So Kerry, tell us a bit about yourself:
I’ve been a creative person for as long as I can remember, and that fed into my decision to move to Chester from my hometown of Northampton and study Graphic Design at the age of 18. Whilst there, I fell in love both with UX and the city of Chester, and I’ve been immersed in both ever since.
Outside of work, I’m a bit of a foodie, and love trying new and interesting foods and cuisines, I’m a keen baker (much to the appreciation of my colleagues), and I also love to travel and see as many new places as I can.
What is your role in Oxbury and when did you join?
I started back in the early days of Oxbury, in 2019 as the sole UX designer, and as the company has grown, so has the team – so I’m now the Head of UX. I’ve been really lucky to see the company grow from a small team of less than 15 full of ideas, to a fully licensed, and profitable bank with 190 employees. My personal role in that growth was to design the banking dashboards, apps and application forms that all of our customers interact with on a daily basis.
Tell us about your background and how that has led to you working at Oxbury and the role that you are in?
I’ve worked in UX since I graduated, and have hopped about throughout a few fields. My first job out of university was creating health and safety training, including interactive courses such as first aid – which is still one of the most fun work tasks I’ve ever had to date!
After that, I began specialising in Financial Services, and worked for many years honing the skills required to streamline application forms, break down heavy financial data and make things as easy as possible for customers to be able to complete their banking tasks.
It was my experience of working in the finance sector that led to me being contacted to have a conversation with the guys at Oxbury. The funny thing is that actually, I wasn’t even really on the look out for a new role in Financial Services, but after one meeting with the people here, I realised they had something special and exciting, and decided to take the plunge!
How would your colleagues describe you in 3 words?
- Creative
- Thorough
- Methodical
What do you like most in your current role?
UX in Oxbury sits within the IT team, and it’s the best group of people I’ve ever worked with. Quite a few of us have worked together for several years now, and it's such a close knit, friendly and collaborative group of people – I feel really lucky to be a part of it.
Do you have a funny moment you can share that has happened to you at work?
Myself and a group of colleagues were on a call with one of our partners a few years back, and one of the most senior people on the call happened to mention he gave bagpipe lessons to children – and I made a comment about how I didn’t know if that was serious or not. Next thing we knew, he played us to the end of the meeting with some bagpipe music!
What is your proudest moment from working at Oxbury?
Back when Oxbury started, I used to go out and give demonstrations of the dashboards I was designing to give investors and partners an idea of what it was we were going to build. Some of these were giant, and the biggest one of these was 120+ people. It was a really nerve wracking experience – as a designer, I’m not accustomed to speaking to crowds – but was a really proud moment to be able to personally demonstrate my work to that many people, and get such lovely feedback afterwards.
And on top of that, a few months later seeing those dashboards go live and know real users were beginning to use them, was definitely a top moment for me.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself or an interesting, yet unhelpful fact that you know?
Competitive art was once an Olympic sport - From 1912 to 1948, artists could earn medals for painting, music, sculpture, and even architecture.