"It's not just about the final answer, you get marks when you show your rough work"

I believe that leveraging the power of design & storytelling can help in addressing some of our biggest global challenges- particularly in enabling decarbonisation, facilitating ecosystem restoration, and improving human health
Through my time working with tech startups & scaleups, along with more established organisations, I've come to see good design as fundamental in creating flows, interactions, and systems that put people at the heart of the experience. 

Increasingly however, I now believe that human-centred design also needs to include consideration for wider systems and populations. I’m talking here of complex systems of biodiversity, and nature at large- thus moving beyond a singular focus on human needs. Ultimately, this wider focus can be to the benefit of society, so in a roundabout way it can still be considered human centric. 

I know this sounds lofty, so to ground it a bit, I also believe that we should be spending less time on our devices and more time outdoors away from screens. To reconcile this innate contradiction- I'm a huge advocate of enabling people to complete tasks (particularly the more mundane & transactional types) as easily and efficiently as possible. This may be something as simple as UX work I did to help streamline a healthcare appointment booking process. Or, in my pre-digital design life, you could catch me doing anything from designing a fitness training session that would be optimal for player development, to organising a stockroom so that employees could easily find the items of clothing they needed to. As such, saving people time and reducing unnecessary stress is a big motivating factor for me.  
Storytelling of course plays a key role in design too. The writing & performing of spoken word is one form of creativity I use to convey different experiences- with one piece capturing my mam’s very frustrating (but also very comical) experience of trying to pay her friend through online banking. 

Creating a visual identity is another powerful storytelling technique, and one that I'm employing to help build community for outdoor experiences ‘That hits the spot’ and ‘Off the beaten'. 
The art of storytelling can be greatly complemented with the application of timeless design principles and laws of UX, grounded in a basic understanding of underlying human psychology. It's an area I find particularly compelling, such that I created an interactive knowledge base that documents many of these themes. 

As not one, but a two-time college dropout in my younger days, I’ve placed a strong emphasis and investment in my education in recent years. Throughout my studies I’ve adopted a design lens when approaching projects- from research & documentation, to designing an interview questionnaire for my dissertation, to creating a concept app for exploring sustainability-related concepts, theories, and books. 

For crucial themes such as people accessing & understanding their health records through to the financing of ecological restoration projects- I see the discipline of design as being fundamental, and I want to be part of it playing a bigger role in these areas. 

Thanks

Karl Byrne
Bray, Co. Wicklow

E X P E R I E N C E

Dec '21 — Mar '22

Facilitator — The Innovation Academy, UCD

Oct '19 — Oct '20

UX & Product Design — Full Health Medical, The Digital Hub

Aug '18 — May '19

Design Sprint Facilitator — The Ladder, The Digital Hub

Apr '18 — Jul '19

Cofounder — Secret Outdoor Cinema Club, Bristol

Jul '17 — Apr '19

Cofounder — The Nectar Way, Dogpatch Labs

Jun '15 — Jul '16

EMEA Business Development — DWCC, Bristol

Sep '13 — May '15

Sole Proprietor — KGB Removals, Bristol

Sep '11 — Jul '13

Evening Manager — Hollister, Bristol

E D U C A T I O N & T R A I N I N G

Sep '23 — Present

Postgraduate Diploma in Sustainable Financial Technology & Innovation — Maynooth University

Jun '24 — Jul '24

MOOC in Environmental, Social, Governance — Law Society of Ireland

Oct '23 — Dec '23

Mastering En-ROADS Climate Ambassador — Climate Interactive

May '23 — Jul '23

Climate Change: Learning for Action — Terra.do

Sep '21 — Aug '23

MSc in Climate Change: Policy, Media & Society — DCU

Aug '20 — Aug '21

Professional Diploma in UX Design — UX Design Institute

Jul '21 — Aug '21

Coda DOC Programme — Coda.io

Jun '21 — Jul '21

Virtual Resident — Low Carbon Design Institute

May '21 — Jul '21

Environmental Law & Climate Change — Law Society of Ireland

Apr '21 — May '21

Do-It-Yourself Geoapps — Esri ArcGIS

Sep '20 — Apr '21

Postgraduate Diploma in Design Thinking for Sustainability — UCD

Aug '18 — May '19

Design Sprint Facilitator — The Ladder

W H Y C H O O S E M E

I'm fascinated by the digital design process and how pixels can be transformed into affordances, that then allow people to perform any number of different tasks

Systems thinking

Taking a systems-led approach to problems. Seeking to look from different perspectives, to identify potential pitfalls. Human-centric but consider wider stakeholder groups

Form & function

I love the dynamic interplay between the logic & structure of functional, practical design, combined with the fun & expressiveness of free form creativity. Yin & something or other

Iteration

"I need fuel". I'm strongly biased towards iterating, prototyping, tinkering, tweaking. Do it again, bit differently this time, let's try that again, try something new

Storytelling

"You'll need a shears for that". Crafting stories that people can connect with, sharing information in a novel way, communicating something in a fresh context

Team-centric

Although my default is being a lone wolf, I really enjoy being part of a team and often perform best in collaboration with others. Driven by the desire to not let people down

Continual learning

Sometimes it does indeed "All fall downnnn….". A former 2x college dropout- I've tried to make up for it by investing much time & energy in my education in recent years