Designer of digital products and services that are used by millions of people around the world
I have extensive experience in both the public and private sectors and love to work with teams to help craft simple, elegant, user-centered solutions to design problems.
I'm based in the North West of England, and my preferred working arrangement is remote/hybrid contracts. If you're interested in collaborating and would like to discuss potential projects, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me at tony.carberry@gmail.com.
Here's what I've been up to in recent years...
Senior Interaction Designer at DWP (4 years)
Our wonderful team (Phoenix) had the widest remit at Universal Credit. Our mission statement was to ensure claimants received the correct payment at the right time. We covered housing, carer support, childcare, students and child-related benefits. It was a constantly challenging but gratifying experience.
Working closely with a User Researcher, Data Scientist and Content Designer, we moved at a fast pace. This was especially true during COVID, as it was impossible for claimants to meet with agents face-to-face.
I mapped out new areas of the service we hadn't worked on before, identifying problem areas. I quickly made prototypes using the excellent Gov prototype kit (HTML/JS) and we continuously user-tested them - remotely and in job-centres. We set success measures and iterated the designs, using data to quantify our results.
I regularly presented my designs to over 100 people across the organisation. Gaining stakeholder consensus with developer, policy and legal teams was a constantly challenging aspect of this job.
Mapping and designing claimant user journeys for declaring and updating housing costs.
Mapping and designing claimant user journeys for adding a child to a claim and changing details.
Mapping and designing a typical user journey for an agent response to a claimant's change of details.
Senior/Lead Designer (UX/UI) at Man Utd (18 months)
I worked at Old Trafford on a 'global digital transformation' for the club with HCL - United's digital partners. I established the visual style (use of fonts, photography etc), led the website redesign, and helped to design the app.
The site and app were very successful, in terms of fan response and advertising revenue. The app was the most downloaded free app in the world at one point, and won several awards. The site still uses most of my designs 7 years later (and still looks pretty fresh!).
I ran workshops with different stakeholders across the club to understand their pain-points and needs. From this, I established a workflow for the editorial team to create content that would get the best out of the incredible stream of photography available.
Collaborating closely with United's Product Team, I designed an extensive set of components that would work across the site and app, testing prototypes with staff, stakeholders and fans. I then ran workshops on how to build custom layouts (pages, articles etc). Accessibility was a crucial factor to consider and we worked hard to achieve an AA rating.
This was a massive project and I could talk about it for hours. One other thing to note... I played in United's staff football team every week. There is a photo circulating of me wearing a full United kit whist playing the annual match against the Man City staff at the Etihad. I support Liverpool. To this day, I still get stick from friends for this.
Homepage: As it was the first thing users see on the site, I wanted this 'news' block to follow a grid but was wary of it looking too generic.
News cards: I designed a workflow for the editor to select either a 'hero' or 'info' card state. This broke up the generic feel but wasn't too 'wild'.
Homepage: I proposed and designed a component system, allowing editors to create different layouts to reflect the different needs across the season.
Article page: United wanted articles to feel more like a news site than a sports site, while still showing off the photography.
Article page: I designed a set of components for editors to use to bring their articles to life eg video, tweets, stats, quotes etc.
Matchday: I designed this layout showing live data, and made a set of matchday components for editors eg polls, updates, video etc.
Stats cards: Working with Opta for the live data, I designed these cards for editors to use across the site and app.
MUTV: I designed this program guide and a set of cards to advertise the offering across the site, to bring the MUTV channel online.
Collections: I designed the 'Collections' - a group of related content types for the app, including articles, quotes, images, videos etc.
Senior UX Designer at Co-op Digital (6 months)
I worked on the Web Team, who were integrating the wider Co-op family of businesses’ core services into an in-house digital solution, after years of out-sourcing to agencies.
I helped to migrate the old Co-op Food website to a new platform. We service-mapped out the customer experience (both online and offline) and I redesigned and restructured the Offers and Deals area.
I helped evolve Co-op’s visual design offering and establish a fresh, coherent design language. I created a set of design patterns and components to hold most of the content on the main Co-op site. They needed to be simple and versatile enough for the (non-creative, non-techy) Food Team to build visually harmonious pages in the CMS.
I worked on the redesign of the main Co-op homepage. Building on the work I’d done on the content components, we designed components to hold content from across the business in various layouts, depending on context (Seasonal Offers etc).
Individual product pages: linking products to information on fair-trade etc, to reinforce one of Co-op's unique selling points - ethical sourcing.
Deals: I redesigned this section of the site, working closely with stakeholders across the food chain. A surprisingly tricky job!
Deals: I redesigned this section of the site, working closely with stakeholders across the food chain. A surprisingly tricky job!
We designed a component system to be used across the site for the homepage and information pages, for example giving information on ethical sourcing.
Senior UX Designer at Booking.com (2.5 years)
I originally joined the Insurance team. When I joined, the Insurance 'attach' rate (ie how many people book insurance with their car rental) was at a record low, following some legally enforced changes as to how the product was sold. In a series of sprints over a year, our team ran hundreds of A/B experiments on the main site, and the Insurance attach rate got steadily higher throughout the year, surpassing expectations.
I ran UX workshops with team members -benchmarking, experience mapping, card-sorting, crazy-8s, dot marking etc - and held weekly sessions with members of the Copy & Legal teams to edit the designs into compliance, and to get sign-off.
I coded up prototypes using CSS/HTML/JS (to AA accessibility standards) and used Power BI, ClickTale and Google Analytics to filter and interpret the data coming in from the A/B experiments, which we used along with surveys and remote user-testing (WhatUsersDo, Usabilla).
I worked with the 'Premium' team, designing a fully compliant customer journey for a major initiative called 'Packages', and worked with the 'Replatforming' team on a site-wide UX/UI refresh.
In my second stint at Booking, I worked with the head office in Amsterdam to establish the UX and UI behind the 'Genius' loyalty program. I also worked on the 'Booking/Cars' team for a few months, designing a set of patterns and components to use across the 'Cars' section.
Mapping out user journeys for the Genius loyalty program.
Genius: I designed this layout to catch the eye and explain the concept.
I also worked on the design system.
Various design agencies
Before the in-house mega-contracts came along, I worked as a Web Designer, Flash Animator/Coder, Motion Designer and more at various design agencies across Liverpool, Manchester and London. These experiences provided me with a diverse range of creative challenges and allowed me to develop a well-rounded understanding of digital design principles.
What I'm up to now
After around 8 solid years of heads-down work, I took a sabbatical over Summer 2024. I've mostly used the time to throw myself into learning the new AI tools, which have blown my mind.
I've used Stable Diffusion and Midjourney to create (lots of) artwork based on my nature photography. This has led to me building an online clothing store featuring all-over prints (coming soon!).
I've also devoured a lot of tutorials on software like v0, ClaudeAI, and Cursor to help me with the coding side of things. Using these tools, I built and shipped this simple one-page portfolio site.
I'm fairly proficient with front-end development but can easily get stuck, especially with setting up workflows. I've always worked best when teaming up with a dedicated front-end coder to get me out of trouble, but now I feel like I have this as part of my toolkit.
Strange and exciting times!