Built to notice what's broken, then fix it properly.
I'm a Computer Science student at Queen's University Belfast, currently on placement in IT support within the EEECS department - and running a freelance creative studio on the side. Product management is where those two halves of my week actually meet.
Placement year, EEECS IT Support
I spend my days on the helpdesk, inventorying hardware, and administering the department's SharePoint estate - practical, unglamorous work that puts me directly in front of what breaks for real users, every day. It's given me a habit I don't think I'd have gotten anywhere else: I notice process failures before feature ideas.
The biggest example of that so far is a full rebuild of the EEECS Student Hub - a SharePoint site used by around 1,200 students - which I led from audit through to a restructured navigation and content model built around accessibility from the outset.
Studio Cathán
Outside of placement, I run Studio Cathán - a freelance studio offering web design, brand identity, and social media management. I've delivered full site rebuilds and brand work for real clients, managing scope, budget, and client relationships the whole way through.
It's taught me the parts of product work that don't show up in a job description: saying no to scope creep, pricing your own time honestly, and shipping something a client is actually proud to put their name on.
The best part of building software was never the building.
I like writing code, and I'm glad I know how - it means I can talk to engineers in their own language and I know exactly what I'm asking for when I scope something. But the moment I actually enjoy is earlier: sitting with a user's frustration, figuring out what's really going on underneath it, and making a call on what to build when the "right" answer isn't obvious yet.
That's the thread running through everything on this site - a rota system built for a venue that couldn't wait for a "proper" solution, a student portal rebuilt around the people most likely to get left out of it, and a studio where every client conversation is its own small negotiation. Product management is the name for the job I've already been doing.
The rest of it
I'm building toward longer distance running, I write and produce music under the same Studio Cathán banner, and I'm based in Belfast with my partner and a cat who has strong opinions about the vacuum cleaner. I'm currently working toward postgraduate study and product roles in parallel - because I'd rather have options than a single plan.