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Senior Product Design Leader | Complex Platforms & Workflows
Craft Foudations
BBC News & Yahoo! | 2001 - 2012
A decade of design leadership at two of the world's most significant digital platforms - building the systems thinking, design rigour, and leadership instincts that underpin everything that followed.
BBC News Interactive | Creative Director | 2001-2006
Overview
Over five and a half years at the BBC I progressed from Senior Designer to Creative Director of the BBC News Interactive development team. My team and I were responsible for the user experience of the core BBC News website and a series of pioneering digital products, including the BBC News Media Player, a forerunner to the iPlayer, and the first BBC News mobile app.
Key Achievements
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Led the 2003 BBC News website redesign - the first major overhaul since launch in 1997 - following which the number of stories read per user increased threefold in the weeks after launch
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Conceived, defined, and delivered the BBC News Media Player - a forerunner to the iPlayer and one of the first streaming news video products in the UK
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Designed the first BBC News mobile app at a time when mobile web was in its infancy
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Managed and co-managed a team of up to 16 designers and researchers across UX, visual design, and research
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Drove adoption of user-centred design practices across the BBC News newsroom
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Delivered multi-persona experiences across editorial, consumer, and internal tooling environments
The 2003 Redesign
The BBC News website had grown organically since 1997 into an unwieldy system — complex navigation, inconsistent patterns, and a structure that no longer reflected how users actually consumed news. I led workshops across the organisation to define requirements, then devised a new information architecture, interface design, and pattern language that simplified the experience for millions of daily users. The results spoke for themselves — stories read per user tripled in the weeks following launch.
Yahoo! EMEA | Design Manager | 2001-2006
Overview
I joined Yahoo! as the London office was emerging as a central product development hub - tasked with innovating and building new products for the EMEA market and beyond. Over six years I led a team of up to 15 Information Architects, Visual Designers, Interaction Designers, and Web Developers across Search, Social, and Media products.
Key Achievements- Yahoo!
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Led new product development for Search and Social, including the information architecture and UX for an ambitious social and local discovery platform that predated Yelp and Facebook's dominance in the space
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Oversaw design and localisation of Yahoo! Answers, Maps, Local, Finance, Eurosport, Shopping and Travel for the EMEA market
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Managed a multidisciplinary team of up to 15 across UX, visual design, and interaction design
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Reported directly to the VP of EMEA
The Social Platform
One of the most ambitious projects of my Yahoo! tenure was a social and local discovery platform - heavily invested, innovative, and ahead of its time. I personally led the information architecture and UX, delivering a product that genuinely challenged what Yelp and Facebook would later build. The product was ultimately shelved due to strategic rather than design or technical failure - but it represents some of the most forward-thinking design work of my early career.
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