About Me

I have devoted my 15 year creative career to helping companies best utilize their design and user experience (UX) resources. I have spent that time honing my own craft and developing a unique set of skills that help businesses and product teams build impactful products for their customers.


My story

I have devoted my 15 year creative career to helping companies best utilize their design and user experience (UX) resources. I have spent that time honing my own craft and developing a unique set of skills that help businesses and product teams build impactful products for their customers.

As a UX manager and leader, I have worked to enable design teams of all sizes to establish and refine processes that empower the team to maximize their positive impact within the organization, the company, and the world at large.

The breadth of my experiences grants me a unique vantage point to help guide designers. My work as an engineer allows me to understand what developers want and need from their UX team. My work as a product manager empowers me to work hand-in-hand with product teams to shape the vision. My work as a brand director enables collaboration with marketing teams to improve sales.

I work to make design teams happier and more effective - and by doing so, I enable products and companies to be more successful.

What peeps have to say...

"Iain has been a strong leader within our product team. He’s brought to Onvi a much more systematic approach to design, helping us build user-centric features and interfaces quickly and at scale.

Iain built out our design system, adding rigour and logic to how we think about components across our web app and native app (mobile and tablet) products. He is an excellent researcher, covering every step from discussion guides to synthesis. And he’s an efficient, effective UX designer when he’s needed to fill that role.

Beyond his ‘hard skills’ as a designer, Iain stands out for his natural curiosity. He asks questions in a way that is probing but non-confrontational. He brings out the best of everyone he collaborates with - from his design team, to developers, to the company’s founders. He makes every group of people he works with more effective. And he’s helped to build a culture across the product and tech teams at Onvi of being inquisitive, of seeking to understand others’ perspective as well as asserting one’s own."


- Raoul, Chief Product Officer @ Onvi
“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
“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 was a welcomed addition to the Product team. When he came on board as Head of Design, it it was clear his leadership, people skills, and his forward thinking approach to design would be invaluable to the expanding Product team.

As my direct line manager, Iain was always available to support me as and when needed. Making himself readily available through design catchups, ad hoc meetings and well structured 1:1s. He listened intently, and asked questions to understand situations and recommend practical solutions. A very intuitive manager who was able to create flexible working conditions when required, which was invaluable so we could continue to deliver the high standard of work without compromising work/life balance.

Iain gained respect from the team quickly and was certainly part of how he put trust at the heart of design team.Bringing welcomed organisation and structure to working processes across the design and development teams, he enabled the teams to work effectively to deliver features and updates to the products at speed.On top of his ability to lead a team he has great attention to detail. Ensuring high standards of design and usability are delivered across platforms. It was an absolute pleasure working with Iain and he would be an outstanding addition to any team.”


- James, Senior Product Designer @ Onvi
"I first met Iain in August 2021, when we had a great chat about design principles and remote/hybrid working and best practices as they specifically relate to product, engineering and design teams. I knew within a minute that I wanted Iain to come and work with us at Onvi and was fortunate enough for that to become a reality only a couple of months later.

Iain’s presence was quickly felt and his work has been transformative at Onvi, working closely with our CPO to launch and evolve our POS solution. It’s not just his hard skills that make Iain such a valuable member of the team though. What makes him exceptional is his phenomenal attitude and the extent to which he cares about the business, our operators & customers, and the team as a whole.

With a wealth of experience working within remote teams, Iain has always been proactive when it comes to promoting best practice and new methodologies with the company, and this has had a powerful and positive impact on moral. His insights into how one can help compensate for a lack of positive acknowledgment that often goes hand in hand with a more isolated remote work experience continue to motivate us all to do better and better.

- Prask, Chief Executive Officer @ Onvi
"Iain is an intelligent, articulate, excellent product designer. Iain was a critical member of the Package Team and key contributor to the teams development from a completely new to a high performing team. Introducing initiatives which improved not only the team's delivery but were then used broadly across the organisation. Working with Iain is a pleasure, he also happens to be an excellent human."

- Dan, Senior Engineering Manager @ GitLab