Raw.Studio | Strategy, UX UI & Branding Agency

Branding, design systems, product design, you name it! At Raw.Studio, I bring my experience and skills in all three areas to lead and create a holistic design direction and strategy for digital products and brands who seek to disrupt their industry.

My responsibilities include:
• Plan and facilitate workshops to align and unpack client needs, translating them into clear requirements, business objectives, and actionable design briefs.
• Lead a team of product designers and UX researchers, mentoring best practices in UX, UI, design systems, and design craft — raising the bar for quality and consistency.
• Define and lead design strategy and direction, ensuring alignment with project goals, client needs, user expectations, and business objectives.
• Facilitate & translate user research into insights, concepts, user flows, designs, and prototypes.
• Design seamless, end-to-end UX journeys with a focus on customer needs and business impact.
• Deliver end-to-end projects efficiently, balancing speed with exceptional quality and attention to detail.
• Adapt across industries, covering all types of projects — from brand design to marketing websites to mobile-first app experiences.
• Build interactive prototypes to support sales pitch for fund raising and UX research (such as A/B testing).
• Establish and evolve scalable design systems for clients, ensuring efficiency, consistency, and brand alignment.
• Present work confidently to clients and internal teams, clearly communicating rationale and design decisions.
• Build trust and strong rapport with clients as a design partner and consultant.
• Collaborate closely with developers to ensure designs are feasible, accessible, and implemented to a high standard.
• Maintain high proficiency in Figma and design systems, applying design thinking methodologies throughout.

Design Lead

Self-Employed

On the side, I design brand identities and strategies for small local businesses and creatives. My process includes:
• understanding the needs and wants of the client
• conducting research and analysis on the brand’s position in the competitive industry and market
• identifying the brand’s vision and values
• developing and presenting concepts for logo and other brand elements
• applying brand on print and digital collaterals
• providing ready-to-print files

Freelance Brand Designer

Lendi

I was the design lead for the newly established design system team. Our team’s focus was building a design system that was accessible and usable for our customers, but also would improve the efficiency and productivity of our consumer’s work and process (designers and developers).

A few of my key responsibilities included:
• leading and establishing a collaborative design process for the team
• creating a backlog of components that was relevant and driven by real use cases in our platform experience
• leading and prioritising our backlog and getting buy-in from our stakeholders
• leading design decisions and ensuring team is focused on meeting OKR
• leading the end-to-end design process of design foundations and components
• collaborating with developers on build solutions, such as API sparring 
• managing design tools and governance
• leading visual design of design team and ensuring the right components and patterns are used for consistency

Lendi and Aussie was going through a merge in this time, so our team’s focus was also making sure our platform experience was brand-aware. This meant we had to establish and build a theming mechanism that our components would use. This would enable our platform experience to be seamlessly themed with a simple flick of a switch. Few key responsibilities included:
• informing developers of desired outcome that would inform their solution approach on theming
• establishing semantic layer for our design foundations (typography, colour and border radii)
• supporting developers in build

Design Lead in Design Systems

I was the dedicated product designer for a cross-functional team that focused on collecting information about our customer’s financial situation, needs and wants, so that we can provide the best home loan recommendations that suits them. 

Few key responsibilities included:
• leading and managing the end-to-end design process (from discovery to design handoff)
• managing and aligning stakeholders on design vision and objectives
• collaborating with designers, PM, BA & developers to produce a minimal viable product that is desirable, viable and feasible
• presenting recommended design solutions to product team and execs for review and approval
• storytelling to take team on the journey of the design process and thinking behind design solution.
• documenting design decisions and feedback

Outside of this role, I also worked on:
• design components for CMS
• establishing design foundations and components for Lendi’s new design system 
• pitched and led the buy-in of transitioning from sketch to figma
• established new design process on figma, including creating a component library, file management and more.

Senior Product Designer

THERE

I was part of the environmental branding team that specialises in wayfinding strategy and design. We created user experience in the physical space using visual and digital cues to ensure that they get from point A to B without feeling lost. I was in charge of managing and designing the end-to-end process of translating this into a digital experience.

Few key responsibilities include:
• assisting in developing a wayfinding strategy
• conducting competitive analysis,
• creating user-friendly and interactive maps
• developing and presenting wireframes and prototypes
• constructing tender documentations for final artwork and more

UX/UI designer

Westpac Group

I was part of the customer experience team of St.George Bank Group Internet and Mobile Banking. The team works in a fast-paced environment and we are constantly collaborating with researchers, scrum teams and key stakeholders to deliver an experience that is desirable for our customers, feasible and beneficial for the business.  

A few of my key responsibilities includes:
• developing and presenting wireframes, prototypes and multi-brand visual designs (St.George, Bank of SA and Bank of Melbourne)
• auditing all visual designs produced by the team prior handover to scrum teams to ensure consistency of patterns
• conducting customer research (including but not limited to competitive analysis, usability testing, customer data analysis, NPS)
• regularly presenting ideas and updates in workshops, meetings, presentations, ranging from 1 to over 50+ attendees.

Experience Designer

In this year, Westpac gave me the opportunity to work in multiple teams (research, strategy and delivery) to understand and gain experience in their end-to-end design process.

A few of my responsibilities involved assisting in customer testing, applying qualitative and quantitative research methods to gather customer data, applying design and data analysis methods to identify patterns and insights of this collected data, followed by applying this analysed data to drive decisions and deliver wireframes and prototypes for a multi-brand company (Westpac, St.George, Bank of SA and Bank of Melbourne)

Junior Experience Designer

Worked closely with senior designers and creative director on branded property development and environment projects for clients such as Rabobank, Ovolo Hotel and more. Projects involve understanding and identifying the client's needs; and efficiently developing the best strategy in response to this with design.

Junior Graphic Designer

Understanding the creative process of THERE studio and adapting to assist senior designers in projects. Had the opportunity to lead a project and develop a creative response for the brief.

Graphic Design Intern

Hi, I’m Akina — a designer who’s happiest in crafting beautiful and effortless experiences from  business challenges.

My expertise spans brand strategy, brand identity design, product design (UX/UI), design strategy, leadership, and building design systems — from creating new systems from scratch to translating legacy frameworks into modern, scalable platforms.

Over the past decade, I’ve worked across 10+ industries — from health to fintech, education to travel — adapting to diverse teams, clients, and environments including start-ups, creative agencies, corporates, and small design studios.

Akina Lam

Prospa.

Lead Service Designer

Senior Service Designer

Sarah Heimeier Design

Coaching, Speaker and Workshop topics - Service Design, Leadership, Frameworks, Design Thinking, Career Progression, Design Research, Digital Transformation, Confidence, Influence, Relationship Building, Stakeholder Management, Design Process, Delivering and Articulating Business Value, Embedding Design

Book in for Design Coaching here - https://calendly.com/sarahheimeier

Speaker, coach and workshop facilitator

Led research on customer behaviour to uncover pain points and opportunity areas, and redesign products and services to improve customer experiences. Facilitate strategic alignment, company vision and co-design workshops to help teams solve specific customer and business problems and drive innovation. 

Key responsibilities:
•	Design and envision current and future state experiences, and create high quality artefacts for presentations, stakeholders and teams. Including: storyboards, service blueprints, roadmaps, design principles and value propositions
•	Plan and conduct user research, within multidisciplinary teams, to develop and test prototypes and new service propositions, including low and high-fidelity prototypes for digital and non-digital services
•	Facilitate and lead teams through design projects from defining the problem space to the opportunity areas, and own the design and implement of projects 
•	Work with stakeholders to help deliver product releases, prioritise features, and create fully functional prototypes of experiences
•	Create and lead Human Centred Design training and helped teams apply the methods to their role

Service Designer | Strategic Designer

Atlassian

Employed to lead the research for Confluence, one of Atlassian's core products, to transform the user experience through qualitative and quantitative research and inform the user experience and establish new initiatives. Trained teams in research methods and managed regular user research to ensure teams and designs were customer led.

Key responsibilities:
•	Responsible to conduct and assist with research product wide research and understood and managed expectations of stakeholders and identified research needs.
•	Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify research objectives, plan and conduct user research activities.
•	Work with various qualitative and quantitative research techniques such as contextual inquiries, interviewing, usability testing, A/B testing, card sorting and surveys.
•	Create user experience assets such as personas, storyboards, journey maps, wireframes, and prototypes.
•	Present and communicate actionable research findings through compelling stories to project teams.

User Experience Researcher

Shadowmaker

Managed and produced detailed 3D designs and 2D drawings of products for manufacture and installation. Responsible for product design and development of a wide range of sculptures, instillations and commercial products. Communicate progress of work, roadblocks and delivery timelines to team members and management. 

Key responsibilities:
• CAD modelled concept sketches
• Produced drawings from 3D models for approval and client sign off
• Created fabrication drawings and files for manufacture
• Assisted and supported  the director on a range of projects from concept design to delivery
• Projects: Barangaroo Shell Wall (Sydney), Boxing day tsunami memorial (Canberra)

Graduate Industrial Designer

Atomic Elf

In charge of taking projects from ideation and concept stage to help get products to market. Created high-quality conceptual renderings and marketing materials for presentations and client proposals. 

Key responsibilities:
• Worked to develop a product that solves a problem through the use of interactive technology
• Developed ideation and concept sketches to fulfil a given design brief
• Produced mock ups, models, and prototypes to explore and validate design concepts with user feedback
• Resolved design problems as they were realised during testing

Industrial Designer

Service Design | Design Research | Strategy | Design Speaker | Coach | Good Design and James Dyson Award Winner | altMBA | x-Atlassian

www.sarahheimeier.com
I love carrying out design research, understanding human behaviour and defining insights and opportunities to help craft great experiences and help organisations thrive. I've worked across User Experience Research, Strategic Design and Service Design. 

I'm experienced in defining future state experiences and roadmaps to help with the delivery of solutions that are viable for the business, feasible to create and desirable for customers. This also involves projecting our thinking into the future and understanding what might change with human behaviour and technology.

My work style is focused around collaborating with stakeholders and taking them on the design journey. This means everyone is aligned and I can feed in their expertise to help understand and solve problems.

I enjoy sharing my knowledge through mentoring and coaching other designers and team members in Human Centred Design. I've ran ongoing Human Centred Design training programs with teams to help them solve large customer and business problems, and mentored them throughout their projects.

I look forward to tackling difficult problems, co-designing and testing minimal loveable products, and planning and facilitating ongoing design sprints. Or anything research related. 

I enjoy learning, challenging, and stretching my abilities. This means I've done lots of different courses - including improv, life drawing, the altMBA and business strategy courses to name a few. 

I won the National James Dyson Award for Australia and contributed to winning three Good Design Awards for Goals 360 (Gold Winner, Best in class and Winner). 


Book in for coaching with me to elevate your design skills and career - https://calendly.com/sarahheimeier/60min



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