Liliya Spencer.
About me

Trained to draw. Paid to decide.

I’m Lily. I’m from Russia, and Singapore has been home since 2013.

Art came first - art school from a young age, then a diploma as a digital artist. What followed was less linear: a career in furniture design, then web development taught to myself in the evenings because I wanted to know how the digital side actually worked, then freelance projects, then a move into front-end proper, and from there into user experience and interface design.

That route is the reason I’m useful. I can draw the thing, argue for it, and then write enough of the code to know whether the argument was honest.

More recently I took a degree in artificial intelligence and data analysis - partly because the field is going to reshape what we all do, and partly because I was tired of being handed a summary of the numbers and asked to design against it. I’ve since built diagnostic models of my own.

Along the way I’ve mentored junior designers, which remains the part of the job I’d least like to give up.

Portrait of Liliya Spencer
Where I’ve worked

Experience

A fuller account is in the CV.

Download CV

2024 - Present

Digital Strategist & Creative Consultant, Cleventh

  • End-to-end solutions across social media campaigns, data-driven branding, UX/UI design and AI-powered analytics, tailored to each client’s goals.
  • Combine emerging technology - AI and machine learning - with data-driven creativity to build scalable web and marketing ecosystems.
  • Delivered digital strategy and creative work for RealEzy in proptech, SITA in aviation IT, and WorldPlay in entertainment, driving engagement and revenue growth.

2022 - 2023 · Contract

UX/UI Lead, AGL.SG

  • Led design teams and stakeholder workshops to align UX strategy with business objectives, mentoring junior designers.
  • Delivered high-impact projects including CapitaStar@Work, an award-winning app, and Omne by FWD, an insurance servicing platform.
  • Drove data-informed UX decisions through user research, market analysis and technical constraints.

2020 - 2022

Creative Director, True Inclusion

  • Defined programme vision and roadmaps for educational initiatives, designing structured curricula and leading creative workshops for schools.
  • Designed and taught specialised design workshops for students with special needs at Genesis School and Mountbatten Vocational Centre, adapting curricula to diverse learning needs.
  • Drove SEO and social media marketing campaigns to amplify programme reach and engagement.

2019 - 2020 · Contract

Senior UX/UI Designer, AGL.SG

  • Led end-to-end UX/UI for CapitaLand’s tender-winning project, including user portals and admin dashboards, conducting stakeholder workshops independently.
  • Owned research, testing and iterative design for SK-II and AGL Metal, turning complex workflows into intuitive experiences.
  • Aligned design solutions with business goals while managing multiple fast-paced projects from concept to QA.

2017 - 2019

Senior Front-End Designer, TouchPoint

  • Led design and front-end development for luxury hotel loyalty programmes - St. Regis, JW Marriott, InterContinental, W Hotels and others - creating responsive websites, mobile application interfaces and full branding suites in HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and the Adobe suite.
  • Owned 17+ projects end to end, from concept to troubleshooting, liaising with global stakeholders.
  • Drove 90% higher email open rates and boosted sales through data-driven redesigns and optimisations, resulting in a performance-based pay increase.
Where it came from

Education and credentials

In the order it happened, earliest first. Open any of them for what it actually covered.

  1. Art School

    Russia

    2004-20095 years

    Five years of classical training: drawing from life, composition, and the behaviour of light.

    Still life and figure studies in pencil, charcoal and ink; tone and shadow construction; perspective; colour mixing in watercolour, gouache and oil; plein-air work; and enough art history to know which rules were being broken. It is where I learned to look at something for an hour before touching it, which is still most of what research is.

  2. Diploma, Art and Graphic Design

    College No. 1, Russia

    2008-20113 years

    Where drawing turned into design: typography, layout, and work made to be reproduced.

    Type anatomy and typesetting, grid and composition, colour systems, corporate identity, packaging and editorial layout, and illustration - together with the print side that decides whether any of it survives contact with a press: prepress, colour separation, paper stock and finishing.

  3. 3D Studio Max

    Certificate

    2011Short course

    Modelling, materials and lighting - the training behind the furniture and booth work.

    Polygon and spline modelling, material and texture setup, lighting rigs, camera framing and rendering, and the dimensioned technical drawing a workshop needs before it can build anything.

  4. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign

    Certificates

    2016Short courses

    Formal certification in the three tools I had been working in since college.

    Raster and vector in depth: masking, retouching and colour management; vector construction and type on a path; and multi-page documents with master pages, paragraph styles and export set up for print and screen separately.

  5. Programming and Databases

    Certificate

    2018Short course

    Relational modelling and SQL, taken so I could argue with developers honestly.

    Entity-relationship modelling, normalisation, queries and joins, indexing and query performance, transactions, and procedural programming fundamentals. It is the reason a CMS brief or a dashboard schema is something I can design against rather than hand over.

  6. Search Engine Optimisation

    Certificate

    2020Short course

    How structure, rather than decoration, decides whether a page is ever found.

    Keyword and intent research, on-page optimisation, information architecture and internal linking, the technical layer - crawling, indexing, sitemaps, structured data and page speed - and measuring the result in analytics instead of guessing at it.

  7. BSc, Artificial Intelligence and Data Analysis

    S. U. Witte University, Russia

    2021-20254 years

    A full degree taken alongside client work, because the field had started rewriting my own.

    Mathematics and statistics, Python, data analysis and visualisation, databases, machine learning, neural networks including convolutional architectures, ensemble methods, and research method. The diagnostic models on this site - pneumonia and dementia detection - were built end to end out of it.

  8. Certified ADHD Coach

    Certification

    2026

    Coaching practice for executive function, attention, and the systems that support both.

    Goal setting and accountability structures, working memory and task-initiation strategies, emotional regulation, and neurodiversity-affirming practice. I use it where I can - most directly through Special Inclusion, whose marketing I help to oversee.

Every tool on this list has been replaced at least once since I learned it. The habit of going back for the next one is the part that holds its value.

Toolkit

What I work with

Practice

  • User experience
  • User interface
  • Design leadership
  • User research and testing
  • Wireframing
  • Rapid prototyping
  • Workshop facilitation
  • Design systems
  • Branding
  • Graphic design
  • Data analysis
  • Machine learning
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Project management
  • Social media marketing

Tools

  • Figma
  • Adobe XD
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign
  • Premiere Pro
  • Dreamweaver
  • CorelDraw
  • HTML5 and CSS3
  • JavaScript
  • Python
  • Play.HT
  • Canva
  • Keynote
Get in touch

Tell me what you’re building.

I’m open to a role where design owns something: the research behind it, the system underneath it, and the people doing the work. Singapore-based and a permanent resident here.

spencerliliya@gmail.com Download CV