Work
Case studies
Cleo AI
2021 — 2022
Intro
Founded in 2017 — I joined Cleo in August 2021 — a few months into their Series B raise. I was hired as their first Design Manager reporting directly into the VP of Product.
The company was around 70 people at the time with employees distributed across the US and EMEA regions. We had five full-time product designers all reporting directly into me.
Think of the Cleo app as a chatbot and interaction layer on top of a legacy financial system. It is not a bank. Rather it leverages bank connects, data enrichment and partnerships to deliver innovative financial vehicles and services.
Team
Building product design function (3x) from 4 to 12 designers in 2021/22. Defining career progression, coaching performance and mentoring further skill development.
- Established a new portfolio checklist to unlock talent team hiring
- Hired and onboarded >8 product designers in less than 6 months
- Defined progression framework for product design levels
- Coached and delegated senior designers to establish reporting lines
Pillars
Establishing new customer centred product pillars, aligning goals to org OKRs. Defining product strategy as part of our Series C pitch material.
- Partnered with C-suite to define customer centered product pillars
- Developed all Series C pitch materials and product strategy
- Implemented new content strategy with data science integration
Sprints
Facilitating design sprints to drive new product innovation. Mapping back-end and system architecture to enable new teams to onboard quickly.
- Facilitated design sprints across cross-functional teams
- Mapped back-end architecture for new team onboarding
- Launched Cleo Card and brand refresh across all domains
QA
Driving new initiatives to tackle design debt, quality assurance and accessibility issues across teams.
- Established Cleo LABs (Design system) and Cleo Studio
- Enabled complete UX and accessibility audit
- Developed dynamic users and event actions for testing
Sourcerie
2022
Intro
Launching in Q4, 2022 — I was referred to the Sourcerie founding team (Alex & Kristen) by an investment partner (Lyst — fashion meta-search).
Having previously worked on a marketplace product with applied machine learning. This was an opportunity to consult with them and develop their product for launch — as their Principal Product Designer.
Systems
Developing a library of usability tested UI components that align not only the patterns of the product but to the engineering codebase.
- Aligned early with CTO and Engineering Lead for accessible standards
- Created design system for store and web app via Tailwind.css
- Componentisation of common UI elements with accessible colour library
UX
Questioning assumptions — hypothesising with the user first. Testing for statistical significance either in production or in a controlled test environment.
- Mapped system architecture and database schema alignment
- Created site maps, journey maps, and notification mapping
- Defined email templates for all edge cases in payments and checkout
- Created back-log of post-launch A/B tests for 'Learn pages'
Research
Discovering both the generative (questions we don't know) and the formative (questions we need answered) through moderated and unmoderated user-testing.
- Leveraged expected patterns and user flows between experiences
- Employed innovative patterns for machine learning recommendations
- User-tested multiple UX/UI variants and naming conventions
- Tested patterns via Maze and moderated tests with early adopters
Brand
Developing the scope and creative feel for the Sourcerie store. From style guidelines to motion graphics, illustrations and iconography.
- Social content templates
- Refactoring of brand guidelines to Figma
- Colour and logo usage guidelines
- Illustration and animation assets and guidelines
