foundations in core UX skills in user research, interaction design and UI design.
Lean UX Week
In 2013, I was the Executive Producer for a conference called Lean UX Week, the first design event of its kind in Singapore that brought Lean UX methodology to the tech ecosystem in Singapore.
We brought in master trainer Janice Fraser, co-founder of design firm Adaptive Path and the company’s first CEO. She was joined by Kate Rutter, also previously from Adaptive Path.
🏖️ Personal life
I’m the father of twin boys, who never fail to disturb my beauty sleep during the weekends. I’m into soccer, video games and recently picked up sim racing.
