Michele Ide-Smith

About

I’m Michele Ide-Smith, a Product and UX lead.

Michele

I’ve worked in digital for 30 years in the public sector (life sciences, higher education and local government) and private sector (a health startup, a software company and a digital agency).

I’m passionate about user research and user-centred design and have a Masters degree in Human Computer Interaction.

You can see some examples of projects I have led on my Work page. Or for my full work history visit my LinkedIn profile.

Some highlights of my digital career include:

  • Streamlined participant onboarding and led project to achieve WCAG accessibility compliance for a platform that hosts healthcare improvement and innovation projects engaging staff, patients and other stakeholders (2024)
  • Developed and delivered a product strategy shaped by user research for Europe PMC, an open access repository of biomedical articles, increasing user satisfaction by 11% in 5 years (2023)
  • Led a high profile project to build a collection of full-text COVID-19 preprint articles on Europe PMC, including scaling manuscript XML conversion operations by 2000% in 2 months (2020). 
  • Co-organised the Cambridge Usability group (2011-2020) and a one-off UX Unconference in Cambridge (2019)
  • Planned and led generative and evaluative user research, using the insights to deliver a user-centered re-design of the Europe PMC website (2019)
  • Spoke at Product Talk about lean product development (2018)
  • Introduced product management and Agile/Lean UX methods to the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) (2016)
  • Lead user researcher and product managed creation of an open access service at the University of Cambridge (2014)
  • Curated conference programmes for UX Cambridge (2014-2018), UX Scotland (2014-2015) and Service Design in Government (2014)
  • Designed Source Control for Oracle using Lean UX methods in 9 months (2012)
  • Introduced social media for engagement and set-up a community engagement platform in Cambridgeshire (2008)
  • Studied a MSc in Human Computer Interaction at UCL part-time (2006-2010)
  • Introduced user-centred design and a top tasks approach to website content design at Cambridgeshire Council Council (2006)
  • Managed delivery of user-centred re-designs of the Cambridgeshire County Council website, intranet and a regional community events website with user-generated content (2006-2008)
  • Managed implementation of ‘AAA’ accessibility standards across a number of different interactive calculators and tools on Which? web sites (2004)
  • Development of an accessibility policy and sales strategy for a digital agency (2004)
  • Designed a consistent website information architecture and managed a CMS rollout across several Open University departments (2004)
  • Information architect for the Which? Endowment Action site, which won the New Media Age Best Charity Website award (2003)
  • Created and managed an intranet for the European Coordination of Film Festivals (1997)

Outside of work I’m a keen gardener and love walking in the countryside, with a Jack Russell terrier by my side.