Melody Koh
Resume

Service + Product
Designer

你好！My name is Melody, and I’m a designer from Singapore 🇸🇬
In my 5 years of being a product designer, I have worked for
a global bank and 8 start-ups on my lovely island city home.

My dream companies to work for right now are:

Some of my selected works :

Creating BlockPunk.net, a decentralised marketplace for Japanese entertainment.

Role
Date
Industry
Lead Product Designer
March 2019 - February 2020
Crypto, Entertainment
Specialising in NFTs for original art, BlockPunk leveraged blockchain technology to help creators track the ownership of their digital artworks.

The journey started with digital art and content, but it eventually branched out to physical merchandise and using NFTs to prevent counterfeit goods.
As a lead product designer,
I worked with the CEO and tech team to prioritise key functions for the different users. As a team, we sat down for a Design Thinking session to talk through the details and map out key user journeys and functionalities.

The journey started with digital art and content, but it eventually branched out to physical merchandise and using NFTs to prevent counterfeit goods.
The approach for BlockPunk is very experimental, as there was no clear product-market fit for blockchain and merchandise. We eventually launched MerchPunk, which is a search engine for authentic J-culture merchandise, and it became a one-stop online shop for non-Japanese collectors. All orders are tagged with NFC chips, and have their own transferable NFTs.

Re-designing Trivago Careers to improve usability and entice potential talents.

As with most job applications, I was greeted with a test assignment from Trivago to showcase my technical skills and competencies. This is for a role in Düsseldorf.

The assignment brief was to analyse the careers website of Trivago.
Improve the overall look and feel with focus on user flows, content structure and hierarchy, and the correlation between visual design and verbal communication.
From an initial heuristic evaluation, the website did not have any major issues with informational architecture. The key pages that needed the most work is their home page and story page, as they were the pages with the highest bounce rates, and the pages where the content could be thought out better.

I decided to shift my focus to searching for real talents who are most likely to apply, using them as my personas.

Hang Xu is a lead designer I had the pleasure to connect with through this process.
The design solution included a redesign of some of their components and user interactions. For example, this is a menu design I suggested to improve accessibility through clearer content segmentation and the removal of relying on the hover interaction.
Mobile versions of the screens were also created to proof the feasibility of the new information architecture and components proposed.

On top of the screens, user flows and personas were also included in my presentation submission to illustrate the story of the talents looking to work for Trivago.
Unfortunately, after I submitted my solution, Trivago ghosted me. This prompted me to write one of my most popular Medium article yet, “Honestly, UX recruitment processes are broken”, with 1.6k reactions from the community and counting.

Designing services and innovation with BNP Paribas.

My one, short year at BNP Paribas has been one of the best touchpoints of my career yet.

Due to an NDA, I am unable to show exactly what I’ve designed online, but I have included a list of the products I’ve worked on with the team at BNP Paribas, and below the snapshots of how we collaborated.
From left to right:
Senior Designer — Ingo Janzen
Lead Designer — Simon Junozovic
Senior Designer — Julia Lin
Junior Designer — (Yours truly!)

I use design to...

Look at the overall holistic vision and deliver.

Pave the path to an ethical, sustainable future.

Design is not just UX, design is not just screens. I make use of service design philosophies to envision the big picture and zoom into the details.
All designs carry impact, and all designers have a choice which side of the moral compass they choose to be.
I choose good; most of the time anyway.

Contributions to the community :

Push UX Munich 2019:
Lightning talk

Hatch Singapore:
UX trainer and mentor

As a start to my journey on public speaking and design influence, I talked about the dynamics of impactful design work, and how designers should learn to say ‘No’.
For nearly 2 years, I have been teaching and mentoring at a local social enterprise that empowers and re-integrates at-risk youths back into society.

You scrolled all the way down?
That’s some dedication!

Thank you for your interest in my work. If you would like to discuss more, share feedback, or ask any questions, I’m just one click away!
E-mail
LinkedIn
Icons courtesy of acri. Copyright 2021 © Melody Koh. All assets are hosted by Netlify. Made with love, durian and bubble tea.

I admire you for trying to look at my portfolio on your phone, but is that really wise? Maybe you should check out my LinkedIn first.

LinkedIn

If you really can't wait till you can get access to your desktop, flip your phone to landscape and enjoy.

Thank you for your interest in my work. If you would like to discuss more, share feedback, or ask any questions, I’m just one click away!
Copyright 2021 © Melody Koh.
All assets are hosted by Netlify.
‍Made with love, durian and bubble tea.
☝️