Product strategy · Research · Design
I have spent sixteen years in digital and the last six consulting to product teams across Europe and the US. My job is to take an ambiguous problem, work out what is actually going on, and hand back something a team can act on the same week.
I am not going to tell you I champion user-centred design. I think that is a bit of a cliché. What I do is get colleagues to really understand who is on the other side of the thing we are building, and make it obvious why that matters. Here is what that looks like in practice.
Turning a messy problem into a ranked plan. I look at the whole picture, work out which few things will actually move, and write the argument down so people can follow it without me in the room. I have been doing this informally for years. I want to do it deliberately.
YOU GET → a ranked set of opportunities with the reasoning attached, not a list of everything wrong.Discovery, evaluation and synthesis, run end to end. At Baymard my reports run to fifty or more recommendations, each grounded in ongoing user research and each shipped with a mockup, because a finding a team cannot act on has not finished being research.
YOU GET → findings paired with design directions, delivered in a session your team can act on immediately.Setting the standard and lifting other people to it. I have built design practice from the first hire, hired the teams, and hired two managers who went on to lead design functions. Critique against a written standard, pairing on the hard half, and leaving the work in their hands.
YOU GET → a written craft standard, and decisions your team can make without me.Specialist audit work since 2022, and a central role in building Baymard’s accessibility research catalogue against WCAG 2.2 and the EU Accessibility Act. The trick is turning a standard into a short list of things to start with on Monday.
YOU GET → a prioritised list by transaction impact, with fixes that land in components so each one ships once.Every project I take on runs along this shape, from a knot of contradictions at one end to a single line a team can build at the other. I am happiest at the knot.
The mark you have seen on my project sites
This is the whole method in one drawing. It is my redrawing of Damien Newman’s design squiggle, and I use it as a section divider on every project site I build. He drew the original to explain the value of design to a client in under thirty seconds. I have made it my own, and it drives how I work.
The left end is where I am happiest. Most people are drawn to the clean line on the right. I like the knot: the contradictions, the research that will not agree with itself, and the slow work of pulling it apart. That preference is the whole offer.
Reviews, data, support transcripts, competitors, and the people doing the job. Cheap evidence before expensive evidence, always.
Rank ruthlessly. Most findings are true and not worth a quarter. I am looking for the few that change what gets built.
A finding nobody acts on cost exactly as much as one that changed something. So it ships with a design, a measure, and a date.
From colleagues and clients. I have picked the ones that describe how I work rather than the ones that are simply kind.
Irani is very good at holding complexity and clarity, opposing points of tension, in her head simultaneously. She can empathise with the user and understand the problem while recommending a simple solution for the team to implement.
She earned the complete trust of my entire team, and I would jump at the opportunity to work with her again. She inspires through being extremely knowledgeable and capable while remaining immensely humble.
Irani has made accessibility tangible and actionable for us. We have a clear list of where to start, removing the confusion and overwhelm.
I started in digital in 2010 at a nature documentary studio in Cape Town, and went deep into ecommerce, fintech and digital government services from there. I am driven by curiosity and I learn immensely quickly.
I consult to ecommerce and SaaS clients across Europe and the US: analysing sites and apps, identifying UX issues, and presenting recommendations to product teams. Reports run to fifty or more suggestions, each grounded in ongoing user research and each with a mockup. I present these in two-hour sessions, prioritising by impact and making sure the changes fit into real sprints. I also play a central role in Baymard’s accessibility research catalogue, keeping it current with WCAG 2.2 and the EU Accessibility Act.
Led design strategy across onboarding, payments and security. Research, personas, journey maps, wireframes, prototypes and visual design. I was the second designer hired and helped grow the team to seven. I championed a full product redesign and acted as product manager across several agile teams.
Designed the private investor platform and established the team’s design process: research, issue identification, mockups, testing and iterative development. First designer at the company. I sourced and built the design team, including hiring the Head of Product Design.
Ethnographic research across the Western Cape, translated into digital government services covering document services and home and business applications. The focus throughout was digital inclusion for underserved communities.
Business innovation, design strategy and information systems. My research focused on digital inclusion and technology for underserved communities.
Interaction design, creative strategy, branding, and digital design tools and techniques.
Certified in design thinking facilitation and usability analysis, alongside accessibility credentials in WCAG 2.2 and the EU Accessibility Act applied through specialist audit work since 2022.
Two co-authored papers on UX research and personas for underserved users of digital government services.
I am open to product strategy, consulting and design leadership work. If you are building something complex and need someone to make sense of it, get in touch. I am also very happy to just have a conversation about a problem, with no expectation attached.
Reach out to me if you want to see my work. Most of it sits under NDA or needs the context around it to make any sense, so I would rather walk you through it properly than post a gallery of screens.