While studying the Master of Computer Science at RMIT, Remya Ramesh developed life-long networks and gained valuable experience that boosted her career.
As the Experience Design Lead at Seamless, I design and build simple, task focused, inclusive website and intranet experiences with a talented group of folks.
I enjoy helping teams move towards a design thinking approach to their work, architecting easy-to-use interfaces and creating positive user experiences - it’s what drives me to get up each day!
The first time a computer showed up in class when I was 12 I was fascinated by this magic machine that I hadn’t seen or heard of before. I always wanted to know just how computers worked - clearly I was wired to tinker from the start.
This interest led me to study an engineering degree in Computer Science from LBS College of Engineering, India, and I was excited by the challenge that postgraduate studies offered.
Studying in Melbourne was my first choice because of university reputation, people, socio-cultural history, arts, music and sports.
I received offers to study at a number of universities but selected the Master of Computer Science at RMIT because of the unique course structure. Moreover, the hands-on component was far better than any other universities.
From the day I received my offer from RMIT I was given a clear picture of what to expect when I arrived, how to prepare before my trip, details about the relocation, how to organise my studies, etc.
After hearing about the Mates program, I signed up as a mentee. I was paired with a senior student who offered guidance in choosing my courses and gave me great advice to prepare for the program - giving me a huge confidence boost even before arriving in Melbourne.
I have stayed in touch with my Mates mentor even after the program was over. When I was about to graduate, he encouraged me to apply for a position in his firm. I was selected as a full-time Graduate Developer even before I finished at RMIT.
As part of my studies at RMIT, I secured an internship with the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) where I helped improve the functionality of their Tropical Cyclone Data Portal.
Our team opened up new possibilities for interactive web-based applications to visualise and analyse data, and our research ‘New information system for enhancing climate and water governance’ was presented at the Australian National Climate Conference (2012) in Canberra.
The internship at BoM was a turning point in my career.
Although I was working as a Business Analyst for the project team, I was also doing a lot of User Experience (UX) activities. This helped me to understand the UX discipline, including areas such as running UX research and usability testing, and led to my pursuing career in User Experience Design.
I’m proud to have established User Experience Design practice at Seamless, mentoring and growing a team of young UX practitioners and creating an environment that values design thinking.
I also set up the Seamless Web Accessibility Group to get the entire organisation to feed accessibility into their everyday work, and organised Australia’s first recruitment hackathon for Seamless - ‘Hack to your future’.
My accessibility focussed work was recognised by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and I won the Gold Digital Disruptor award for 'IT Professional of the Year - Female under 30' in 2015.
I love what I do because I want to transform the way people connect with the government!
