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UX Leadership | Research Specialist
About me
I've spent 25 years in design leadership and user research across enterprises, startups, the public sector and fintech. Most recently, I was Head of UX at Spirax Group, where I built the design capabilities, established research ops, and led digital design across the organisation.
I love user research. Not just setting the strategy, but the actual work of understanding: Why do users struggle with this workflow? What assumptions are we making that aren't true? How do people actually work?
I'm particularly drawn to complex problems that require a deep understanding of systems, people, constraints, and what's actually true.
I work across all qualitative and quantitative methods ensuring the method follows the question. I have a broad range of experience, including enterprise systems, regulated environments, and situations where success requires understanding multiple perspectives, trade-offs, and constraints.
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Work
2023 - 2026
Spirax Group
Head of User Experience
Led UX across multiple digital products and business units. Built research operations, established the Fuse design system, and developed the SOAR innovation framework. Conducted extensive research with sales engineers, quantitative surveys across AI/IIoT projects, and organizational maturity assessments to guide product delivery capability.
2019 - 2022
Curtis Fitch Ltd
Head of Design
UX strategy and design leadership for a De Beers Group start-up. Conducted user research with rough diamond buyers and the luxury consumer market, Benchmarked competitors and tested prototypes to understand what would enable confidence in high-value online purchasing. Research findings directly informed platform redesign and new business initiatives.
2013-2018
Iress Ltd
Head of User Experience
Built UX capability from scratch in a global fintech. Established user-centred design processes grounded in research, designed systems supporting global teams, and introduced design thinking across the organisation. Led research and design across lending, trading and wealth solutions for B2B and B2C users.
2010 - 2013
BAE Systems
Senior Design Manager
The UK's largest design and build agency at the time. I led multi-disciplinary teams designing solutions for a range of clients, including national security, fintech, telco, health, entertainment, transport and financial services.
2000 - 2010
Various design roles
Following university, I held design and UX roles at various companies and agencies.
What I do
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I help teams understand and validate challenges and opportunities in their digital spaces. Whether that's discovery before design, building research and design capability at scale, or assessing organisational maturity, I bring methodological rigor and strategic perspective.
Build research and design capability
Build and scale UX through operations, repositories, culture and team enablement.
Plan and conduct user research
Qualitative and quantitative methods, framed around your problem or opportunity with clear insights and actionable recommendations for product, design, and leadership audiences.
Organisational assessment
Understand maturity across product delivery dimensions, identify gaps, and provide a structured roadmap for improvement.
Audience recruitment
Sourcing and logistics for B2B and consumer research, including hard-to-reach specialist audiences.
Highlights
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LEADERSHIP HIGHLIGHTS
Design Ops
Fintech
Built design capability from scratch; introduced a global design system adoption across global platforms.
Digital Innovation
Spirax Group
Led a global remote multidisciplinary team. Responsible for all research and design work across Group digital.
Digital Transformation
De Beers
Led UX for $500m digital transformation across B2B and B2C.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
SPIRAX GROUP
Building research ops
Built research operations at scale across the Group, creating a repository of actionable insights that allowed product teams to access evidence-based findings independently. Research became a shared asset, informing roadmap and design decisions.
DE BEERS
$500M Research
Conducted research with rough diamond buyers to understand what would enable confidence purchasing expensive diamond parcels online. Research directly informed a new auction platform design and new business models.
IRESS
Regulated industry
Led research across a number of financial solutions for lending, trading and wealth services.
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Contact
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