Lead UX
Designer

mirrOR is a live streaming platform used during surgical procedures, connecting operating theatres to remote experts via smart glasses. Surgeons share their point-of-view in real time while receiving guidance, annotations and support from specialists anywhere in the world. The stakes are high — this interface operates in a live surgical environment, where every second and every interaction matters.

Since launch, the mirrOR interface had accumulated features organically — each added in response to a user need, but without a holistic view of the whole. The result was a toolbar packed with controls competing for attention at exactly the moment users needed to focus most: mid-surgery, under pressure, with no margin for error. The brief was to simplify the interface without losing functionality.

I conducted 6 user interviews across three groups: surgeons (primary users), customer service agents who join calls live to problem-solve in real time, and product managers. A consistent pattern emerged: the interface contained far more controls than were ever needed during a live procedure. Users were navigating around features they never touched to reach the 5–6 they relied on every time. I also ran an icon recognition test on the existing icon set — particularly the glasses controls — to identify which icons were understood intuitively and which caused hesitation or confusion.

In a high-pressure, high-stakes environment, visual noise isn't just an inconvenience — it's a risk. Every unnecessary element on screen is a potential point of hesitation at a moment when hesitation costs time. The redesign needed to surface the essential and get everything else out of the way, without removing it entirely.

Designing for expert users in high-stakes environments taught me that simplicity isn't about removing features — it's about making the right things effortless to find at the right moment. If I were approaching this today, I'd push further into error-state design and accessibility: what happens when a connection drops mid-procedure, and how does the interface communicate that clearly without adding panic? I'd also want to explore whether some secondary controls could become truly contextual — appearing only when relevant within the surgical workflow.

Trade show attendees were overwhelmed by directories of thousands of exhibitors, with no meaningful way to find who was actually relevant to them. Discovery was essentially a manual search problem — time-consuming, frustrating, and leading to poor event ROI for visitors. RX Global needed a smarter approach that could scale across their portfolio of 250+ events and brands.

I led UX design end-to-end — from initial discovery through to launch — for an AI-powered recommendations engine built on AWS Bedrock using large language models. The system delivers personalised exhibitor and supplier suggestions based on both explicit user input and implicit behavioural signals (navigation patterns, dwell time, interactions).

Designing for LLM-powered features requires a fundamentally different approach to UX — you're not designing deterministic flows but probabilistic experiences. Managing user expectations around AI confidence, handling edge cases gracefully, and building trust incrementally were the most interesting design challenges I've worked on. The project also reinforced how critical it is to involve engineers early in the design process when the output space is defined by model behaviour rather than fixed logic.

FIBO is one of Europe's largest fitness industry trade shows, but like many large conventions, visitor engagement beyond passive browsing was limited. The challenge was to design an experience that drove active exploration of the event floor, increased dwell time at exhibitor stands, and created memorable moments that visitors would share — all without disrupting the flow of a live event.

I conceived and designed an augmented reality treasure hunt that transformed the convention floor into a gamified discovery experience. Visitors used their smartphones to hunt for hidden AR markers placed throughout the event, unlocking challenges, prizes, and exclusive exhibitor interactions along the way.

Designing for physical spaces requires a completely different mental model to screen-based UX. Environmental context, crowd dynamics, and the unpredictability of real-world conditions become design constraints you can't prototype away. The project taught me to design with much wider tolerances — and to get comfortable making real-time design decisions on the floor during a live event.