My Story

For over two decades, my career has been about bridging the gap between physical reality and complex software. It started not with pixels, but with metal. I spent years in industrial design, learning the hard-won, often greasy lessons of turning an idea into a tangible object that didn’t fall apart under pressure. I also ran a commercial photography business for a time, which taught me sharp lessons about visual discipline and the commercial realities of creative work.

Eventually, the world shifted, and so did I. I was handed the challenge of dragging a piece of gym equipment, kicking and screaming, from an ATM-style screen into the modern world of Android touch interfaces. From that moment, I was hooked on the properly difficult problems of digital product design.

That journey took me to The Hut Group, where I led UX for the intricate operational software running a global e-commerce machine—a baptism of fire in internal tooling where a clumsy interface doesn't just annoy people, it burns money. At 90POE, I built and led the design function for maritime technology, turning the chaotic data streams of modern global shipping into tools a ship's captain wouldn't want to throw overboard. Today at Citation, I lead design and research across complex compliance platforms, while working closely with leadership to shape how autonomous and agentic workflows reshape our product lifecycle.
I remain a player-coach by design: someone who can define high-level product strategy and scale a team, but who refuses to retreat entirely into slide decks and roadmap spreadsheets.

My Leadership & Craft Philosophy

I am a pragmatist, not a purist. I am drawn to legacy architecture, heavy business logic, and high-stakes workflows that most designers run away from. I solve them with a minimum of design theatre.
To me, being a design leader doesn’t mean giving up your tools—it means using your craft to raise the bar for everyone around you.

1. Clarity over chaos (Strategy & Direction)
Before anyone opens a file, my job is to kill ambiguity. I partner with product managers and engineering leads to forge a common-sense strategy: What problem are we actually solving? What does victory look like? And is everyone pulling in the exact same direction? It’s about having a structural blueprint before laying bricks.

2. Substance over ceremony (Team Coaching & Agency)
I lead senior product designers and researchers by giving them context, not micromanagement. That means building proper career ladders so people stay and grow, running rigorous critiques that sharpen critical thinking, and establishing rituals that produce useful debate instead of soul-destroying meetings. I lead from the front, setting a high standard for quality while giving the team room to own their domains.

3. Systems over bottlenecks (Design Systems & Architecture)
A leader who acts as an operational roadblock is failing. I architect and govern tokenised, scalable design systems and shared Figma environments that eliminate technical debt and bridge the gap with front-end engineering. When systems are robust, designers stop reinventing basic wheels and start spending their energy solving real customer problems.

4. Hands-on with the 'Properly Difficult' (Complex Systems & Next-Gen Workflows)
Enterprise software is notorious for feeling like wading through digital treacle. Whether embedded directly in a squad untangling multi-state legacy forms or working with leadership on agentic, human-in-the-loop product patterns, I stay close to the work. I build software that respects the user's intelligence and gets the job done without friction.

Career Milestones

The Citation Group | Lead Product Designer

• Focus: B2B SaaS | Compliance & HR Tech

• Dates: 2026 – Present

• Role: Leading a multidisciplinary team of senior designers and researchers. Architecting multi-tenant design system foundations, governing design quality across squads, and defining the emerging agentic product lifecycle.

90POE | Lead Product Designer

• Focus: Enterprise SaaS | Maritime Intelligence

• Dates: 2021 – 2026

• Role: Built the design function from the ground up. Architected the tokenised design system, scaled design rituals and career pathways, and led UX strategy for high-stakes maritime navigation and operations platforms.

Glofox | Senior Product Designer

• Focus: SaaS | Fitness Tech

• Dates: 2021

• Role: Greenfield design for analytics and marketing platforms, laying the groundwork for scalable component libraries.

THG (The Hut Group) | Senior UX Designer

• Focus: Enterprise E-commerce | Internal Tooling

• Dates: 2019 – 2021

• Role: Led UX for the group's operational backbone—from warehouse logistics and courier routing to internal trading and customer service engines.

Pulse Fitness | Senior Product Designer & GUI Architect

• Focus: Connected Hardware & Touch UI

• Dates: 2002 – 2019

• Role: Directed the digital transformation of commercial gym machinery, transitioning physical consoles to custom Android touch ecosystems and connected fitness software.