Expert Eye: Shelley Adamson
With a background spanning fine art, UX and digital design, Shelley Adamson has built a multidisciplinary practice that brings together creativity, technology and storytelling. Working independently, she has developed experiences across digital and physical spaces, with a particular focus on how people interact with technology.
In the first edition of Expert Eye, Shelley shares the skills she relies on most, from empathy and problem-solving to listening and synthesis, how her approach has evolved throughout her career, and why staying curious and adaptable is essential in a rapidly changing creative landscape.
LBB> What do you do?
Shelley> By title, I’m a creative director and experience designer. In practice, I bring multidisciplinary teams together to create ambitious, digitally driven experiences that captivate audiences through interaction, storytelling and design.
My route into creative direction was through UX, and that foundation continues to shape how I approach the work. I shape the central creative idea with the team and guide how it comes to life, thinking not only about what we want to communicate but how people will encounter and engage with it. I’m particularly drawn to work that immerses people in new worlds, blurs the boundaries between digital and physical, and brings brands to life in memorable and unexpected ways.
Much of my role is connective: bringing strategy, creativity and technology into alignment, while creating space for different disciplines and perspectives to make the work stronger.
LBB> What would you say are the most crucial skills that you depend upon to do what you do?
Shelley> I’d say the two I depend on most are empathy and problem-solving. They may sound broad, but they underpin almost every part of my job.
Empathy allows me to interpret a brief from both the brand’s perspective and the audience’s, then find the meaningful overlap between the two. It also shapes how I lead multidisciplinary teams: understanding what people need to do their best work, drawing on their individual strengths and giving them a sense of ownership while maintaining a cohesive creative vision. The same applies to client relationships, where empathy helps build trust and creates space for honest, productive conversations.
Problem-solving turns that understanding into a way forward. At a macro level, that might mean resolving the central creative challenge within a brief. At a micro level, it could mean refining a particular interaction or navigating a technical or production constraint. In either case, my role is to identify the real problem and find the clearest, most creative path through it.
LBB> When you were starting out, what training did you do, either on specific courses or on the job?
Shelley> I studied Fine Arts, specialising in sculpture, and became interested in the relationship between physical and digital spaces as a creative subject. After art school, I wanted to do the 'Big OE' (big overseas experience) -- something of a rite of passage for young New Zealanders. I also knew that supporting myself as a full-time artist might be difficult, so while working in bars and cafés to save for travelling, I enrolled in a postgraduate digital media course as a route into design. Art school had given me strong conceptual and critical-thinking skills, but digital design hadn’t been my focus, so I still needed to learn its particular tools and conventions.
When I arrived in London, I only applied for design roles and internships. To be completely honest, when I landed my first internship, I still didn’t really know what I was doing. I had the conceptual foundations and just enough relevant study to get my foot in the door, but I was learning the job as I went. By day I worked on real projects; at night I completed Photoshop tutorials and read everything I could about UX best practices. I vividly remember teaching myself how to make extruded buttons in Photoshop during my first few weeks.
The internship became a permanent role, and that combination of learning by doing and filling in the gaps in my own time became the foundation for the rest of my career.
LBB> Have you had any mentors who played an important role in the development of your expertise?
Shelley> I’ve never had a formally defined mentor, but many people have played that role at different points in my career. Early on, I learnt a great deal from my managers, both through direct conversations and by observing how they worked. I paid attention to how they navigated difficult situations, communicated with clients and brought teams together, as well as what worked and what I might choose to do differently. It taught me that creative leadership isn’t only about the ideas you contribute, but also the conditions you create for other people and their ideas to thrive.
These days, I see that learning as much more of a two-way exchange. I continue to learn from fellow creative leaders, but also from designers, strategists, producers, developers and specialists in disciplines very different from my own. I don’t believe expertise only travels downwards, and some of the most useful shifts in my thinking have come from listening closely to the people I’m collaborating with.
LBB> Are there any new skills that are entering your field, perhaps due to changes in technology or client need? If so, what are they and how have you approached keeping up to date with these evolving skills?
Shelley> AI is the obvious answer, but I don’t think the emerging skill is simply knowing how to operate every new platform. It’s developing the judgement to understand where AI can genuinely improve a creative process, where it introduces limitations, and how to evaluate the quality and originality of what it produces.
I try to stay current by experimenting with different tools on projects when appropriate, as well as through self-initiated explorations in my downtime. I’m particularly interested in how AI can support ideation, visualisation and prototyping, but with new platforms appearing so rapidly, trying to master every one can quickly become overwhelming.
I remember a similar period when new UX, design and prototyping tools seemed to appear every week. Over time, a smaller number proved genuinely valuable, with Figma emerging as a widely adopted standard. I expect to see a similar pattern with AI. My approach is to experiment, stay curious and pay attention to which tools are earning a lasting place in creative workflows, rather than feeling compelled to master each one the moment it launches.
LBB> What are some of the more subtle, softer skills that are also important in your role and how have you developed those?
Shelley> One of the most important is the ability to listen and synthesise. A creative director receives input from clients, audience research, strategists, designers, developers, producers and countless other sources. The job isn’t simply to pass all of that information on. It is to identify what matters, understand how the pieces connect and turn that complexity into a direction people can act upon.
Closely related to this is the ability to read between the lines, particularly when interpreting feedback. Often, the solution someone requests isn’t the same as the underlying problem they are trying to solve. Learning to hear the concern beneath the proposed solution can transform feedback from something restrictive into a genuinely useful creative tool.
I’ve developed these skills through a combination of experience, observation and reflection. I’ve learnt from navigating complex projects myself, but also from watching how others handle difficult conversations, competing priorities and feedback. Over time, that has made me more deliberate about pausing, identifying what is really happening in a situation and choosing how best to respond.
LBB> Tell us about a project or campaign that really put your skills to the test. How did you apply your skills and how did they impact the final project?
Shelley> One project that brought many of my skills together was Anyang: China’s Ancient City of Kings, a major exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. What began as three digital activations became five interconnected experiences, including physical installations, an interactive kiosk, AR and accessible web adaptations.
The challenge was balancing creative ambition with historical accuracy, accessibility and the practical realities of a large public exhibition, while making complex content engaging and easy to navigate. The AR experience was a good example. Originally designed for wayfinding, we couldn’t reliably track visitors inside the museum, so we reframed it as a scavenger hunt, with visitors searching for ancient 'dragons' hidden within artefacts across the two buildings.
My role was to connect the moving parts -- working with curators, shaping the UX and creative approach, adapting ideas around constraints and guiding the creative and technical teams through delivery. The result was a cohesive digital layer that encouraged visitors to explore the exhibition in new ways, reinforcing my belief that UX can shape how people move through spaces, encounter information and experience a story.
LBB> What advice would you give to someone entering your field right now?
Shelley> Build relationships, not simply a contact list. I say this as an introvert and someone who has to make a conscious effort to network and keep in touch. It doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’ve seen how much it matters.
Networking doesn’t have to mean confidently working a room or approaching people solely because they might be able to hire you. Start with genuine curiosity. Reach out to people whose work you admire, tell them why it resonated with you, or ask a specific question that is easy to answer. Don’t focus only on senior people, either. Some of your most valuable relationships will be with the peers and collaborators you grow alongside.
Careers are long, and opportunities often emerge from relationships years after they begin. Someone may not be able to work with you today, but further down the line you might be exactly who they need, or they might be exactly who you need. Be interested, be generous and make an effort to stay lightly connected without turning every interaction into an ask. It’s something I’m still practising myself, but it’s also something I wish I had understood earlier.
