Product Design & Research Leader
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.
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 40+ person multidisciplinary team of designers, researchers, writers and managers. Led the strategic redesign of core products and made the case to the executive team to invest in AI-led personalisation, resulting in the launch of Return.
Spotify, 2020-2023
Co-led the product team that shipped 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. It reached 400M+ users across 180+ markets and drove a 21% spike in app downloads on launch day, and inspired Apple Music, YouTube Music and Deezer to launch equivalent features.
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.
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.
Book, coming soon
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 progress
Spotify Insights, 2021
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 MediumGood 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.
Open to VP and Senior Design Director roles. Email is the fastest way to reach me.