Eriol is a ‘generalist’ senior designer with 10+ years of experience in design, technology and human rights and has been leading projects and teams for the last 5. Their bachelor’s degree was in Time-based media, where they explored the nature of communicating digitally, personal information exchange and vulnerability in the early 2000s. They then pivoted into a design career while doing volunteer community work in Cardiff UK across Environmental, Education, Asylum Seeker and Arts issues and gained their masters in Visual Communication at the University of South Wales. Eriol has worked in insurance, finance, legal, housing and family tech sectors before moving into the open-source and human rights as a designer. They are most happy when working as part of a team of designers, developers and product folks with a focus on collaboration and cross-function conversation and appreciation.

They are passionate about intersectional inclusion and actively works to make tech and design more inclusive through their talk ‘Diversity in Design’ and also ensuring design is ’trauma informed’ through their talk ‘UX research and Ethnographic design for humanitarian technology’. Eriol is also part of a number of communities including Open Source Design, Sustain OSS Design & UX Working group and their local Pride festival committee.

Eriol is currently studying part-time for a PhD in Computer Science at Newcastle University’s Open Lab the research is funded by Northern Bridge and is around how designers get involved in humanitarian focused open source software projects.