Goodbye Singapore! This product designer is heading back to Sydney.

Well, it has been an amazing journey for me personally and professionally as a product designer the last 18 months. Singapore has been a wonderful place to live and work. The tasty food, the ease of travel, the meld of cultures are all things that have made this time great.

That said, the stand out takeaway I’ll cherish most will be the people I’ve had the privilege of working with at Neo Innovation.

Although I’ve been the lone ranger designer or UX team of one, I’ve learnt an incredible amount from my time here. The team at Neo have a drive to learn and better themselves which I’ve not experienced at any other company. This collective drive for self-improvement and excellence is by default transferred to whoever is exposed to it – This has pushed me to better myself and I believe I’m a much better designer (and general human) for it.

Looking back on my first day at Neo. I arrived for breakfast (The team has breakfast together every morning), had our daily office standup and then was shipped over to my first project at a Singaporean Government ministry on the last day of a 40 person, two-week inception. Talk about being thrown in the deep-end (with a cement block around my ankles).

Since then I now have worked with some great clients and have had the opportunity to tackle interesting and challenging problems. I’m extremely proud of all the work I’ve been involved with at Neo. I’ve partnered with product designers, product managers, engineers, business analysts, writers from different consultancies including IDEO and ThoughtWorks and worked with a range of organisations in different domains from self-funded startups to enterprise companies and Government agencies.

I’ll look back on my time working with Neo in Singapore fondly. I’ve made some lifetime friends professionally and personally and have had an absolute ball living and travelling around the area.

I’m now moving on to start an even bigger and especially long-term program which is raising a baby human being! My wife an I have decided to move back to Sydney to be closer to family and enjoy the Aussie lifestyle with our new family.

I’m looking forward to jumping right back in the deep-end again at the beginning of this next chapter of my life.