Siyabonga Hanabe

A highly skilled Senior UX/ UI designer with over 15 years of experience in delivering user-centric designs for digital products. Expertise in user research, wireframing, prototyping, and designing intuitive interfaces. Proven ability to collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to drive innovative solutions.

User Experience Designer at First National Bank (2022-04 – Present)

• Won the Innovators Award for developing a more engaging, user-friendly method of capturing customer interest—an approach that blended playful interaction with strategic UX thinking and significantly boosted user engagement.
• Led end-to-end design delivery, creating wireframes, interactive prototypes, and high-fidelity mockups in Sketch and Figma, ensuring seamless transitions from concept to polished product.
• Coached and mentored fellow designers, offering guidance on UX best practices, user-centric thinking, and design systems to elevate team capability and output.
• Partnered closely with back-end developers and cross-functional teams (PMs, stakeholders, QA) to ensure feasibility, refine technical flows, and deliver high-quality user experiences across multiple large-scale projects.
• Facilitated strategic discussions on user needs, feature prioritisation, and product direction, helping teams make informed decisions grounded in UX insights.
• Hosted UX workshops covering user journeys, persona development, use-case exploration, and solution-mapping to align teams on shared design goals.
• Supported user testing and usability studies, analysing behavioural insights and iterating designs to improve clarity, functionality, and overall usability.
• Conducted competitive research, identifying gaps, trends, strengths, and opportunities to inform product enhancements and future UX strategy.
• Presented design findings and product recommendations to business stakeholders, ensuring alignment and buy-in across departments.
• Delivered annual UX perspective and strategic outlook presentations, helping shape the product roadmap and long-term design vision.

Senior UI/ UX Designer at Digi Outsource (2016-11 – 2022-03)

• Developed creative, high-impact design solutions that increased engagement across digital content, campaigns, and branded experiences.
• Designed visual identities, websites, and brand elements for multiple online casino brands, ensuring consistency, clarity, and strong user appeal.
• Produced responsive promotional websites using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, delivering fast, mobile-ready experiences aligned with marketing goals.
• Created banners, infographics, and social media artwork, optimising visual storytelling for various digital platforms.
• Delivered wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity UI designs in Adobe XD and Figma, ensuring smooth handovers to development and a refined user journey from concept to final output.
• Conducted desktop research and competitive analysis, contributing to information architecture decisions and helping shape product direction.
• Acted as a technical soundboard for front-end considerations, supporting the team with feasibility checks, implementation guidance, and best practices.
• Coached and supported fellow designers, offering technical help, workflow guidance, and skill-building to improve team performance.
• Championed process efficiency, identifying opportunities to streamline workflows, optimise tools, and refine design approaches.
• Helped teams empathise with users by translating insights into actionable design decisions that aligned business objectives with real user needs.

Front-End Developer, UI/ UX Designer & Brand Designer at Zai Lab (2014-04 – 2016-10)

• Design logo, the company website and taking lead in designing the application that's will be delivered by Zai Lab.
• Created wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity mock-ups using tools such as Adobe XD, ensuring a seamless user experience from concept to final design.
• Designed and developed responsive, mobile-first websites and web applications using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript frameworks (angular.js).
• Testing and ensuring cross browser compatibility on website's functionality and appearance are consistent across different web browsers.
• Making sure responsiveness and accessibility work on all devices and comply with company accessibility standards.
• Communicated with product managers and UX designers to translate project requirements and business objectives into polished user interfaces.
• Involved in the user experience exercises for the application the company has developed. Responsibilities were to do rough drawings and wire framing and following best UX practices.
• Mapping out user journeys to visualize and understand users' end-to-end experiences.

Front-end developer, Web Designer at Metropolitan Health Group (2013-05 – 2014-03)

• Design mobile and website for the schemes that Metropolitan administrates.
• Front end development work using HTML and CSS.
• Email designs for the schemes that Metropolitan administrates.

Front-end developer, UI/ UX Designer at On The Dot (2011-11 – 2013-04)

• Managed full-cycle design tasks, handling phases from conception to completion while maintaining guidelines throughout.
• Offering recommendations on how to differentiate a product based on user needs.
• Worked in Agile-driven environment to effectively maintain project timelines and utilize available resources.
• Reviewing web analytics and user behaviour data to identify trends and issues within the product.
• Designed email marketing assets, powering outreach campaign execution.
• Optimized landing pages in HTML and CSS for integration and cross-browser compatibility.
• Mapping out user journeys to visualize and understand users' end-to-end experience.
• Created concepts and produced design mock-ups and prototypes to strengthen designs, enhance user experiences and improve site interactions.

Web designer, Graphic designer at Level Zero (2010-07 – 2011-10)

• Client support, on issues client had with the CMS.
• Design work from Logos, web design to print work. (Take full responsibility of the design concept from start to finish).
• Front end development work using jQuery, HTML, XML,CSS and ActionScript.

Web designer, Graphic designer at Ukubona Media (2008-01 – 2010-06)

• Client support, on issues client had with the CMS.
• Design work from Logos, web design to print work. (Take full responsibility of the design concept from start to finish).
• Front end development work using jQuery, HTML, XML,CSS and ActionScript.

Production Assistance (Internship) at Bizcommunity (2008-10 – 2008-12)

• Design and develop Press Offices for clients, using HTML & CSS.
• Maintaining the stripaton. (Cartoon strip).
• Designing and animating holiday greetings cards for clients.

ND in Multimedia – Information Technology – CPUT (2004-01 – 2008-11)