I'm Fiona — a senior product designer who's often the first in the room, defining direction.
I take full ownership of design, from the first scrappy interview to the work that ships and performs.
A decade in, I've spent most of my career as the founding or sole designer for consumer products, marketplaces, and B2B platforms. That means defining product direction and the design language from scratch and staying with the work until it's measurably better. Circulate, Keebo, Robin AI, Koru Kids, Touch Surgery are in completely different industries but share the same problem — they are small teams that need design to move fast and hold up as they grow.
I came into design sideways — five years as an insurance underwriter and business analyst before pivoting in 2016. That background still shapes how I work: I read the data before I open Figma, and I'm comfortable arguing about commercial trade-offs in the same conversation as type and hierarchy.
I also co-founded The Shoot, a UK marketplace for photographers, with my husband. We grew it to over 250 photographers before closing during the pandemic. Although our endeavour was short-lived, it taught me what it takes to earn trust from real users, and how to design and grow a company under commercial pressure.
After a decade of working for myself, I'm looking for a senior in-house role — somewhere I can go deeper on harder problems with a strong product and engineering team.
Strategic thinking
I work at the level above the UI, connecting product decisions to business outcomes so we solve the right problem before committing to a solution. Years in business analysis and a stint as Chief of Staff gave me a fluency with commercial reality I bring into every project.
Systems thinking
I think about how the product behaves as a whole — how the parts connect, where the seams might break, and how to build structures that scale without fragmenting. The result is a product that's easier to extend, easier to maintain and easier for users to trust.
Design craft
Strong visual design isn't separate from good product thinking — I believe it is good product thinking. I care about typography, hierarchy, layout, and the small details that make an interface feel considered. Good craft builds the kind of trust that's hard to measure but easy to feel.
Customer insight
I bring the voice of the customer in early and keep it there as an ongoing tool for making better decisions and catching problems before they get expensive. At Touch Surgery I observed real surgical procedures, and at Koru Kids I interviewed parents and carers before any pixels existed.
I start by getting under the skin of the problem — talking to the people closest to it, reading the data, mapping where the friction is before I jump to solutions.
From there I work closely with founders, PMs and engineers to build alignment around a clear direction. I want everyone to understand not just what we're building but why it matters. I write things down a lot. I review with engineers as early as I can, and I'd rather have an honest conversation about trade-offs in week one than ship something that doesn't fit the reality of the business in week six.
I move fast and iterate. A good decision made quickly almost always beats a perfect one made too late. I use AI tools as a practical part of my process, including Claude, Figma Make, Cursor, to explore ideas faster and get work in front of users sooner.
I'm comfortable with ambiguity. I know when to push back and when to compromise. I've been the only designer in the room often enough to be calm about it.
Looking for in-house senior product designer
Open to fully remote across the UK and EU. Available for conversations now.
Independent senior product designer
Founding or sole designer for startups and scale-ups across consumer, marketplace, and fintech. Selected work: Circulate (B2B marketplace · design system from zero · ~20% conversion lift) and Keebo (consumer fintech · onboarding research). Also taught UX and landing-page design at Jolt.
The Shoot — co-founder & designer (side project)
Co-founded a UK marketplace for photographers — evenings and weekends alongside the day job. Grew to 250+ photographers before closing during the pandemic.
Forward Partners (now Molten Ventures) — senior UX designer
Embedded design partner across the venture studio's portfolio — roughly 10 companies, idea stage through Series A. Worked on Koru Kids, Robin AI, RoomLab and others. The crash-course in 0→1 that everything since builds on.
Touch Surgery (acquired by Medtronic) — UX designer
Designed Touch Surgery Video — a data-heavy review tool for surgical teams. Observed real procedures. Learned the discipline of designing where wrong is not an option.
Konsileo — UX designer
First design role: an insurtech startup building software for insurance brokers. The bridge between my pre-design career and everything since — a domain I already understood, with a craft I was just starting to learn.
General Assembly — UX design intensive
Three months, full-time, head-down. The career pivot.
Insurance — underwriter, then business analyst
Five years pricing risk and writing requirements before I knew what either really meant. The reason I'm comfortable in a finance meeting today.
Lancaster University — BSc (Hons) Economics, 2:1
Where I learned to be suspicious of any chart without a clearly labelled y-axis.
Oxfordshire, soon Cheshire
Moving house in July. Wish me luck with the packing!
Running and swimming
Best activities for thinking through a sticky design problem.
Badminton
The most fun way I know to lose to better players.
Reading
A mix of business books, biographies and fiction. I have an eclectic taste.