I'm starting to look for my next role. Exciting!

I enjoy diving into tricky, ambiguous problems amd turning them into intentionally crafted products 🪄 - Ultimately, I just love learning and building tech that helps people.

I've been hustling at Student Beans, now part of Pion, the global leader in student discounts and verification technology, for the past 9 years. As the first product designer, I launched the Student Beans apps, established the Product Design function, and helped scale the company from 12 to 300+. Now, as Principal Product Designer, I lead a new business unit tackling competitive pressures and unlocking revenue.

Outside of the day job, you’ll find me pursuing outdoor adventures🏕️, testing my fear of heights ⛰, getting stuck into another business idea 💼, or opening the throttle on my motorbike 🏍💨

My Favourite Projects 🥰

#1: Pion — Building a Client Portal

0-1 Product Design | Go-to-market | B2B

I led design of our ✨Client Portal✨. Revolutionising how our clients get their discounts onto our marketplaces, embed customer verification on their own website, and manage their paid media - completely self-serve.

Before portal, our processes were completely manual and client satisfaction was on a downward trend. Over the course of 6 months and two value focused milestones, we built a delightful MVP that has drastically changed the operations of the company and opened up new revenue opportunities.

Contribution
  • Led the end-to-end design as Principal Product Designer.
  • Crafted user journey maps and service blueprints to align functions, tools, and services.
  • Adopted just-in-time design to streamline handoffs and speed up production.
  • Inspired the business with product vision, goals, and design rationale through regular updates.
Impact
  • Reduced signup-to-live time from 60 days to 3 hours, driving $$$k in affiliate revenue.
  • Boosted client satisfaction to ~80%, improving renewals.
  • Generated $$$k in additional revenue through product-led upsells.
  • Secured approval to advance our SaaS strategy.
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#2: Student Beans — In-store discount experience

Iterative design | Continuous discovery | B2C

After noticing a rise in in-store complaints, I evaluated the user experience and persuaded the business to invest in improving our ✨in-store✨ feature. This boosted our customer satisfaction from poor to great and in-store became a key competitive differentiator.

In-store began life as a simple list ordered by newest, which just wasn't surving our customers. Users often didn’t think to check the app while shopping, struggled to find location-specific discounts, doubted whether discounts would work at certain stores, and faced numerous other issues.

Contribution
  • Initiated the Empathy stage after spotting rising in-store complaints and interview insights.
  • Used a UX scorecard to quantify the experience and secure prioritisation.
  • Led user interviews, problem definition, design, and testing to refine the feature.
  • Redesigned the Student Beans iD after a spicy global rebrand.
Impact
  • Boosted customer satisfaction from Poor to Great.
  • Increased in-store offer usage by 90%, driven by new brand additions.
  • Reduced in-store support messages by ~80%.
  • Achieved a ~400% rise in independent brand redemptions.
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#3: Student Beans — Identity Verification Technology

Leadership | Strategy | B2B | B2C

I led the design and shaped the strategy for our ✨Verification technology✨ over the course of two years.

Working across two development squads, we focused on continuously improving success rates, usability, and security while expanding the technology beyond students to include military personnel, healthcare workers, teachers, and more.

Contribution
  • Identified improvement opportunities through usability testing, user feedback, and competitor analysis.
  • Managed design team workload and output across squads.
  • Led the UX vision for expanding verification tech to new groups, ensuring technical feasibility and presenting to leadership.
  • Collaborated with Sales, AM, Branding, and Product Marketing to launch Beans iD.
Impact
  • Achieved a 20% YoY increase in conversion.
  • Rated best verification user experience against competitors.
  • Generated $xm additional revenue within 8 months of expansion.
  • Reduced prospects lost to competitors by 95%.
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#4: Pion — Design System Lead

With our suite of products expanding, I’ve been leading the latest evolution of our design system

One of the major contributions to raising the design maturity across the business was in the restructure and development of our Design System.

I've worked with a small task force of designer and cross platform developers to document components, UI kits, ways of working, maintenance procedures, and the ability to measure that it is succesfully increasing the performance of its users.

Contribution
  • Reached out to contacts in larger companies for help on how they were organising their systems (Booking, Spotify, Deliveroo).
  • Organised our approach to reworking the system around key milestones and incremental releases.
  • Managed impact of updates against disruption to designers.
  • Educated the wider product development team on the new library structure.
  • Developed ways-of-working to make sure the system continued to evolve and improve.
Impact
  • Increased efficiency across Product and Engineering by 41%
  • Saved the business roughtly ÂŁ150k pa in wasted time.
  • New robust design system that will scale with the business.
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My Experience 🤓

Student Beans / Pion

2015 - Now

Principal Product Designer
(Other roles: Lead Product Designer & Head of PD)

Student Beans, part of parent company Pion, is a leading student discount platform with millions of users globally. Backed by Pion’s cutting-edge identity verification technology.

As the first product designer, I launched the Student Beans apps and quickly found myself in a design leadership role leading us from a single product to a diverse suite as the company grew from 12 to 300+. Establishing the Product Design function and implementing scalable design and product development practices that have left a lasting legacy, enabling teams to innovate with greater autonomy and efficiency. Most recently, I’ve gotten back to what I enjoy most - building!

As Principal Product Designer, I lead design for a new business unit tackling competitive pressures and unlocking revenue. I’ve expanded our verification technology beyond students, launched a Shopify Integration App, and established the Client Portal—driving revenue growth, opening new markets, and enhancing client value.

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