Design Lead / Principal

Supporting an early-stage health tech start-up. Shaping proposition, brand and go-to-market strategy. More soon...

NDA: Discovery project exploring AI for the Beauty industry.

Exploring new paradigms in UX & interface design.

WGSN are trend forecasters, the most influential B2B company that you probably don't know exists. Through bringing a user first, design first approach to the table, I led product design and contributed to the transformation of WGSN from a publishing led business to product led, making it future fit.

Key achievements:

The WGSN Ecosystem

• Responsible for complete redesign of WGSN; evolving the brand and unifying the experience across 5 product verticals, resulting in a robust, coherent platform
• Business impact: reduction in publishing time, record-breaking NPS scores (from 38 to 52! I know controversial metric), delighted customers, and soaring retention rates during a tough economic spell

Design-led product culture, allowing innovation to thrive

• Implemented product design practices, championed the customer, brought research insights to the product discovery and development cycle, defined product strategy and direction, prototyped new services
• Launched 4 new products within 4 years; the #TrendFeed, Beauty vertical, Personalisation & TrendCurve; revolutionising how trends are predicted. Giving WGSN the potential to move from a digital publishing service to a bespoke data reporting service in the near future
• Team impact: showed the C-suite the value of the product team which led to growth in this discipline.

Upskilling & supporting the team

• I fostered collaboration across the business, showing the engineering team & editors how to "sprint"; taking them on the design journey. Reducing delivery of new products & features from months to week
• I upskilled (non-product) designers through coaching and practical workshops on product design thinking
• Coaching and mentoring design team
• Created an approach to recruitment & hiring designers

Designed an intensive learning experience and delivered it to over 100+ software apprentices from Google, Facebook, EY, Deloitte, PwC & BritishLand. Responsible for a module about Agile Methodologies and User Centred Design Thinking.

Co-op: Embedding with the Manchester Co-op team, to discover opportunities for improvement and growth in their Food business through an Alpha discovery programme.

Eurostar: Re-imagining the booking journey, evolving the brand, and coaching the in-house team on the principles of agile product development.

Further clients: Trinny London, ASOS, Barclaycard, Worldpay.

Agencies: Undercurrent Brands, Wieden+Kennedy, Hudson Wright (Fashion), Morning Brands, Aimee Betts (Textiles), House of Fraser (Retail), Me&Dave (Property) , The Mind Gym (Corporate training), Brand Pie, Greentarget (Corporate communications), Design@EC1 (Packaging), New Future Graphic, Wallpaper* Magazine, Smith and Gilmour (Publishing)