Nick Jacob
Senior designer
Senior Product Designer with 15+ years across government, and non-profit sectors. I specialise in leading and owning the design of enterprise products and transformation projects.
Get in TouchCase Studies
Dulux
Find painters near me
View Case StudyLed product design for Find a Painter, a key Dulux Group marketing qualified lead offering, driving improvements in customer engagement and service experience.
Sporting Schools
Sports grants for schools
View Case StudyLed product design for Sporting Schools, an Australian Government grants platform, improving usability and engagement for schools across Australian and national sporting providers.
Child Link
Accessible and inclusive user testing
View Case StudyLed end-to-end usability evaluation and accessibility compliance of ChildLink, a Victorian Government child wellbeing and safety platform, 80% task rate and 95% WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.
Fire Permits Victoria
Fire permits for Victorian citizens
View Case StudyLed end-to-end product design for Fire Permits Victoria, a State Government permits platform that unifies permits issued by three emergency services.
Experience
Dulux
UX Designer
Feb 2024 — Oct 2025- Selected Case Study: Find a Painter consumer and painter experience (Mobile App, Web, Email)
- Problem: Poor service matching, basic form experience, high enquiry expiry rates, branding
- Action: Synthesised research insights, redesigned matching flow, redesigned service based user journeys, and improved information clarity
- Outcomes: +20% increase in successful matches/enquiries, improved trust and discoverability
Australian Sports Commission
Senior UX Designer
Jul 2022 — Jun 2023- Selected Case Study: Sporting Schools grants platform (Web)
- Problem: Low usability, confusing navigation, inconsistent experience across key user groups, high drop-off across key journeys
- Action: Redesigned information architecture, user flows, and interaction patterns based on analytics and insights, usability testing, actionable roadmap
- Outcomes: Task success improved from ~68% to 85% and System Usability Scale increased from 62 to 78
WISE Employment
Senior UX Designer
Feb 2023 — May 2022- Selected Case Study: UX Evaluation of Onboarding & Conversion Optimisation
- Problem: Poor usability and user experience across key onboarding and conversion journeys for job seekers
- Action: Conducted UX audit of job seeker onboarding and Resume Builder flows, synthesised usability testing insights, and developed actionable recommendations and roadmap for improving onboarding completion and feature adoption
- Outcomes: Enabled targeted, high-impact product improvements
Department of Education and Training, Victoria
Usability and Accessibility Analyst
Jan 2021 — Feb 2022- Selected Case Study: Embedding Usability in Product Development
- Problem: Lack of usability maturity across delivery teams, lack of clarity with stakeholder engagement and expectations
- Action: Multiple round and phase usability testing plans, usability guides and standards, usability evaluation against standards, prototype design solutions to address usability problems, and stakeholder engagement and education
- Outcomes: Enabled engagement with key user groups, internal and external stakeholders. Set usability standards across components, pages, and flows. 80% to 91% task completion rate, less than 2 minute task time
Country Fire Authority
Mid to Senior UX Designer
Sep 2006 — Dec 2020- Selected Case Study: Fire Permits Victoria
- Problem: Manual paper-based, fragmented permit processes across agencies
- Action: Led end-to-end design of unified digital platform for 3 seperate emergency service organisations
- Outcomes: ~50% reduction in manual processing. Improved cross-agency coordination. Enabled greater visibility of fire permit use across Victoria
- Selected Case Study: Incident Reporting System Redesign
- Problem: Time-consuming phone based reporting during emergencies, compounding call-taker workload and priorities, reliance on desktop based legacy system
- Action: Led end-to-end design of real-time reporting for fire brigades, mentored junior designer, end-user interviews and call-taker desk observations
- Outcomes: 25 to 40% faster reporting times. Enabled fire brigades to complete fire reports in real-time. Improved availability of call-takers for higher priority calls. Informed digital strategy for transformation of legacy system
- Selected Case Study: Enterprise Design System (Hydrant UI)
- Problem: Inconsistent user experience, user interaction and duplication of effort, design and development inefficiencies across platform applications
- Action: Established design system, design system roadmap, informed platform strategy
- Outcomes: ~30% improvement in product delivery efficiency. Improved design to developer collaboration. Seeded consistent user experience and interaction across platform applications. Informed digital strategy across platform application portfolio
- Selected Case Study: Public Emergency Platform
- Problem: Access to, and duplication of emergency information across emergency services, inconsistent and stressful user experience during emergencies
- Action: Led end-to-end design of emergency information and warnings on single platform
- Outcomes: 430K+ users during peak events. Mobile-first, responsive access to emergency warnings and information. User experience leadership in stakeholder workshops and committees. Improved usability and access to emergency information and warnings in high-stress scenarios
- Selected Case Study: Fire Investigation Digitalisation
- Problem: Reliance on desktop based legacy system, paper-based fire investigation process, inefficient capture of evidence and investigation findings
- Action: Led end-to-end design of digital fire investigation management system
- Outcomes: On-scene capture of fire investigation evidence and findings. Reduction in duplication of effort and manual handing of information. Increased resolution of fire investigation outcomes. Digital workflow of fire investigation from initial call-out to insurance/court decision
About Me
G'day, I'm Nick Jacob. I'm an experienced designer with broad skills and expertise. I like to take a diplomatic and balanced approach to problem solving and decision making. I enjoy working collaboratively in multidisciplinary cross-functional teams to design and deliver products and services that meet user needs and solve complex business challenges.
