Senior Product Design Leader | Complex Platforms & Workflows
Case Study
Ad-Lib.io (acquired by Smartly.io in Jan 2022) | Head of Product Design | January 2020 - August 2022
Leading the end-to-end design of a scalable, AI-forward MarTech SaaS platform - and building the design practice that delivered it.
Key Results
• £100m acquisition by Smartly.io, January 2022
• Campaign activation time reduced from weeks to hours
• 50% of customers self-serve onboarding within one year
• Platform adopted by 10 of the top 30 global advertisers, including Nestlé, Sony, and
L'Oréal
• Recognised as Startup of the Year (Campaign Tech Awards 2021) and Most Valuable
Tech Product (Campaign Asia-Pacific 2021)
• Design organisation scaled from 0 to 6 across a fully multidisciplinary function
Project Overview
Role
Head of Product Design, employee #9, Foundational designer
My Team
Scaled from 0 to 6, Research, UX and Visual Design
The Challenge
When I joined Ad-Lib.io, the product was an early-stage, service-dependent MarTech tool built around engineering logic rather than customer needs. The mandate was clear: transform it into a scalable, AI-forward, self-service SaaS platform capable of supporting global enterprise advertisers — and build the design practice to sustain it.
Tools & Methods
Figma · Miro · Maze · Dovetail · User Stories · Continuous Discovery · Usability Testing
My Process
1. Establishing a User-Led Foundation
The existing product reflected fragmented managed-service thinking rather than real customer mental models — resulting in missing features, usability issues, duplication, and inconsistency.Before a single screen was redesigned, I established the research foundation the product had never had.
What I did
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Built Ad-Lib's first product research practice from scratch
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Personally conducted stakeholder and customer interviews and workshops to establish key personas and core user goals
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Identified gaps between real user behaviour and the existing product
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Created workflow maps and an overall site architecture to guide feature prioritisation
Outcome: A shared understanding of customer goals and required functionality that aligned Product, Engineering, and leadership around common objectives for the first time - and a clear brief for what needed to be built.
Outcomes of persona and painpoint workshops
2. Designing the Core framework and defining the key products for a multi-persona platform
To enable a true self-service SaaS model, the platform needed a new structural foundation — intuitive, modular, clearly differentiated, and scalable.
What I did
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Designed and delivered the core user flows
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Defined the information architecture for Ad-Lib 2.0 - rationalised into four product spaces reflecting real user personas and workflows: Design Studio, Campaign Management, Data Analytics, and API Activation
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Created a UX framework and interaction principles to guide future expansion
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Identified a pathway to progressively productise the platform architecture
Outcome
A simplified, cohesive platform architecture that significantly reduced cognitive load, created a clear product roadmap, and laid the foundation for enterprise-level self-service — enabling 50% of clients to onboard independently within the first year.
Early proposal for site architecture and productised feature set
3. Delivering the Product
Working hands-on alongside my growing team, I led design across all four product spaces:
Design Studio - where users set campaign parameters and create initial concepts. I designed the core wireframes and UX logic; my team delivered the visual design layer.
High fidelity wireframes for Ad-Lib design studio
Visual designs for the Concept index and image cropping tool
Producer (Decision Tree) - where users manage campaigns and rapidly create variants for market segmentation. This tool was subsequently patented - a rare distinction that reflects the originality of the design thinking behind it. I designed the wireframes and interaction model.
Decision Tree Wireframes by me
Visual design by my team
Data Analytics - where users view performance metrics and surface actionable campaign intelligence. High-fidelity wireframes by me.
High Fidelity wireframes by me
API Activation - enabling enterprise-scale campaign deployment across channels.
Throughout, the principle was the same: reduce complexity for the user, increase power and flexibility under the hood.
4. Building, scaling and leading a Design Org
A great product requires a great team. In parallel with delivering the platform, I built the design function from the ground up.
What I did
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Grew the team from 0 to 6 across research, UX, and visual design
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Defined roles, hiring criteria, and org structure as the company scaled
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Established design rituals and delivery processes in partnership with Product and Engineering
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Led design across all four product verticals simultaneously
Outcome
A high-performing, multidisciplinary design function embedded across the business - delivering consistently high-quality, scalable product experiences through hypergrowth and into acquisition.
5. Building the Design System
To sustain quality and velocity as the team and product grew, I introduced Ad-Lib's first company-wide design system.
What I did
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Defined scalable interaction patterns and components across all product surfaces
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Directed the creation of a comprehensive visual style library and design principles aligned to brand guidelines
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Documented standards and guidelines, to ensure correct usage and consistent adoption
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Worked with engineering to develop ready to use design tokens and coded components
Outcome
Faster development velocity, greater consistency across the product, and a sustainable foundation that outlasted my tenure and supported the platform through acquisition and beyond.
Elements of the design system, built by my team
A Note on the Acquisition
Ad-Lib.io was acquired by Smartly.io for £100m in January 2022. The self-service platform we built, the design system that underpinned it, and the team I grew were central to the product's scalability and the company's attractiveness as an acquisition target. I co-presented the product vision to Smartly.io as part of the acquisition process.