Milly Schmidt | product leader

What I'm working on 👩‍💻

I am delighted to be working as a Senior UX Designer at RMIT Online.. Specifically, I work with the talented Future Skills team who build short courses in things like AI/ML, AR/VR, blockchain, design thinking and HCD.

My role is to champion user research, mentor budding UXers, create design systems and introduce the whole organisation to the practice of UX.

I manage a team of two designers, one videographer and one front-end developer and collaborate with learning designers, service designers and strategy guns to create distributed degrees - a reimagined higher education that will prepare the next generation for the future instead of leaving them behind.

My role is to set the bar high and leverage agile, lean and design thinking at this educational institution to build short courses that really accelerate people's careers and teach them amazing skills in exciting, innovative ways.

Our goal is to revolutionise higher education to bridge the gap between industry and academia, upskill Australia and move towards a world where education is a lifelong activity, helping you change as fast as the world does.

I also help with research & facilitation at Code Like a Girl

Things I'm proud of 🙌

I was Director of product and design at a rapidly evolving CX startup RateIt where I managed a team of software engineers, a junior product manager and a graphic designer. I hired a senior UXer, started their component library and design system, shifted a team into a productive agile process, created a practice of human-centred design and was a damn good manager. I was part of the senior leadership team and helped shape strategy, OKRs and culture.

I've (hopefully) inspired girls and women by investing my time into events, workshops, hackathons and mentorships with Code Like a Girl, Girl Geek Academy, Girl Geek Dinners, Ladies that UX and other organisations trying to get more diversity in tech.

I've taught more classes than I can count at General Assembly.

I kickstarted a culture of design, research, testing and lean product development at EstimateOne.

I'm built a content strategy and relaunched a killer website for ItStrategic.

I refactored a huge amount of code into a robust React component system (deleting more code than I added!) and helped refine and improve the onboarding flow (through some deep and thorough user research and testing) at fin-tech startup Clover.

I designed and built a pluggable, customisable, scalable and re-usable multi-site theme system and built a team of excellent UX designers, single-handedly shifting the diversity ratio drastically at Equiem.

I led a small team of developers building Drupal-based CMS solutions for SMEs at Godel.

I co-founded and built much of SaaS project management app Estimate Work.

I've written multiple articles for international business news and culture publication Quartz.

I worked with Beat magazine to build an online version of their magazine that helped streamline their editorial workflow.

Want to make cool stuff with me? 🤙

I'm looking for work that makes a meaningful difference in the world. I'm keen to work with small organisations, particularly those with a commitment to diversity and inclusion, and especially those led by women.

I'm interested in leadership roles and advisory opportunities, and am keen to chat to you if you would like your organisation to be led by human-centred design principles.

My day rate starts at $1000 AUD (+GST). I'm keen to work in Melbourne, Australia and potentially beyond - remote and flexible commitments are appealing.

I'm usually doing something important with my time, but I'm always keen to chat. Get in touch.