I'm an end-to-end designer who loves solving challenging problems. Curious by nature, I love connecting with and understanding people , passionate about improving experiences.

 

Hi! Thanks for stopping by.

I am dedicated and determined to create the next level of innovative products with a focus on business outcomes encompassing Design strategy, Cost Cutting, Team Growth & Management as well as Growing Revenue.

I'm extremely competent in UX, UI and product development process in an Agile environment with the ability to learn, adapt and improvise. With 15+ years of experience in the design environment, creating responsive design solutions is a part of my day to day activities.

With a proven knowledge of user-centric product development, creative strategising, user-focused vision and communication, my expertise revolves all rounded on both client and platform side - delivering solutions within a full cycle of a UX/UI project for brands and the people who matter to them.

 

Experience


 

Ernst & Young

March 2019 – November 2021
Head of Product Design (Innovation Hive)

Design a SaaS platform to drive digital engagement with our clients by facilitating day-to-day interactions on the platform, leading to growth in SaaS revenue and technology enabled services.

Currently used by over 3000 users, across every Sub Service line and enabling £3m in revenue.

Design innovative solutions enabling spending less time on routine tasks and more on business partnering.

Develop the Product design strategy for the platform to enable shared understanding across teams

Managing and coaching a young design team along with developing User-research function within the team.

Developed and delivered the vision of an end-to-end SaaS platform including Design mythologies, Design principles.



Paddy Power Betfair

January 2019 – March 2019
Product Design Manager - Customer Acquisition & Customer Engagement

Focused on translating human insights into actionable experiences to improve the product and service ecosystem

Managed, mentored and guided the global team to create well crafted on brand experiences that best suit our customers needs. My role required me to resource, plan & hire for our design team. I was also responsible to knit together the teams spread across London, Dublin, Cluj (Romania) and bring stakeholders on our journey through design.

Working closely with a large number of agile teams we worked hand in hand with our tech teams to develop industry leading products.

Lead user experience efforts from a customer acquisition and engagement perspective, advancing design strategies and driving design awareness as a critical function for competitive advantage and market differentiation.



Emoov Ltd.

June 2017 – December 2018
Head of Design and UX

Drove 2x net revenue / ~25% CoS reduction over 12 months at Emoov via a best-in-class SaaS platform.

Applied design thinking methodology to solve a compliance issue that saved the firm ~£200K over 12 months and also improved customer acquisition as well as onboarding.

Responsible for delivering a Product Roadmap for the business that moved the needle on critical KPIs as well as reporting into C-level execs.

Delivery of 5-10 new features and enhancements every 2 weeks via a continuous stream of requirements for a team of 9 devs.

Projects ranging from e-commerce optimisation to boost conversion, to an automation of repetitive, manual tasks to reduce COS.



Mintel Group Ltd.

May 2009 – June 2017
Head of Design

Established and developed designs teams across Product design, Marketing, Video production and Digital publishing across London, Chicago and Shanghai.

Ideated, developed and managed a new revenue generation channel to sell single-copy reports online - resulting in over £500k+ revenue in first year


 

Skills



Core competencies

Wire-framing and prototyping highly functional UX frameworks and creative user interfaces that match the needs of both customers and business areas.

Capture, document and present holistic user journeys in a clear, engaging way and creating modern and accurate user-journey mockups.

Drive complex UX/UI requirements from concept to release.

Define features, interactions, user flows, content & error conditions.

Ensuring the designs are responsive and functonal across mobile and desktop devices with a mobile-first approach

Create and rapidly iterate digital service prototypes

Work with user researchers and front-end developers to turn concepts into user-centred services

Know how to use data and research to influence design thinking

 

Recommendations

I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside Jay at EY’s Innovation Hive where he was the Principal Product Designer. I have seen Jay create the entire visual foundation and the design principles for our entire SaaS platform.

Jay has been coaching his design team and everyone at the organisation who had questions about design. Jay quickly caught on with the task and only after a few days of joining he had a wholistic plan to redesign the entire platform. He redesigned the way to work with the design team using design sprints and design briefs.

Jay introduced the team to the concept of Atomic design principles and despite his extreme workload Jay personally helped me outside of his scope to give feedback and advice on how to best visualise artifacts for senior stakeholders.

Jay is very approachable and easy to get along with, he is always fair and gives designers enough creative freedom to ensure they do their best work. I have seen Jay coaching designers instead of micromanaging or doing the task instead of them to ensure they learn and grow in their roles. I would happily work with Jay again, he is an outstanding designer and leader and fun to be around.

Marton Gaspar - Freelance Head of Product | Product management consultant and coach | Advocate for Neurodiversity in tech


Luckily for me I had the pleasure of working with Jay directly at the Betfair, as I reported directly to him.

He is a thoughtful, highly skilled creative professional who always wants to get things delivered, but to the highest possible quality. His leadership was critical during a high pressure period on a very high profile project that I was delivering and his measured approach meant that the right things happened at the right time.

He's so awesome that we all make positive reference to him on a daily basis, which I find helps the team to remain positive during the more challenging moments, as Jay helped restore faith and value in what we do when we needed it the most. He's very much missed.

Leon Copeland - Senior User Experience Designer at Paddy Power Betfair


I have had the pleasure of working with Jay for a couple year at my last startup Emoov. Jay was great to work with.

An amazing UX/UI designer with a big appetite to get deeper and deeper into the business to understand those experiences he needed to handle gracefully with his designs. Hard working and always went the extra mile. Highly recommend...

Ivan Ramirez - CPO | COO | CEO | CSO at Emaar