Expertise
Five roles, one through-line.
Twenty years from front-end code to design leadership — building teams, practices, and now the AI tooling that runs them. Always the same focus: making complex systems usable for real people.
Career progression
2022 – NOW
5. UCD Leadership
Embedded Design Lead and design leadership across major programmes (FCDO, UK Export Finance) — coaching designers, facilitating design sprints, and setting research-to-delivery operating models. Founded UCDOps® Agent, an AI-assisted UCD pipeline, and run an AI-first practice on live OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE engagements.
2018 – 2022
4. Lead UCD Consultant
Discovery through delivery and service design across UK Government — Scottish Government, HMRC, MoJ, NHS, CQC, Home Office, Ofgem. GDS Service Standard, service assessments, and multidisciplinary squad delivery.
2015 – 2018
3. Lead UX Designer
Lead product design remit — design systems, high-fidelity prototypes, and squad leadership at Vodafone, Nationwide, and Virgin Media.
2011 – 2014
2. Senior UX Designer
Discovery, research, interaction design, and usability testing for Rank Digital, British Airways, and other regulated consumer brands.
2006 – 2010
1. Web Developer
Front-end stack and full-stack delivery at Nokia, Wipro, Cognizant, Yahoo! and IBM.
How I lead
Leadership through practice, not just headcount.
I lead by setting direction, raising the bar, and staying in the work — direction-setting for programmes, coaching for designers, and a hands-on design practice that never went manager-only.
UCD Leadership
Research-to-delivery operating models across UK Government programmes; GDS Service Standard fluency and service assessments from discovery to live.
Design Lead
Embedded leadership on transformation programmes (FCDO, UKEF, CQC): direction, prioritisation, and quality without a ramp-up period.
Design coach
Raising team capability in the flow of work — crit culture, pairing, and practice standards that outlast the engagement.
Design mentor
Teaching materials, intern and graduate resources, and team collaboration guides used across delivery teams.
Hands-on senior designer
I don't stop designing when I start leading: prototypes, design systems, and developer handoff remain part of the job.
Design Sprint facilitator
Workshops and sprints that align policy, delivery, and engineering around evidence — from problem framing to tested prototype.
AI-first practice
I built the tooling my practice runs on.
Founded and built UCDOps® Agent (ucdagent.com) — an AI-assisted pipeline that runs UCD stages end-to-end, from research synthesis and evidence analysis to artefact generation. I designed the operating model, built the product, and use it on live client engagements to compress discovery-to-delivery cycles.
This is what an AI-first design leader looks like: someone who redesigns how the team works, not just what it ships — including the due diligence to run AI tooling safely in secure government contexts.
Built, not bought
Designed and shipped end-to-end: operating model, product, and pipeline — Next.js, agent SDK, deployed and live.
Proven on live engagements
In active use on real client work — running research synthesis, evidence analysis, and artefact generation inside delivery, not as a demo.
Capability matrix
Research
- Discovery
- Usability testing
- Service mapping
- Evidence synthesis
Design
- UX
- UI
- Interaction
- Content design
- Design systems
- Prototyping
- Accessibility (WCAG 2.2)
Leadership
- Team coaching & mentoring
- DesignOps & practice maturity
- Hiring & capability building
- Stakeholder & exec communication
- Workshop & sprint facilitation
- GDS service assessments
AI-first practice
- AI-assisted research synthesis
- Agentic workflows
- Prompt & agent design
Stack
- Figma
- Miro
- Next.js / React
- Power Platform
- Agent SDKs
- Cursor