Sophie Coates

I am a product-focused creative with a strong technical foundation, who can bridge the gap between intuative design and practical implementation. While my most recent experience is rooted in more development and technical operations, design and user experience has always been a driving focus in my work.

I bring a critical eye for detail and a systems-thinking approach to every project. My current blend of roles allows me to ensure that solutions are visually engaging, while keeping technical feasibility requirements in mind throughout the process.

Ultimately, I aspire to find opportunities which allow me the freedom to use both my creative and technical skillsets and stretch my abilities.

Experience

Senior Creative Technologist

Yonder Consulting, London

2020 - present

• Web Development & Management Develop and maintain Yonder's two websites, and develop bespoke, project platforms and brandsites.
  • Led the development of a website for a new Saudi investment entity, moving from kickoff to launch in under 2 months. Partnered directly with a dedicated UI designer to translate static Figma designs into a fully responsive, component-based site. Built and iterated on these components using Elementor and custom HTML/CSS. The resulting launch was highly praised by the client.
  • Developed and scaled a bespoke research platform using WordPress to guide participants through usability tests. The platform introduced new digital service concepts, managed prototype testing flows and collected user feedback. The platform's intuitive user flow was highly successful, leading to its adoption by other members of the research consortium.
• UX/UI Design & Prototyping Consult on information architecture and user flows. Design prototypes, including rapid mockups to validate concepts in user research and more considered component built layouts in Figma.
  • Advised the Chello Bank product team on user flows for their financial platform. Designed new high-fidelity UI screens in Figma, extending the original visual identity to new platform features and components. Presented technical solutions to the Chello development team, resolving CSS styling issues with the Highcharts JS library.
• Tool Integration & Workflow Enhancement Identify, implement, and support use of productivity tools. Develop custom integrations using the most appropriate tool, such as Zapier, Make, Salesforce Flows, or custom apps running on hosted App Platforms.
  • One ongoing project requires collaboration between Yonder and a client team at Amazon to build datasets for fieldwork. The teams were sending Excel sheets back and forth and relying on outdated macros for automations. I redeveloped the workflow in Airtable with additional functionality, including a status dashboard, easy collaboration between the teams and the ability for the client’s developer team to use Airtable’s API to get the fieldword data directly. Yonder has now used this system for over 80 waves of research.
• AI Integration Research, champion, and integrate emerging AI tools to enhance team productivity and client-facing technical capabilities.
  • Developed and launched a custom Slack app to provide secure, company-wide access to paid OpenAI models early in the rollout of AI tools. This app prevented company conversations from being used for model training. The app saw wide internal adoption before a managed open-source solution became available to migrate to.
  • Leverage AI tools for client-facing proposals and workshops, using Figma Make to prototype potential changes to a client's loyalty program and Replit to demonstrate live corporate experiments.
  • Create bespoke tools for niche client project needs by combining technical knowledge with AI development tools such as Github Co-pilot and Google Antigravity. A recent project app enabled Yonder to to store photos and survey entries on our own Box account, catering exactly to the project needs, rather than leaning on a more generalised tool which was also hosted in the US.
  • Act as an internal AI champion by creating and presenting training documentation and best-practice guides for teams on prompt writing.

Senior Technology Associate

Decidedly, London

2016 - 2020

I joined the team in a role which allowed me to engage with innovative technologies and diverse platforms. Beyond my responsibilities as an administrator for our Salesforce instance and our website, I also became a creative asset, directly contributing to client proposals and projects.

• Digital Prototyping Prototyped apps and websites, from concept to extensive Sketch and InVision mock-ups used for in-depth testing.
• Video Editing & Delivery Produced video content for the website blog and client project outcome delivery.
• Creative and Tech Exploration Pioneered creative areas new to Decidedly, such as 360 video, animation, and AR to expand the team’s output capabilities.

Freelance Graphic Designer

eXceeding, Northamptonshire

2015 - 2016

I supported the creation of client propositions and bids, contributing my design and layout expertise.

• Bid & Proposition Design Led the design and page layout of bid documents, ensuring clear and impactful communication with diagrams and visual aids to effectively convey ideas. Used InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop to develop polished, print-ready documents.
• Print and Production Managed the production and delivery of printed documents and branded collateral for successful bids.

Education

Design and Innovation, MEng

First class with honours

Queen Mary and Goldsmiths UoL

2012 – 2016

This course leveraged specialisms of two leading universities; Queen Mary provided a broad understanding of mechanics, materials, and electronics, while Goldsmiths offered insights into ethical, cultural, and societal considerations for design.

Skills and certifications

Interests