Nick Jacob

Dulux

Led product design for Find a Painter - https://dulux.com.au/find-a-painter - a key Dulux Group service offering, driving improvements in engagement and user experience.

Australian Sports Commission

Led product design for Sporting Schools - https://ausport.gov.au/schools - an Australian Government grants platform, improving usability and engagement for Australian primary schools.

Department of Education and Training, Victoria

Led end-to-end usability evaluation and accessibility compliance of ChildLink - https://www.vic.gov.au/childlink - a Victorian Government child wellbeing and safety platform, 80% task rate and 95% WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.

Country Fire Authority

Led end-to-end product design for Fire Permits Victoria - https://firepermits.vic.gov.au - a Victorian Government permits platform that unifies and visualises use of fire permits across three emergency services.

Country Fire Authority

Led a product team and end-to-end product design for real-time incident reporting for the Country Fire Authority, Victorian Government Emergency Service, mentoring a junior designer, establishing an Enterprise Design System - https://hydrant-ui.netlify.app/ - ~30% improvement in product delivery efficiency.

Country Fire Authority

Led product design for Warnings Victoria - warnings.vic.gov.au - no longer active - a Victorian Government emergency information and warnings platform, enabling 430,000 concurrent user sessions by Victorian citizens, inspiring Victorian Government to develop VicEmergency: Incidents and Warnings - https://emergency.vic.gov.au

Professional development

• Daily use of Claude for side projects, hobbies, business ideas, health analysis. Vercel V0 and GitHub for design to code, and maintaining portfolio. Completing AI Product Management Course, RMIT University Nanodegree. Watching, learning, reading on SubStack, Maven, Leaders of Awesomeness.

Dulux

• Key achievement: 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

• Key achievement: 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

• Key achievement: 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

• Key achievement: 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

• Key achievement: 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
• Key achievement: 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
• Key achievement: 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
• Key achievement: 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
• Key achievement: 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