About

Design engineer in Sydney. I trained in visual arts before moving into software, and I've spent five years building products end-to-end, from UX flows and interface design through to production React, TypeScript and Elixir.

Art School, Then Software

I came to software from visual arts, and it shaped what I notice. Type that sits wrong, a focus state that goes missing, an error message that tells you something failed but not what to do about it. Those things bother me, and fixing them is most of what separates software that works from software people actually like using.

Five years in, I still work across both sides. I've been a technical consulting engineer at Alembic since January 2022, embedded in teams of two to four across healthcare, e-commerce and automotive. The job is usually to take a loosely-scoped idea and hand back a shipped feature, so I scope it, write the tickets, design the UI, build it, document it and QA it.

What I Do

Design Systems

I led the design system for a nurse-led healthcare platform's mobile app, defining reusable components that were picked up across its treatments and consent-form epics. On a US disability respite platform I set the design system up from scratch. I've also run component-system, enforced-usage and white-labelling spikes for a client expanding into new health verticals.

Accessible By Default

I'd rather settle contrast, focus behaviour and semantics at the design-system stage, where they're cheap, than at the remediation stage, where they aren't. And I test with VoiceOver, because automated tooling catches only a fraction of what real assistive technology use reveals.

End-to-End Ownership

I scope, ticket, design, build, document and manually QA entire features solo. Recent epics have shipped with fewer than three bugs found across internal QA and production combined, and I've hit delivery estimates within two days across three consecutive epics.

Selected Work

Client work is under NDA, so these are described by sector rather than by name.

Health-tech platform

Nurse-led medispas · 2025–2026

A platform connecting registered nurses with remote physicians for treatment sign-off.

  • Led design and delivery of the design system for the platform's mobile app, defining components later adopted across its Mobile Treatments and Mobile Consent Forms epics
  • Owned the core treatments architecture end-to-end, from React and GraphQL prototyping through to production delivery on Phoenix and LiveView
  • Ran component-system and white-labelling spikes as the client expanded beyond aesthetic treatments into psychological health and physiotherapy
  • React
  • React Native
  • GraphQL
  • Elixir
  • Phoenix
  • LiveView
  • Tailwind

Disability respite platform

California, US · 2026

A service matching support workers with clients, from families of children with disabilities through to veterans.

  • Designed and built the UI for pre-billing verification and multi-authorization rollover flows, working from ambiguous requirements through to shipped interfaces
  • Built a form builder feature and championed accessible branding options as part of the platform's design system
  • Set the project's design system up from scratch and introduced a PR template to raise team-wide review quality
  • React
  • Capacitor
  • Elixir
  • Phoenix
  • LiveView
  • Ash

Fast-fashion retail group

Multiple online apparel brands · 2024–2025

E-commerce storefronts for a group of apparel brands.

  • Led an ADA compliance audit and accessibility remediation program across the group's sites, plus hands-on accessibility training for the content team
  • Redesigned the product page details accordion and landing pages for accessibility and conversion, measurably improving landing page conversion rates
  • Integrated Klaviyo subscriptions and refactored the legacy frontend, cutting code surface area by more than 30% without losing functionality
  • JavaScript
  • Accessibility
  • Klaviyo

Automotive retail technology platform

2024–2026

The platform major car brands use for tailored in-person and video ownership appointments, valet and repair services.

  • Solely delivered the front-end workflows for a 12-week rebuild; 80% of surveyed users preferred the redesigned workflows to the prior system
  • Delivered a branded dealership-onboarding experience and appointment workflow for a luxury automotive client, and led a manage-UI architecture rework
  • Used Cursor and Claude for frontend R&D, speeding up prototyping and day-to-day delivery
  • Elixir
  • Phoenix
  • LiveView
  • Ash
  • Tailwind

Accessibility

Accessibility is the part of the craft I've gone deepest on. It's the difference between a product that's available to everyone and one that silently excludes marginalised groups.

  • Led an ADA compliance audit and accessibility remediation program across a retail group's e-commerce sites
  • Ran hands-on accessibility training for a client's content team over several weeks
  • Championed accessible branding options within a client's design system, so the decisions landed before they became remediation
  • Redesigned a product page details accordion for accessibility and conversion together, rather than trading one off against the other
  • Wrote Writing Better Alt Text: A Guide for the Web, on giving images descriptions that earn their place

Speaking and Writing

  • Speaker, ElixirConf 2022 Wordle, Elixir flavour
  • Guest, Elixir Wizards podcast September 2022
  • Guest, Exercism's Functional February February 2024
  • Sydney Elixir meetup talks Testing LiveViews, learning Gleam in a week

I write about accessibility and front-end craft, and I've spoken at conferences and meetups on Elixir, testing and picking up new languages.

See my talks Read the blog

Get In Touch

I'm always open to a chat about a role, a problem you're stuck on, or accessibility work in general.

theoharris.dev@gmail.com