Product designer & design engineer, Edinburgh
calm: fewer alarms, clearer next steps. hard jobs. night shifts, floods, rush hour, harvest.
I’m Mara, an independent product designer who also writes the front-end code. For twelve years I’ve worked on tools people use under pressure, and I think they deserve the same care as anything sold in a shiny shop.
Now: designing a rota tool for community nursesSelected work
Each one started by watching the work, not by opening a design tool.
A ward board for night-shift nurses that turns forty competing priorities into one calm list.
22 → 14 min average handover time
Read the case study: Night WardA public flood-warning service that shows how sure the forecast is, not only what it says.
3× more residents signed up for alerts
Read the case study: TidelineA fare finder that leads with the cheapest valid ticket and explains the rules in plain words.
+18% off-peak tickets bought
Read the case study: Northline faresHow I work
Shadow shifts, ride along, read the call logs. The real product is usually a paper list in someone’s pocket.
Rough sketches on the wall where the team works, so nurses and drivers correct them before they harden.
Real prototypes on real devices from week three, tested where the work happens: wards, platforms, fields.
I bring the code, not just the screens.Fewer alerts, shorter handovers, fewer wrong tickets. Numbers the people doing the job care about.
Writing
Most interfaces are designed at 11 in the morning by rested people. Some are used at 3 at night by exhausted ones. Here is what changes.
Alert fatigue is a design problem, not a discipline problem. Four questions I ask before any notification ships.
The first screen most people see is an empty one. Designing it first makes the rest of the product clearer.
Kind words
Mara spent a week of nights on our wards before she drew a single screen. The nurses noticed, and so did the result.
Director of nursing, a hospital group
She writes the code for her own designs, which means the details survive the hand-off. There is no hand-off.
Engineering manager, a rail operator
Calm, clear and very hard to argue with, because everything comes with evidence.
Head of resilience, a coastal council
Sample quotes, written for this template.