Lara DScribed
Senior Digital Consultant
Lara has extensive experience as a leader, analyst, content guru, UX & UI interaction analyst & designer, content & communication manager, business analyst & product manager.
All of this from her career starting within the fashion industry in Russia, launching what became one of the highest circulating fashion magazine globally - Glamour magazine.
Lara’s now a lead digital consultant, in the Web Platforms & Products group, at the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga.
Persona Building
Persona building is the ultimate who, what, why, how, when, & where exercise.
Leading the charge to truly get to know the education audience in NZ. So much of the knowledge about audiences is based on assumptions or outdated info & stats.
It’s important to make sure you keep touching base with your audience, to let them know you care about who they are, what they’re after, what they’re trying to achieve, what makes them tick, what painpoints they have, what devices they have access to, what channels they gravitate to & why!
Te Mahau
Leading the design and implementation of the Te Mahau website for the ministry. Working closely within the web services team with the UX / UI designers and the developers making sure the project stays on track, that risks are raised, designs are circulated and approved, and development in Drupal8 is speedily delivered.
Lara’s the scrum master for all team stand-ups - within web services, Salesforce and the service design team for Te Mahau.
The Te Mahau solution’s made up of a public-facing website and an internal, sector-facing Salesforce service portal. Lara worked closely across both aspects of the solution to make sure we were all on track for a successful delivery within a very tight timeframe.
Lara lead the communication between the team and the business owners (the communications team). The Te Mahau solution’s part of the digital services for future education.
CHANNEL & CONTENT STRATEGIES
Revitalising the content & channel strategy to make sure that information & tasks are in the right place, in the right words, for the right people.
Remembering accessibility, usability & searchability are key!
Knowing the audience is essential to be able to consider the channel & content strategies. Being able to use quantitative & qualitative discovery is priceless.
Incredible Years®
Incredible Years is part of the positive behaviour for learning (PB4L) initiative in New Zealand.
Leading the research & discovery into what other countries globally use to manage the delivery of their Incredible Years® programmes.
Incredible Years is supported by over 30 years of research. It help parents, teachers and children prevent & treat young children’s behavioural issues & improve their outlook socially, emotionally & academically.
Lara reached out to all sorts of other countries & jurisdictions to find out exactly how the programmes delivered by group leaders to parents, caregivers & teachers of children on the autism spectrum or behavioural needs.
A decision for how New Zealand’s Ministry of Education would manage the programmes was made, based on the outcomes of this research.
Senior Business Analyst & UX
Lara was a senior business analyst, for Jemini, at Fusion5.
She worked in the Jemini product development team, working closely with the customer from their first taste of Jemini all the way through to their adoption. Jemini is an HR & Payroll solution with a difference.
She ran the discovery & advisories (DnA) for customers in New Zealand; establishing the facts, happy points, processes, painpoints & wishlists for each customer. She ran Jemini’s business workshops, experience mapping sessions, persona building interviews & quantitative research.
As well as taking the customer on the DnA journey, she also took customers through their pre-adoption, and their adoptions of Jemini. Going onsite for UAT & usability testing, offering training to the whole company, which can be split into separate sessions based on the permissions that users will have in Jemini. She trained the trainers. She mitigated any confusion with what will be visible to each group of Jemini users (based on security permissions).
Lara created Jemini’s performance, aspirations, & upskilling applications from scratch - based on extensive research, customer workshops & ensuring the application is future proofed, robust & scalable.
She enjoys scoping requirements for the design & development in an agile manner during the DnAs and pre-adoption workshops. She’s passionate about plain language, enjoys thinking outside the box & using her creative flare. She’s responsible for the terminology used within the system & its general voice & tone.
CUSTOMER INDUSTRIES
• Accounting • Education • Fashion & Celebrity • Gaming • Health •
• Luxury • Motor industry • Not for profit • Ports • Public Sector •
• Retail & distribution • Technology • Tourism & hospitality • Transport • Utilities •