Product Design & Research Leader
I build and scale design teams that innovate, stay curious, and drive real impact.
During my time at Spotify, Meta/Oculus and Welltech I led product strategy and partnered with CPOs, CEOs and executive peers to shape what gets built, and why.
Selected work
Design leadership · Business impact
Building a design organisation at scale
Joined Welltech to build the design, user research and writing functions from the ground up. Worked directly with the CEO and CPO to define the role of design in the company's product strategy, then hired and scaled a 30+ person multidisciplinary team — designers, researchers, writers and managers. Led the strategic redesign of core products that drove +7% first-time usage and −11% churn, and made the case to the executive team to invest in AI-led personalisation — resulting in the launch of Return, which achieved +13% higher retention.
Welltech
Subscription growth · Cultural impact
Spotify Wrapped
Co-ted the product team that ship Wrapped, Spotify's long-term retention and brand investment effort. Directed and grew the cross-functional team that designed, researched and shipped this global cultural moment. Results reaching 400M+ users across 180+ markets and driving a 21% spike in app downloads on launch day. Inspired Apple Music, YouTube Music and Deezer to launch equivalent features.
Spotify
0→1 product · Cross-company strategy
Lossless Audio Streaming
Led the strategic effort to bring lossless audio to Spotify — a product that required aligning stakeholders across product, engineering, marketing and the executive team around a shared definition of what "quality" actually means to listeners. Built and led the team from early research through to launch, translating a complex technical capability into an elevated product experience.
Spotify
AR/VR · 0→1
Oculus Go & Oculus Quest
One of the first design and research leaders at Oculus, working directly with Oculus CEOs to shape the strategic direction of Meta's social VR platform from the ground up. Led design and insights for Oculus Go — CES Best Product winner, 2M+ units sold — and Oculus Quest, Meta's first 6DOF headset on a platform that went on to sell 20M+ units. Also drove the design of Workrooms and Venues, defining how millions of people work and connect in VR.
Meta / Oculus
Thinking
Coming soon
Design for Failure
Most design frameworks celebrate the "happy path" - the seamless, idealised journey where users make no mistakes. But real life rarely works that way. This book argues that failure is not just inevitable but essential to good design. By learning from failure, predicting it, and designing for it, we build products that are more resilient, more empathetic, and ultimately more successful.
In progressSpotify Insights · 2021
4 myths about tactical research
The tactical/strategic split in UX research is a false dichotomy and believing it limits the impact of the work. A case for why tactical research, done right, is some of the most powerful work a researcher can do.
Read on Medium →About
Good design isn't decoration. It's the earliest form of product thinking. The best designed products I've been part of started not with a brief, but with a question: what does this person actually need, and why?
I've spent my career building and scaling multidisciplinary design, research and writing teams - 40+ people at Welltech, 10+ at Spotify and Meta - working directly with CPOs, CEOs and boards to shape product direction from the earliest stages.
My background is in Human-Computer Interaction research, which shapes how I lead: hypothesis-driven, evidence-grounded, with a high bar for craft and a clear view of what good looks like. I've built design systems, led monetisation and paywall design, driven subscription product strategy, and navigated global expansion across regulated markets. I'm now thinking carefully - and practically - about what AI means for design practice, for research, and for the organisations doing this work.
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