I’m a Lead UX & digital product designer specialising in e-commerce design

What I can do for you

I’m a team leader, and also capable of doing detailed design. I use data to inform and drive the product design process, including directing and conducting my own usability testing and Contentsquare / GA analysis.

I think in terms of design systems, and delivering to achieve business outcomes. Design is a collaborative activity, and I enjoy working within a team, and representing my team within the wider organisation and beyond.

I’ve grown UX and digital product design as a new function with companies, managed AB testing programmes, and led the UX / digital product design function for e-commerce brands, corporates, and within digital agencies. I have also created and delivered new products, e.g. a major new product for LexisNexis.

For the last 5 years, I was lead UX designer at Arcadia / Top Shop, then Ted Baker, both permanent roles (started both as a contractor, then hired permanently). Before that, I was a contractor for 12 years - leading UX design & research teams, and delivering commercial design work - full rundown below.

most recent ROLE

Ted Baker: Lead Digital Product Designer (Dec 2020 to May 2024)

Responsible for UX design function. Brand building and product design across all digital channels. Leading product design and a team of designers and front-end developers to deliver all UX and UI design and research.

• Defined and embedded new data-driven design processes, onboarding Contentsquare and online UX testing (Userzoom)

• Managed and ran AB testing programme (using Webtrends Optimize)

• Delivered usability testing programme (using Userzoom, then UserTesting)

• Programme lead for UX design on full re-platforming of www.tedbaker.com

• Proactive analysis of Contentsquare and Google Analytics data to identify opportunities and inform trading and marketing on site

Some quick highlights from my time at Ted Baker:

Design ops & delivery

I led UX and UI design for a full redesign of Ted Baker. I was the lead UX designer producing all wireframes, and also delivered some UI, along with directing the work of a small team of visual and UI designers. I collaborated with product managers and business analysts to define and refine the Jira backlog for two design squads, who worked on Product discovery and Checkout.

Design system

I was responsible for the migration of our design workflows from Adobe XD to Figma, and the delivery of a full design system in Figma.

Previously, design work was delivered as visual designs only. I added Zeplin to our workflow as an initial design system solution, which worked well for communication with developers. I then advocated for our move from XD to Figma, and migrated the design system into Figma. This involved everything from a business case for procurement through to training plans for the team to learn the new platform.

I authored new page designs in Figma using the new design system, so that Jira tickets could also be updated and we had a complete solution from design system to delivery within Figma.

Campaigns & Live shopping

I collaborated closely with the brand and marketing teams to design and deliver a regular cadence of promotions and branded content on the website. Each week, the primary, secondary and tertiary key messages were agreed with Marketing, and used to deliver a pipeline of creative for the site.

Some highlights -

• Street Party: studio performances of UK acts including Jungle, Little Sims and Bastille all wearing Ted Baker. I created a dark mode version of our homepage, taking inspiration from Netflix to present the music videos in a more lean-back entertainment mode.

• My Town: 8-10 minute videos by local influencers from San Francisco, Cape Town and London giving insider recommendations, all wearing Ted Baker. I extended the campaign templates to include PLP and PDP take-overs for products featured in the videos, to maximise engagement.

• Live Shopping: presenting a live feed of two stylists presenting new arrivals from the Women’s collection, with easy add-to-bag functionality and live moderated chat. I selected and configured a third party service (Bambuser) to deliver the functionality within a tight timescale and budget.

Screens from the three campaigns here:

Here’s a video of the first live shopping event (below). Fully live events like this support great engagement, as viewers can comment in real time, and the presenters can respond to questions and comments. It’s important to have a team in place to moderate chat, to relay comments to the presenters, and to keep the flow of models and outfits moving along smoothly.

We also experimented with pre-recorded video, which allowed for seamless outfit transitions etc, but missed out on some of the energy of a live event for the audience. Live video is ideal for new collection launches, but pre-recorded offers a better solution for more evergreen content, e.g. an outwear collections video that can be useful over several months.

Conversion optimisation & AB testing

Revenue was the primary KPI for website performance, with conversion rate as a secondary measure. I used several tools to identify opportunities to increase performance, and also as part of a coherent design process where new design was usability tested, and then AB tested before being rolled out to live:

Usability testing: I set up testing within the company, initially selecting Userzoom as our testing tool before later moving to UserTesting. I defined the tests, analysed the results and took action based on the outcomes.

Contentsquare analysis: I was the lead on our company use of the tool, ensuring that the teams had training and support including additional help around Black Friday etc. I was also the heaviest user of Contentsquare in the company, using it daily to review performance and identify ways to optimise site design, minimise errors and frustration scores, and inform promotion configuration.

AB testing: I led and managed the AB testing programme, collaborating with stakeholders throughout the business to identify new ideas to explore, and then defining these as testable hypotheses to be built out by a team of font-end developers. I used Webtrends Optimize as our AB testing tool.

Below is a snapshot from the Benchmarking report in Contentsquare, showing the outcome of these activities - nearly 3% CVR.

Collaboration & teamwork

Design is a collaborative process, working with stakeholders throughout the business to understand what’s needed and then achieve it. I ran regular workshops with teams, using techniques from Jake Knapp’s Design Sprint methodology and Figjam to encourage participation.

PREVIOUS ROLES

Arcadia Group

Lead UX Designer across projects for multiple high-street fashion brands (Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton Menswear, Miss Selfridge, Wallis, Evans, Outfit). Freelance, then permanent: July 2019 - Dec 2020.

• Delivered all UX design to support a squad working on Product discovery & selection, working with a UI designer and with support from a research team

• Conducted 40+ first round interviews, second round interviews with design task (increase average order value on Deliveroo or Just eat) and a third round with wider stakeholders. Defined a balanced scorecard to ensure systematic and fair hiring process

• Managed creation and delivery of Design System to enable 8 separate brands to be built and managed on a single platform

• Proposed and delivered design workshops to engage with brand marketing and commercial teams through the organisation, so that we were aligned and working together effectively

• Oversaw delivery of design consistency across design team, who were embedded in three separate design squads 

• Led procurement of remote usability testing tools, site data analytics tools and design tools

Results

• Increased team size from 2 to 10, a mix of UX and UI designers, and UX researchers

• Built design process maturity, through provision of customer-centric data tools and data-driven design philosophy

• Purchased and deployed tools including Contentsquare, Userzoom, Figma
  
  

Refinitiv / Thomson Reuters: (Oct 18 - Jun 19) Design Manager, leading a team of UX, UI and visual designers (Oct 2018 - July 2019). I also delivered a strategic project, mapping out all customer touch points and key user journeys on an overarching service design blueprint. This enabled the business to have a shared view of exactly how it interacts with its customers, across all channels, and more importantly, to identify opportunities for improving the quality and consistency of users’ experience.

The project involved running workshops with senior stakeholders throughout the company, and working with external research agencies to conduct user research interviews in London and New York.

Black+Decker / Hugo & Cat: (Aug 18 - Sep 18) UX consultant. A brief project to lead some user journey-mapping workshops with Black+Decker (a leading brand of power tools for home users). I ran client workshops at Hugo & Cat’s HQ in Shoreditch, London, and delivered detailed user journey maps for key consumer product purchases. In follow-on workshops with their senior marketing teams, we ideated on tactical and strategic opportunities to increase sales and engagement, and developed a roadmap for the next year of activity.

Department of International Trade: (Apr 18 - Jul 18) Product Manager. I came into an existing team, and helped to boost their delivery to get the project approved to move from Alpha to Private Beta (i.e. to progress from an early exploration to a product that’s shared with selected end-users, in this case exporters of military hardware). I helped to define the overall product roadmap, and then wrote user stories for the Agile development team.

ASDA / AMV BBDO: (Mar 18 - Apr 18) UX consultant. I worked with the head of UX on an agency-wide pitch for the Asda account (Asda is a major UK supermarket chain). This involved taking part in creative ideation sessions with planners and creative teams, and I also defined a design system to present products and promotions consistently across the site, so that our creative work would be functionally viable as an online shopping experience. AMV BBDO won the pitch, and is now the lead agency for Asda's agency ecosystem. AMV BBDO is the largest advertising agency in the UK (by revenue, at date of this project). 

Amazon / Matter of Form: (Nov 17 - Feb 18) UX design lead.  I designed an online service for Amazon’s marketing team, featuring a dashboard for key sales analytics and data, and a tool for generating custom sales and analytics reports for their biggest vendors. The service also allowed teams to define marketing campaigns for key vendors, and deliver a visual timeline of promotions and KPI goals to share with the vendor. I worked with Amazon product managers to define the service, designed and user-tested wireframes, and then also produced the front-end visual design deliverables in Sketch and Zeplin. The service was voted ‘most useful new service’ by its users at Amazon.

BT Global Services at Wunderman (Aug 17 – Oct 17) UX Design Lead for B2B campaign website and emails targeting C-suite executives at their top 200 global accounts.

LexisNexis (Jul 15 – June 17 - 24 months) UX Design Lead in a globally distributed product design team. Achieved significant growth in NPS for a portfolio of online products. Member of global design leads team. Delivered a major new product from concept to launch.

NS&I at The Team (May 15 - Jul 15) UX Design Lead for a SharePoint intranet for the Government department NS&I (National Savings & Investments).

J. Sainsbury’s (Nov 13 – April 15 - 18 months) Design team lead on a full redesign of Phoneshopbysainsburys.co.uk. This was a client-side role, leading the UX & visual design team, and being main client point of contact for all design-related matters, internally and with agencies.

Volkswagen & giffgaff at Tribal DDB (July 12 – Sept 13 - 15 months) UX Design Lead on a full redesign of Volkswagen.co.uk, new checkout for giffgaff.com to sell Pay monthly phones, campaigns for Diageo (Guinness, Bell’s). Consultancy on O2.co.uk. Tribal DDB: Webby for Agency of year 2013.

British Gas at Rufus Leonard (May 12 – Jul 12) UX Design Lead on a website for British Gas Business.

Yell at BIO Agency (Mar 12 – Apr 12) UX Design Lead for a new website for Yell.com selling website and marketing packages to SMEs.

Vodafone Group (Jun 10 – Jan 12 - 20 months) UX Design Lead for e-commerce site templates used by Vodafone in 16 countries worldwide. Also, templates for the My Account section for Pay monthly Vodafone accounts.

AXA Insurance at Crayon London (Apr 10 – May 10) Strategic review of all AXA Insurance direct-to-consumer channels.

O2 at VCCP 3m (Feb 10 – Apr 10) Strategy and UX work with pitch team at VCCP on their (winning) pitch for the full O2 account.

Honda & ESPN at Collective London (Dec 09 – Feb 10) UX Design Lead for a website for Honda UK, consultancy on ESPN UK website.

Vodafone Group (Dec 08 – Dec 09 - 12 months) UX Design Lead on Vodafone’s My Web portal on both web and mobile platforms.

Justgiving (May 08 0 Nov 08) UX Design Lead for a full website redesign of Justgiving.

IMG Media (2002-2008, permanent) User Experience Architect. Full website redesigns: Fifa.com, Manchester United, Manchester City, The Open Championship (golf), European Tour (golf) and more.