About

About this site

In the spirit of the Swahili word elezea, which means to elucidate, explain, clarify, and relate, this webcolumn contains reflections on Technology, User Experience Design and Software Product Development, and how we can all get a little better at what we do.

What I do

I focus on helping teams create and execute software development processes that are efficient and tailored to the unique needs of the business. I further help teams develop their user experience strategy, and I make the strategy real by designing and building products to deliver measurable business results. More specifically, here’s what I spent most of my time on:

User Experience Strategy (Product Discovery, Design Thinking, etc.)
User Exeprience Research
Content Strategy
Interaction Design
Product Management
Product Strategy and Execution

I spent over 6 years based in Silicon Valley, California, and I’m currently based in Cape Town, South Africa. You can get more details about my work on my portfolio page and my LinkedIn profile. If you want to discuss working together you can send me an email.

My story

I’m passionate about designing and building software that people love to use, and I’m currently Head of Product & User Experience Design at South African online retailer kalahari.com.

My professional story starts in Stellenbosch, South Africa, where I completed degrees in Engineering and Information Science, and caught the Internet bug after seeing a full color photo of a mountain slowly come up on the screen through the dial-up connection in our Engineering lab.

After my initial studies I moved to Perth, Australia to complete a Ph.D in Internet Marketing and pursue this Internet thing all the way. I did my dissertation on Social Network Theory and its implications for Marketing and the Web. I met a girl while I lived in Australia, so after completing my studies there I moved to California to pursue her (no it’s not as creepy as it sounds, and yes we eventually got married).

I spent the next 6 years working in Silicon Valley: first at market research firm Survey.com, followed by 4 ½ years in eBay’s User Experience Design group where I got infatuated with the theory and practice of all aspects of Design. My last position at eBay was as Senior Manager of Product Strategy, where my responsibilities included leading a team of strategists who worked with various parts of the organisation to develop and guide product roadmaps and requirements that meet user needs.

I then joined South African startup Yola.com in San Francisco as a Senior Product Manager, where I was responsible for the product vision, strategy, design, and development of a variety of areas of the Yola user experience. In March 2010 our family moved back to South Africa permanently where I established and grew the Product and User Experience teams at Yola’s Cape Town office. In December 2010 I moved to build and head up the Product & Design teams at Kalahari.

User experience design and software development is my obsession, and I’m excited about the great opportunities ahead in the South African Internet space. I blog and tweet regularly about these and other topics, and I also enjoy the speaking circuit, so let me know if you’d like me to do any of that. You can also find me on about.me.

About my workflow

I use a 15″ MacBook Pro. I research and plan posts using Pinboard and Mindnode Pro. I write with iA Writer, nvALT, and MarsEdit. I use a customized Thesis theme on the latest version of WordPress. The site is hosted on Bluehost, with a little help from CloudFlare. I use Coda for all custom coding work.

Disclaimer: You know this but I’ll say it anyway. The opinions in this blog are my own, and does not reflect the views of my employer.

Elezea is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. In short, you may reproduce, reblog, and modify my content, but you must provide proper attribution.