Ellen was born in Melbourne, Australia but her family is spread across the commonwealth. By day, she works in Product Design as a User Experience Researcher; by night, she is an opera singer!
Who are you outside of Blacklane?
I study classical music, something I’ve been doing on the side since childhood. I have tried out a range of instruments but now focus on voice. I have sung in a number of concerts and operatic performances as both soloist and chorister.
During my masters in information systems, I was lead soprano for the Anglican Parish of the Parks in Albert Park, and I helped re-launch a boutique opera company called Shoestring Opera Melbourne, working as a soloist and in creative direction.
A highlight was co-writing the English libretto (which is like a script) for Offenbach’s Le 66 that we performed during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2016. This has been recently purchased by two other small companies in London and Singapore, with the London version premiering next month.
In the future, I hope to sing in more mainstage productions, this is going to take some time as I have a voice type that needs to grow a little more, plus I need to find time to audition!
Besides this, I enjoy playing around with graphic design projects, cooking, baking and taking walks in Grunewald with my husky, Nikolai.
What brought you to Blacklane?
I attended a Ladies that UX Berlin meetup where my now manager, Kyra, gave an interesting presentation talking about her research into the limousine service providers who partner with Blacklane.
What does your day at work look like?
My tasks involve planning and executing remote user interviews, analysing qualitative data sets, mapping out the information architecture of the website, cutting together video findings, improving internal understanding of who our users are, and soon strategically applying our research findings into a range of projects/needs throughout the company.
If you are interested in working with Ellen and the rest of our excellent team, take a look at the open positions on our career page!
