I build digital products that people actually need, and I know what happens when you try to do that at enormous scale inside a complex, highly-regulated organisation.
That unusual combination comes from three distinct chapters in my career.
Founder. I owned and ran a digital agency building mobile apps and web applications for blue-chip companies across the UK and Europe. That taught me how things actually get made, and how quickly decisions matter when you’re burning cash.
Enterprise. I spent two years working on technology for a pensions company, which taught me what happens inside large organisations: the layers, the constraints, the impossible compromises. It’s where I learned that strategy matters more than process, and bureaucracy can kill enthusiasm in so many ways.
Scale. For the last three years I’ve led product across the mobile and online channels of a tier-one UK bank. Millions of monthly active users across mobile app and secure web-based platforms, along with the notification platforms that let customers know what’s happening. That’s where I learned that a product isn’t an interface. It’s a living and breathing system that includes operations, risk, compliance, and service teams, alongside the engineers and designers who produce the technology… but most importantly, it includes the people who use the things we make.
I write about what I’ve learned: how to build products that are genuinely useful, how organisations become capable of making good decisions repeatedly, why simplicity is harder than it looks, and how to exercise judgement when the data runs out.
I’m particularly interested in the gap between what product leaders preach and what they actually do (and I include myself in that!), the cost of unnecessary complexity, and the great things that can happen when you choose substance over ceremony.
I’m based in Scotland and always love to talk about the subject. I’m available for speaking engagements and conversations about product leadership.
You can find my writing here, my work on A List Apart, and my recent contributions to digital product design and strategy.