Black and white close-up photo of a middle-aged man with short, light-colored hair, wearing a dark T-shirt, looking directly at the camera with a serious expression. Background includes office computer monitors.

I’m a design leader with 25+ years of experience building brands, products, and teams - starting at animation studios before shifting to advertising agencies and branding agencies and then to funded fintech scale-ups.

Today I’m Head of Design at Alt21, a Series A FX fintech, where I lead product transformation across client, partner, and internal platforms. My focus is simple: turn complexity into clarity.

That has meant:

  • Redesigning onboarding to reduce completion time from 30 minutes to 10

  • Building a scalable design system from the ground up

  • Elevating product maturity during a Series A funding round

  • Aligning brand, UX, and business strategy into one coherent story

Before fintech, I built award-winning brand work for Coca-Cola, Vodafone, Sony, and cultural figures including Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I’ve led creative studios, built marketplaces, shipped apps, and learned first-hand how hard scaling product really is.

Some ventures succeeded. Some folded. Both were useful.

Today I specialise in leading design teams within scale-ups — building systems, culture, and clarity while staying close to craft.

I’m also actively integrating AI-augmented design workflows, using tools such as Anthropic Claude for research synthesis, ideation, and product thinking, and experimenting with MCP-assisted workflows to generate and refine design structures directly within Figma environments. My view is simple: AI should accelerate thinking and iteration, but taste, judgement, and responsibility remain human work.

I regularly speak at events including Web Summit, The Next Web, Global Entrepreneurship Congress, and Friends of Figma, exploring design leadership, creativity in regulated industries, and how designers can adapt to AI-accelerated workflows without losing craft.

Comfort zones expire quickly in design. Curiosity shouldn’t.

  • FX risk management platform serving SMEs, partners, and professional traders. Lead design strategy across:
    • Client-facing B2B2C platform
    • White-label partner system
    • Internal compliance and operations tools

    Worked closely with Product, Engineering, Compliance, and Leadership.

    Strategic Impact

    Platform Maturation
    • Elevated UX and visual maturity during product pivot
    • Strengthened brand-product alignment ahead of Series A funding
    • Increased consistency and investor-facing credibility

    Onboarding Transformation
    • Reduced onboarding time from 30 → 10 minutes
    • Introduced “form-filling by exception” model
    • Integrated third-party KYC tools - Increased T&C completion and account activation
    • Simplified regulatory copy and introduced light engagement mechanics

    Improved Trading Experience:
    • Enhanced the trading journey through thoughtful light gamification across new products and features, increasing engagement, usability and revenue
    • Simplified product language by replacing complex, technical terminology with clear, accessible copy, reducing friction and making the platform more approachable for entry-level users

    Design System
    • Built scalable cross-platform system
    • Standardised components, behaviours, and accessibility
    • Improved engineering velocity and reduced UX fragmentation

    Dashboard Rebuild
    • Transformed low-engagement surface into core operational hub
    • Increased user interaction with key workflows

    Leadership
    • Mentor and elevate product designers
    • Drive critique culture and craft standards
    • Introduce AI-assisted research and prototyping responsibly
    • Align design decisions with measurable outcomes 

  • Led product design and concept development for the MVP of an esports media platform focused on licensing, discovery, and interactive engagement with gaming and esports visual content.

    ESPAT’s vision was to modernise the legacy media licensing model by transforming esports imagery and video into interactive, commerce-enabled digital assets for publishers, brands, and content creators.

    Working closely with founders and technical stakeholders, I helped shape the early product strategy and user experience, translating an ambitious technology concept into a clear, usable platform capable of attracting early investment.

    Key Contributions
    • Defined product vision and designed the MVP user experience and platform architecture
    • Designed workflows for content discovery, licensing, and distribution within the esports media ecosystem
    • Created UX concepts for interactive and commerce-enabled media assets
    • Designed creator and publisher interfaces enabling content owners to monetise esports imagery and video
    • Helped establish early product narrative and positioning for investors and partners

    The MVP helped communicate the commercial potential of the platform and supported early-stage investment and industry partnerships within the esports and gaming media ecosystem. 

  • Led UX and gameplay design for a real-time sports prediction platform that allowed rugby fans to make match decisions (try/no try, foul play, etc.) ahead of referees and TMOs during live games. The product transformed the natural debate of live sport into an interactive second-screen experience, rewarding fans for speed and accuracy of match analysis. It also demonstrated how live sports analytics and prediction mechanics could deepen fan engagement and create new opportunities for broadcasters and sponsors.

    Key Contributions
    • Designed core gameplay mechanics and scoring system for live match prediction
    • Built UX flows supporting real-time fan engagement during broadcasts
    • Developed social and community features enabling league creation among friends and local venues
    • Introduced location-based competition mechanics allowing pubs and fan groups to host live challenges
    • Designed engagement opportunities for brand sponsors including Guinness

    Commercial Impact
    • Successfully piloted during the British & Irish Lions Tour in partnership with Premier Sports
    • Generated interest from international sports organisations including Rugby League Australia
    • Concept explored for expansion into other sports including India’s Twenty20 Cricket Premier League
    • Provided engagement analytics for broadcasters and sponsors to better understand fan behaviour

  • Designed the product concept and UX for a digital platform connecting craft breweries with local consumers, allowing users to discover small-batch brews in production, pre-order limited releases, and track the brewing process from creation to collection. The platform aimed to solve a discovery and distribution challenge faced by independent breweries while giving consumers transparency into craft production and access to highly limited batches.

    Key Contributions:
    • Designed end-to-end UX for consumer mobile experience and brewery management dashboard
    • Created product flows for beer discovery, batch tracking, pre-orders, and pickup scheduling
    • Developed educational product features helping consumers understand brewing styles and craft processes
    • Worked with brewery partners to shape platform requirements and operational workflows

    Outcome:
    The concept demonstrated strong interest among craft breweries and consumers but faced scaling challenges due to the complex and fragmented alcohol sales regulations across U.S. states, highlighting the importance of regulatory considerations in marketplace product design. iption

  • Led product vision, design, and creative direction for JiTT Travel, a venture-backed mobile platform delivering location-aware cultural and historical storytelling to travellers in real time.

    The product was built around a simple insight: many travellers, particularly business travellers, have limited time to explore a city. JiTT used smartphone GPS and wearable technology to surface relevant cultural stories, history, and audio guides precisely when users encountered locations, effectively putting a local historian in your pocket (and on your wrist).

    Key Contributions
    • Led product design across mobile apps, platform architecture, and content marketplace
    • Designed and launched the first tourism city guide apps for Apple Watch, released on the device’s launch day in 2015
    • Built and scaled a multilingual platform spanning 16 cities across 7 languages
    • Created JiTT Travel Publisher, a marketplace enabling travel writers, bloggers, and tourism organisations to distribute free and premium guides
    • Shaped the end-to-end experience including UX/UI, brand, art direction, content strategy, copy, and audio production
    • Onboarded independent publishers and regional tourism bodies to the platform

    Industry Engagement
    Presented the product and its design approach at Web Summit, The Next Web, and the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, and represented the company across EU startup and innovation events.

    Outcome
    Despite strong partnerships with travel content creators and tourism organisations, the startup ultimately struggled to compete within the highly consolidated travel content market. The experience provided valuable insight into marketplace dynamics, content ecosystems, and early-stage product scaling.

  • Purple was where I truly grew up as a designer.

    I joined Purple from its founding day and developed from middleweight designer to senior creative, contributing to brand identity, advertising campaigns, and strategic creative direction for national and international clients.

    Working within a high-pressure, fast-moving agency environment, I helped shape visual identities, advertising concepts, and campaign storytelling across print, broadcast, and emerging digital media, providing creative for direct clients and for multinational clients as a service provider for larger advertising agencies.

    This period was formative in shaping my understanding of the designer’s role as both craftsperson and strategic thinker, balancing creativity, commercial objectives, and audience impact.

    Clients included: Sony, O2, RTÉ Television, Brennan’s Bread, Alltech, SuperValu, Forbo, Diabetes Federation of Ireland Cash & Carry Kitchens

    During this time I developed the creative discipline, conceptual thinking, and collaborative working style that continues to inform my product design and leadership approach today.

    I continue to maintain a strong professional relationship with the studio and collaborate with them on projects.