I Design Dreams &
Lead Teams to Build Them.

With a combination of user data, collaboration, and empathy, I craft powerful experiences for users. My designs empower product development teams to deliver that same value directly to their customers.

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Hi! I'm Iain

I'm a resourceful data-driven design leader with 15+ years of creative experience in overseeing user research and providing human-centered design solutions. Over that time, I have developed a standardized process for executing data-driven design I have followed as part of several different types of organizations.

I am a proactive problem-solver, with a portfolio demonstrating success in resolving complex design challenges. As a visionary leader, I excel at sharing the big picture and shaping strategies to achieve business goals.

Passionate about promoting a culture of diversity, inclusion, and belonging, an an expert at facilitating productive group conversations. Hear what others have said about their time partnering with me.

Initiatives

I have been fortunate to work on projects in a myriad of industries: civic tech, education, fin-tech, and DevOps. Below are a few of my favorite projects, showing my design process in action.

Onvi zero to market ready

With my help, the Onvi team was able to pivot their current product offerings to meet rapid changes in the Food and Hospitality markets after the world reopens from COVID-19. In 3 months, we released our MVP and, just three months later, had a fully market-viable offering.

Enhancing the GitLab Registries

From 500 packages to 1 million! My involvement in GitLab's Package and Container Registries covers foundational discovery research through design, development, and eventually quality and product data strategy.

Helping local parks & rec teams

Your local parks and recreation department handles more than just the neighborhood pool. Rec agencies are in charge of sports leagues, after-school programs, recreation centers, events, parks, forests, lakes, and even golf courses.

enhancing city code inspections

The primary focus of the Inspector App is to enable city growth through organizing inspections. This single solution allows cities and municipalities to smooth and simplify the building inspection process.  

I can state this plainly, Iain is by far the best UX designer I have worked with.

His focus on research, empathetic design, and fostering collaboration has resulted in a stellar product experience for GitLab users and a high-performing team.

Iain and I collaborated on multiple research projects, in which he led and synthesized the results in a digestible format for the entire team.

He also worked closely with both back and front-end developers on technical investigations and deep dives to ensure that the end user's voice and the experience were represented throughout the design process.

If given the chance, I would work with Iain again in a heartbeat and I would recommend him to any company looking to build world-class designs and highly-performant development teams.

- Tim R. Senior Product Manager @ GitLab
“I can state this plainly, Iain is by far the best UX designer I have worked with.

His focus on research, empathetic design, and fostering collaboration has resulted in a stellar product experience for GitLab users and a high-performing team.

Iain and I collaborated on multiple research projects, in which he led and synthesized the results in a digestible format for the entire team.

He also worked closely with both back and front-end developers on technical investigations and deep dives to ensure that the end user's voice and the experience were represented throughout the design process.

If given the chance, I would work with Iain again in a heartbeat and I would recommend him to any company looking to build world-class designs and highly-performant development teams.”

- Tim, Senior Product Manager @ GitLab
“Iain works hard to develop and drive his team. He takes time to follow up individually with his team members and genuinely cares about their success and well-being.

He is very passionate about improving workflows and processes and is always looking for ways to make not just his team but the entire organization collaborate more effectively.

As an individual contributor, Iain consistently and quickly delivered great, well-considered designs.”


- Arul, Director of User Experience @ Accela
“I had the pleasure of working with Iain for one year at GitLab, collaborating on several projects throughout this period. Iain was taking a role of a Senior Product Designer and was reporting directly to me.

Iain always stood out to me as a very user focused and empathetic product designer, with tons of tools and methodologies to better understand customer needs and communicate those back to the team. Iain takes a strong position of  product design expert and challenges the team to make the right decisions for the user.

Iain has a strong focus on building great relationships with his team (PM, Engineering, Designers) that results into a solid team collaboration and helps achieving great results fast. Iain is always open for sharing his broad knowledge and experience with others on the team, and has a great leadership potential. Iain earns my highest recommendation.”

- Nadia, Head of Design @ Moonpig
“Working with Iain is a delight! He brings strong design skills as well as a desire to deeply understand what end users need and want from a product. This combination results in designs which are highly effective and uncomplicated. His excellent interpersonal skills are always on display when working with his product managers, fellow designers, and the research team.

Iain has a thirst for knowledge and when presented with a new product group, dives into the existing data to understand the end users, their motivations, and gains a thorough understanding of the features and functions.

In addition to his kick-a$$ designer skills, Iain also has a head for research. It is effortless to collaborate with him on research methodology and approach. He keeps the research objectives in focus and ensures the methodology will deliver the right data needed to make the product and design decisions required.

Any company who has Iain on staff is a lucky one! You'll not only get a designer steeped in solid UX research methods, but a caring, intelligent teammate.”


- Lorie, Staff User Researcher @ OKTA
“Iain is an intelligent, articulate, excellent product designer.

Iain was a critical member of the Package Team and key contributor to the team’s development from completely new to a high performing team.

Introducing initiatives which improved not only the team's delivery but were then used broadly across the organization.

Working with Iain is a pleasure, he also happens to be an excellent human.”


- Daniel, Senior Engineering Manager @ GitLab

Photography

One of my passions is photography. I find the art of capturing a single moment to tell a story an incredible medium for exploring the world. Please take a peek at some of the pictures I have taken on my travels.

Paradise

Wild west

The Green Isle

Holland

Haunted