# Daniel Shires
> Senior Product Designer based in Woonona, NSW.
Dan is a Senior Product Designer at [Commonwealth Bank](
https://www.commbank.com.au), exploring the future of customer communication.
He brings together product discovery, customer-centred design, and systems thinking to make complex problems easier to understand and solve. Working across product, engineering, and research, he helps turn early insights into clear concepts and useful digital experiences.
He also uses AI to explore ideas, prototype quickly, and build working products, bridging design and development. Outside his day job he builds small products and experiments, from a Figma plugin to this site.
## Pages
- [Home](
https://danielshires.com/): profile, selected work, and recent writing
- [Projects](
https://danielshires.com/projects): case studies and independent work
- [Thinking out loud](
https://danielshires.com/writing): essays and notes
- [Playground](
https://danielshires.com/playground): small interactive trials
- [About](
https://danielshires.com/about): summary, experience, and ways to connect
- [Design](
https://danielshires.com/design): design portfolio
- [Field Guide](
https://danielshires.com/field-guide): concepts and patterns
- [CV](
https://danielshires.com/cv/daniel-shires-cv.md): résumé
## Interests
- Product discovery
- Design systems and interface craft
- Photography
- AI-assisted prototyping
- Accessibility
## Experience
### Commonwealth Bank — Senior Product Designer
Mar 2026 → Now
### Commonwealth Bank — Senior UX Designer
Jan 2025 → Mar 2026
### Commonwealth Bank — Senior UI Designer
Nov 2023 → Jan 2025
### Commonwealth Bank — Specialist UI Designer
May 2022 → Dec 2023
### Formbay — Digital Designer
2020 → 2022
### MyCareSpace — UX/UI Designer
2020 → 2021
### Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours — Digital Designer
2019 → 2020
### Freelance — Graphic Designer
2018 → 2019
### Made.com — Creative Artworker
2017 → 2018
### Echo House — Freelance Graphic Designer
2017
### TurnbullGrey — Graphic Design Intern
2017
## Work
### CommBank Yello — [View](
https://danielshires.com/projects/commbank-yello)
Re-imagine loyalty for Australia's largest bank
### Laws of behaviour — [View](
https://lawsofbehaviour.netlify.app)
A reference of behavioural principles for product decisions
### Frame Wave — [View](
https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1302193588260093806)
A Figma plugin for previewing designs across mobile screen sizes
### NetBank — [View](
https://danielshires.com/projects/refreshing-netbank-s-homepage)
Modernising the NetBank homepage within its existing architecture
### Formbay — [View](
https://danielshires.com/projects/formbay)
Leading visual design for a solar start-up
### Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours — [View](
https://danielshires.com/projects/scenic-luxury-cruises-and-tours)
Campaign and digital design for a luxury travel brand
### Design Maxims — [View](
https://designmaxims.netlify.app)
Short quotes and ruminations on what design (and life) can be
### MASO Fitness — [View](
https://danielshires.com/projects/maso-fitness)
Brand identity and website for a new fitness group
### Yo! Gif — [View](
https://yogifme.netlify.app)
A simple search platform for Gif images
## Writing
#### [How I built this site](
https://danielshires.com/writing/how-i-built-this-site)
26 Oct 2026
The decisions behind building this portfolio with Astro, Sanity and AI-assisted development, and why AI speeds up the work without making the calls.
#### [Crocs](
https://danielshires.com/writing/good-design-award-1-crocs)
12 May 2026
Is good design only about solving problems? The first Good Design Award goes to a shoe people love to hate.
#### [Make Coffee. Think Better.](
https://danielshires.com/writing/stop-to-think)
7 May 2026
Why the best ideas don’t happen at your desk
#### [Techno feudalism](
https://danielshires.com/writing/techno-feudalism-is-real)
6 May 2026
What Yanis Varoufakis's book explains about our dependence on cloud platforms, and what we trade for it.
#### [Getting feedback](
https://danielshires.com/writing/getting-feedback)
4 Jul 2025
Getting feedback is essential for understanding how to interact with our surroundings and digital products, but it's also essential for moving your design practice forward.
#### [Designers that I admire](
https://danielshires.com/writing/designers-that-i-admire)
21 Jun 2025
An ongoing collection of some of my favourite designers.
#### [Top 10 tips to help build applications with Cursor](
https://danielshires.com/writing/top-10-tips-to-help-build-applications-with-cursor)
18 Jun 2025
Save time and move fast. Build small web projects with these top 10 tips.
#### [A short history of my web portfolios](
https://danielshires.com/writing/a-short-history-of-my-web-portfolios)
9 Jun 2025
A look back at the portfolios on GitHub: the first HTML site in 2020, a Jekyll version, a Hugo site, and the Astro project this page lives on.
## Stack
This site is a static [Astro](
https://astro.build) 4 build, hosted on [Netlify](
https://www.netlify.com). Pages are generated ahead of time.
Projects, writing, pictures, and albums come from [Sanity](
https://www.sanity.io) (project `5fq3rcf6`, production dataset). The studio is at [/studio](
https://danielshires.com/studio). About copy, experience, and social links are edited in `src/config/about.ts`. The CV is the markdown file linked above.
Interactive pieces, such as the theme control, are React islands. Everything else is Astro. Styling is Tailwind CSS, with a light and dark theme stored in `localStorage`. [Swup](
https://swup.js.org) replaces only the `<main>` element between pages. Images are optimised with Sharp. A Netlify function serves the avatar chat experiment at `/api/avatar`.
This profile is the plain-text version of the site. It is also published at [/agent.md](
https://danielshires.com/agent.md). The homepage returns the same document when a request sends `Accept: text/markdown`.
## Connect
- LinkedIn: [in/shiresdaniel](
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shiresdaniel/)
- GitHub: [@danielshires](
https://github.com/danielshires)
- Email: [hello@danielshires.com](
mailto:hello@danielshires.com)