Luke Searson
Product Design Strategy and Leadership
I build awesome teams that design awesome things, helping businesses embrace the value of great products and design. I gravitate towards industries and problems with a high level of complexity where the impact of great products and design can materially shape the strategy and outcomes for all.
I'm an evangelist of the mantra "make something people want, the rest will take care of itself…" and endlessly in pursuit of that 'magic' when you find great people, help them understand their shared purpose and practice continuous improvement, going beyond 'design is how it looks' to 'design is the way it works'.
What others say about me…
Currently…
I'm Head of Product Design at IVC Evidensia where I'm helping bring about product transformation for one of largest animal healthcare providers in the world. We provide care for millions of pets every year across the UK, Canada, Western Europe and Scandinavia. My focus is on making things better for our pet owners, our 40,000+ healthcare professionals, and the animals under our care. This includes…
🙌 Growing the product design team from 3 to 17 people, working with VP & Directors to focus our efforts on domains where product differentiates us as a global healthcare provider.
🐕🦺 Redesigning our customer proposition to be more proactive and engaging. We've launched multiple products like new health plans in the UK, Canada and France to help our give more of our pets more complete care.
🧑⚕️ Building great new software like a new Clinical Notes app that's actually smart - and connects with our vast network of medical data and patient care frameworks.
💸 Fixing clunky administration processes by deploying simpler internal tooling and automations to manage insurance claims, payments and invoicing.
In early 2020…
I joined digital freight forwarder Beacon as their founding designer in early 2020, playing a key role navigating the company's rapid growth from Seed to Series B and beyond. Whilst store shelves ran out of the essentials, we kept our customers supply chains afloat and on track through…
💸 Rapidly researching, prototyping and launching a trade finance product in ~6 months. We onboarded 12 businesses and helped finance ~$12 million of goods to be shipped within the first 90 days.
🤖 Before AI was plastered over every SaaS product, we used algorithmic models and machine learning to auto-allocate container space for our operations hub in Shenzhen.
🏃 Using a design sprint, we navigated a strategic pivot of the business to becoming a realtime Tracking & Analytics platform - now the company's core offering.
💪 I hired and led a team of 12 multi-disciplinary Beaconeers (Product Design, User Research and Brand Designers), raising hiring standards across the business through interview best practices and culture reviews.
'16 to '19
From first joining as a Senior IC role to eventually being promoted to Head of User Experience, I brought design thinking to a multi-billion dollar services company. Working across Altus Group’s technology hubs in London, Toronto and Hyderabad, we focused on improving portfolio analysis and workflows for the world’s leading real-estate investment companies (CBRE, JLL and Blackrock to name a few).
📊 I led strategic design of the company's first ever SaaS product - a deal management workflow tool, enabling more efficient data and asset transfer (dealroom) with in built scenario modelling for Commercial Real Estate acquisitions.
🏗️ My team and I modernised a suite of portfolio management & asset valuation products, ultimately helping customers move off legacy infrastructure to 'the cloud' (something perceived as high risk in the asset management world) - now the company's flagship software service (ARGUS Intelligence)
🏗️ My team and I modernised a suite of portfolio management & asset valuation products, ultimately helping customers move off legacy infrastructure to 'the cloud' (something perceived as high risk in the asset management world) - now the company's flagship software service (ARGUS Intelligence)
Many moons ago…
At Derivco, I played a Lead IC role inside a tech incubator formed to make our games portfolio for the emerging smartphone market. This quickly transitioned into being promoted to Creative Lead role, working as a player/coach across our entire native games platform (iOS and Android). I hired, mentored and led a team of UI engineers, Game Designers and 3D artists to work on…
🤑 Mobile-first player registration, payment and wallet experiences across 17 different markets and territories, including localization into 12 languages.
🕹️ Groundbreaking game publishing pipelines and design systems (LibGDX, Unity & Unreal engine) - ramping up to deliever several games per quarter with upwards of 1 million monthly active players.
🏆 Partnering with Universal Studios to create Jurassic Park and The Dark Knight themed games, we won 2 ICE Gaming Innovation awards 🏆
About Luke 'workshop'
