Lead product designer and design leader with 20 years’ experience turning complex customer insight into measurable outcomes, from end-to-end journey design to shipping features used by millions.
Experience at
I’m a lead product designer and design leader who has spent 20 years obsessing over the gap between what customers expect and what they experience. I’ve worked across industries from telecommunications to accounting to property, and every role has reinforced the same lesson: the best product decisions start with a deep understanding of the person on the other side of the screen.
At Xero I led 5-7 designers across Inventory, eCommerce and Data-in, lifting Inventory CSAT by 50% and shipping features used by millions. Now at Trade Me I design data-led tools for property agents and I am building AI into how design teams work.
I believe in a collaborative, human-centred approach to cross-functional work - connecting strategy to delivery in a way that teams trust and customers feel.
Turning complex requirements into clear, usable interfaces.
Using AI to prototype faster and make sense of customer feedback.
Leading design teams and aligning product, engineering and research.
Some of my recent projects that show how I connect customer insight to deliver measurable business impact.
Xero's inventory products were fragmented. The basic offering sat inside Xero but lacked features needed by small businesses, while paid add-ons aimed at multi-channel businesses sat entirely outside of Xero – duplicating functionality rather than connecting to existing workflows. Customers upgrading had no clear path, and often ended up managing the same data in two separate places, meaning their accounting was never in sync.
I was part of the team that defined Xero's customer journey framework methodology, then led its application across the full Inventory landscape – seven business lifecycle stages, three levels of zoom. The framework highlighted the fragmentation between products clearly for the first time, and surfaced other gaps alongside it. It became the foundation for every major Inventory decision that followed, shaping roadmap priorities and giving the wider team a shared language for the customer experience.
For small business owners, stocktakes had always meant counting manually and adjusting inventory one item at a time – a process Xero had no good answer for. I designed bulk adjustment from the ground up: researching how users actually run stocktakes across different business types, mapping the end-to-end workflow, and identifying where the biggest time costs sat.
The resulting feature lets users update multiple inventory items in a single action, cutting what used to take hours down to minutes. It launched to an overwhelmingly positive response – 29.5K adjustments submitted in the first three months, a 4.1/5 satisfaction score, and customers saving around 40 minutes per stocktake on average.
69% of UK businesses still spend hours on manual data entry. With Making Tax Digital raising the stakes for compliance, I led the design of an experience that lets small businesses snap, forward, or upload receipts, invoices and rental statements – with industry-leading AI extracting line items and pre-filling records in seconds.
Xero cross-references each captured record against bank data, automatically flagging matches and duplicates so nothing slips through. The result is a seamless flow from document capture to HMRC submission without the user ever leaving the product. It launched to 1.1M uploads in the first month, drove 14.4% WAU growth, and opened up a 2.4M customer TAM that Xero hadn't previously been able to serve.
Purchase orders in Xero had been built on an ageing platform that sat visually and behaviourally out of step with the rest of the product. I led the redesign and re-platform onto Xero's current design system – not just a visual lift, but a full rethink of the workflow to remove unnecessary steps, improve accessibility, and close out 13 long-standing product ideas representing 182 customer votes.
The project also served as a critical strategic unlock: by modernising the technical foundation, it created the infrastructure needed to build Supplier Email Attachments – Xero's most requested Inventory feature with 277 votes. At just 5% rollout, the new experience was already processing 150K purchase orders across 64K organisations, and CSAT rose from 2.0 to 3.01 within weeks of launch.
Virgin Media's bundle comparison page was a critical point in the acquisition journey – and it wasn't converting. Working closely with data and research teams, I mapped exactly where customers were dropping off and why: too many options, too much friction, and a layout that made comparison harder than it needed to be.
The redesign focused on reducing cognitive load and making the right choice easier to reach – clearer hierarchy, better signposting, and a structure built around how customers actually make decisions rather than how the business wanted to present its products. A/B testing validated the approach before full rollout, delivering £700k additional revenue per year, 341 more orders per month, and a 4.4% conversion uplift.
Before I sketch a screen, I follow the customer: where they start, what they're actually trying to do, and where they get stuck. The best product decisions are made by people who genuinely understand the person on the other end.
Qualitative insight tells you why. Quantitative data tells you where. The combination – deep understanding of customer behaviour paired with rigorous measurement – is where real impact lives. I don't guess if I can know.
The best design isn't the most polished Figma file – it's the thing in front of customers, being used, being measured, and getting better. I bias toward delivery and treat every release as the beginning of a conversation, not the end.
Working closely with Product and Engineering to evolve Trade Me’s B2B property solutions. Leading discovery and design of Data enrichment to give agents behavioural insight that generates higher-quality leads, and evolving how Design works to accelerate adoption of AI tools.
Managed a team of designers across Xero’s Business Management Portfolio, fostering a culture of customer advocacy and design excellence. Led experience strategy and design for Inventory, eCommerce and Data-in products, working closely with Product, Engineering and Marketing counterparts to define and execute long-term experience strategies.
Led the modernisation of Xero's Contacts product, facilitating customer interviews and translating deep user insight into design decisions. Partnered with Product and Engineering to shape medium and long-term experience strategies.
Part of a cross-functional agile team focused on improving the end-to-end customer acquisition experience. Used A/B testing methods and customer data to drive measurable improvements across the purchasing journey.
The time you invested in the customer journey framework really shows. The way you mapped the inventory workflow and journey is excellent, and it's incredibly helpful for external stakeholders to understand the inventory process. I'm confident this framework can be a powerful tool for us moving forward.
Your communication throughout this project was excellent – you consistently kept me informed about the plan, any timeline or scope changes, and actively sought my feedback. Thank you for making work fun, challenging with respect, and always being ready to brainstorm ideas!
Rich is one of those rare designers who combines real creative vision with genuine leadership. He sets a high bar for quality while creating space for others to grow – and he genuinely invests in the people around him. He listens, offers sound perspective, and has mentored plenty of colleagues through challenges. Any team would benefit hugely from his expertise and the collaborative culture he brings.
I'm looking for my next role as a Lead Product Designer or Design Leader. If you're building something that matters and need someone who brings strategic thinking and hands-on craft – I'd love to hear from you.
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