Finn Robertson
I'm a Lead Design Technologist at Xero with 20 years of experience running StudioBuster, where I helped clients and creative teams turn digital ideas into websites and customer experiences. My work bridges design and frontend engineering, with a focus on reusable systems, AI-assisted prototyping, and making complex workflows clear and usable.
About
At Xero, I work at the intersection of design, frontend engineering, and AI. I build practical tools and prototypes that help teams move from ideas to realistic experiences while keeping accessibility, design-system consistency, and a path to implementation in view.
- Built AI-assisted prototyping tools and reusable interface foundations to help teams explore product ideas with greater consistency.
- Structured design-system guidance so it can be used by designers, developers, and AI-enabled workflows.
- Created prototype-sharing and review workflows that make experiments easier to communicate and reuse.
- Developed interactive prototypes for complex business experiences and contributed hands-on frontend refinements.
- Integrated accessibility and content-quality considerations into design-system and prototyping work.
- Ran StudioBuster for 20 years, delivering web design, development, and optimisation for clients, creative agencies, and design studios.
Areas of work
What I focus on at Xero, across design, frontend engineering and AI.
Before Xero
Before joining Xero, I ran StudioBuster for 20 years, partnering with clients, creative agencies, and design studios to take digital work from concept through design, development, and optimisation.
A recurring focus was making complex needs manageable: shaping customer journeys, connecting booking and business systems, and giving teams practical ways to manage their own content.
- Custom websites & web apps
- Design systems
- CMS
- E-comm
- Performance & SEO
Notable clients
Many delivered in partnership with creative agencies.
Web app, assessment tool
Design system and web app
Website, booking, e-commerce
Website, CMS
Websites, e-commerce
Best Winery Website, 2024
Website, CMS, e-commerce · with Liquorice
Website, CMS, e-commerce · with Liquorice
Website, CMS · with Dentsu
Web app · with Royals
Website, CMS · with State Empire
Website, CMS · with Royals
Featured projects
Select a project for the full story.
An online coaching resource and assessment tool for Tennis Australia. It guides coaches in developing players from grassroots to professional, across five development stages from age 8 to 17+.
- Turns Tennis Australia's development framework into a navigable resource, organised into pillars: Vision, Character, Weapons and Priorities, and Program Requirements.
- Sets out the competencies expected at each development stage, along with junior and professional ranking benchmarks.
- Includes a signed-in assessment tool where coaches manage their players, assess them against the matrix and view progress reports.
I built the whole product: front end, API, database and the assessment workflow.
The website for The Superpower Institute, a not-for-profit led by Ross Garnaut and Rod Sims that helps Australia seize the economic opportunities of the post-carbon world.
- Publishes the Institute’s policy, research, news and open data in one place.
- Headless, content-managed with Sanity so the team can publish and update content themselves.
I built the whole site: front end, content model and Sanity CMS setup.
A rebuilt website and booking experience for one of Melbourne's best-known removalists, followed by internal apps connected to their business systems.
- Instant online booking: customers enter their move, pick an arrival time and lock it in on the spot.
- E-commerce for moving boxes and supplies, with custom API integrations into the business’s booking systems.
I worked closely with their internal systems team to prototype, refine and build the booking flow.
“StudioBuster completely rebuilt our complex booking system. What impressed us most was Finn's ability to take a complicated onboarding flow and make it intuitive.”
The website for ACMI, Australia's national museum of screen culture in Fed Square, Melbourne, launched for the museum's reopening.
- A headless, content-managed site for exhibitions, films and events.
- E-commerce and search optimisation built in.
I did the front-end development, in partnership with the agency Liquorice.
Process
My process is collaborative and pragmatic: understand the goals and constraints, work closely with client and agency teams, choose technology suited to the job, and support clients in taking ownership of their content.