Barbara Mertlova

Background

About Barbara Mertlova

I am a Service and User Experience Designer with 9+ years of wide-ranging experience working with clients across the public, private and third sectors. I am passionate about enabling people, building capacity, and designing accessibly, inclusively, and with empathy. I care deeply about the environment and sustainability, and actively explore the role of design in this area. I contribute to building the Design community internationally, through various voluntary projects. I am: • Facilitator of Virtual Design Coffee - connecting 300+ designers in randomly paired conversations every month • Co-facilitator of Service Design Scotland Slack • Formerly co-organiser of the Distanced Gathering - regular Zoom meet ups of the Service Design community (#SDSGather) and its sister initiative Head to Head - a series of discussion sessions on a topic of interest to the Service Design community • Speaker at UX Scotland; Service Design in Government; UCD Gathering; Lean Agile Scotland; Agile Cambridge; and others. I graduated with 1st class Hons, in MA Politics and International Relations from the University of Dundee: • Thesis project: Political representation and participation of the economically marginalised in Scotland. Formerly, I was the Editor-in-Chief of The Magdalen Magazine, leading a team of over 100 creatives.