Buzz Usborne
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Buzz Usborne
Lead Product Designer

👋🏼 Direct link

Hey, I’m Buzz [he/him]. I’m a Product Designer with 19+ years creative experience and a love of creating collaborative business tools. I help designers achieve success on their own terms, build tools that enable teams to work more effectively, and produce creative strategy to help businesses be awesome.

I’m passionate about solving tough customer problems by combining thoughtful research, clever technology and beautiful design — and love working with businesses who believe that design can change the world. I coach designers, I spend my day in Figma and I love being wherever the creativity is happening!

I’m also a dad to two lovely boys, husband to a talented graphic designer, and a lover of the outdoors, ocean and motorbikes.

Experience Direct link

Freelance Product Designer

Now

I’ve been heads-down working through tough UX and UI challenges with a range of fun companies. Working closely with integrated design teams, engineers and customers I’ve built out design systems, evolved existing platforms and created entirely new products. I help companies find the right solution — quickly and confidently — when failure isn’t an option.

I’ve also been mixing hands-on design with coaching, running workshops, talking at events and advising companies on their creative strategies.

Design Team Lead @ Buildkite

2022 – 2023

Reporting directly to the CEO, my core responsibilities were to enable design success throughout the business — teaching customer-centered tactics and best practice to a technically-minded organization.

In a leadership capacity I created cross-functional processes for designers to operate in a collaborative and effective way — and support individuals in their craft and professional development. I created a career growth framework, coaching structures, and processes necessary to help designers operate at their best.

On the tools, I created the design system and established the principles and visual direction for strategically important projects. I was also been responsible for modernizing the UI and creating the UX foundations for continued product growth.

Principal Designer @ Help Scout

2017 – 2022

My time at Help Scout — US-based customer support tool — was spent as Principal Designer; producing design work for high-impact features, while also producing processes and guidance to help facilitate great work in others.

As a designer, I created a whole new chat product and revenue stream, designed their embeddable suite of tools from the ground-up and produced a number of features aimed at helping support teams operate more effectively at scale. I collaborated remotely with engineers, customers and product leadership to see problems from concept to completion.

Working closely with the founders, I was also responsible for building the ways the fully-remote team collaborate and communicate as a team to design effectively at scale and across borders. In addition to creating the design system and ensuring its company-wide adoption, I worked directly with designers to encourage effective and creative approaches to the work.

Design Coach @ YFB

2016 – Now

Through my own business I have coached hundreds of high-performing designers and creative individuals — helping them navigate tricky spots in their career and find clarity and purpose in moments of opportunity. I lead with honesty and humility, and aim to help designers uncover success on their own terms.

In this capacity I’ve had the privilege of coaching design leaders from the likes of Canva, Atlassian, Facebook, Webflow, Shopify, Wordpress and some amazing high-performing startups!

I facilitate design reviews for small tech teams — collaborating with designers on concepts, ideas and coaching individuals towards producing their best work. I also advise portfolio companies of one of Australia’s largest VC firms — helping CEOs create effective design organizations.

Career Direct link

Speaking & Events

I regularly talk and write about design leadership, creativity and collaboration. You can see some of my recent events & articles here

Nice Words Direct link

Working with Buzz for 5+ years was an absolute privilege. Rarely do you come across someone who cares so deeply for the customer, works so consistently to improve their craft, and makes every person around them better at their job.
Nick Francis
CEO, Help Scout

Buzz had a phenomenal impact on Campaign Monitor in the years he was with us. Buzz was as impactful as he is versatile. His role saw him redesign our brand and marketing site, lead the product design on a number of key features and manage/mentor design teams across both marketing and product to help them to their best work.
Dave Greiner
Founder, Campaign Monitor

Buzz has had so much impact on the design culture at Buildkite; it feels like our fledgling practice is a proper team now. He’s influenced everything from process to thoughtful design details, so much that design actually feels like a consideration than an afterthought. He’s a true craftsperson, and has been an amazing mentor.
Jasmin Wong
Staff Designer, Octopus

Buzz is an one-of-a-kind mentor and coach. Being an expert in not only the craft itself, but in leading designers, Buzz’s mentorship has elevated me and my team’s efficiency and performance dramatically.
Tina Hsu
Group Product Lead, Canva

Let’s Chat!

I’m always interested in hearing about remote opportunites, lead design roles and speaking engagements. If you’re in Sydney I’d love to grab a coffee, or we can jump on a call any time.

Email me