I'm Luke 👋

I design awesome teams that design awesome things, helping businesses embrace the value of great product & design. I do this through shaping product strategy and design practice to create better technology for humans, and by being an evangelist of the mantra "make something people want, the rest will take care of itself"
I'm 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…

What I say about myself…

From working on mobile gaming at the birth of the iPhone, international supply chains during global lockdowns, and veterinary healthcare in the age of AI medical breakthroughs, I've grown from IC and Lead to Manager and Senior Leadership.
  1. I bring strategic planning and hands-on execution to companies at varying stages of growth, from facilitating conversations with the C-suite and Investors, to running detailed design critiques with teams readying a new product launch. 



  2. I get into the details when nuanced discussion helps make a better informed decision, or zoom out to distill complexity and ambiguity into something simpler that allows others to frame different perspectives against.



  3. I foster a collaborative culture and environment between product, design, engineering and data - where anyone should be able to advocate clear insights that inform a design direction and everyone should advocate for the customer.

  4. I obsess over the words on a slide deck as much as I do the onboarding copy for first time customers - especially when that combines insights, a strategic vision and great user experience that communicates 'the why'.



  5. I'm a Design For Good advocate, open to opportunities where a company's mission is aligned with such values, bringing my skills in product strategy, research, design, communication and creative leadership to make a better planet.

2022 - Today

Currently, I'm Head of Product Design at IVC Evidensia where I'm leading the charge to bring our veterinary healthcare services into the digital age. We're one of the biggest players in the market, caring for millions of pets across the UK, Canada, Scandinavia and Western Europe. My focus is on making things better for our pet owners, our 40,000 healthcare professionals, and the animals under our care.
This includes…
🐕‍🦺 Redesigning our customer proposition to be more proactive and engaging. We've launched multiple products like new health plans in the UK, as well as Telehealth and loyalty mechanisms in Sweden to help our give our pets more complete care.
🧑‍⚕️ Building great new software tools like a new Clinical Notes app that's actually smart - and connects with our vast network of medical data and patient care frameworks.
💸 Fixing the clunky processes around insurance claims and payments.

I've grown the product design team from 3 to 14 people to make this happen, working with VP & Directors to focus our efforts on domains where product differentiates us as a global healthcare provider.

Building and nuturing teams to tackle global healthcare challenges

Building and nuturing teams to tackle global healthcare challenges

Redefining our Customer propostion - what is complete pet care?

Redefining our Customer propostion - what is complete pet care?

2020 - 2022

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 building an international trade finance service in ~6 months. We onboarded 12 SMEs and helped finance ~$12 million of goods within the first 90 days of it's launch.
🤖 Before ChatGPT was cool, we used algorithmic models to auto-allocate container space for our operations hub in Shenzhen (China).
🏃 Using a design sprint, we navigated a strategic pivot of the business to becoming a realtime Tracking & Analytics platform - which is now the company's core offering.
💪 I hired and led a team of 12 multi-disciplinary Beaconeers (Product Design, User Research and Brand Designers), investing time to raise hiring standards across the Product org through interview best pratices and culture reviews.

Navigating global supply chains through lockdowns and series rounds

Navigating global supply chains through lockdowns and series rounds

Bringing supply chain out of spreadsheets into realtime tracking and analytics

Bringing supply chain out of spreadsheets into realtime tracking and analytics

2016 - 2020

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)

Bringing asset portfolios and deal rooms into a modern SaaS workflow

Bringing asset portfolios and deal rooms into a modern SaaS workflow

2010 - 2015

At Derivco, many many moons ago, I took up an 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 🏆

Lightning 'Jam Session'

  1. Grab a sticky and write as many statements about Luke in 2 minutes. ☑️

  2. Group post its together by Luke's Skills and Hobbies ☑️

  3. "Sprinkle some AI on it" to look like there's been an incredibly productive workshop ☑️

  1. Grab a sticky and write as many statements about Luke in 2 minutes.

  2. Group post its together by Luke's Skills and Hobbies.

  3. Sprinkle some AI on it to look like there's been an incredibly productive workshop

What do all those post-its say?*

By doing long term discovery on Post-Its™ and their digital equivalents "stickies" (Miro, FigJam etc.), as well as cross-referencing with workshop effectiveness analysis done by AJ&Smart and Google Ventures, I've been able to calculate that the ROI of (daily) global post-it consumption to genuinely good ideas is 0.0000003%.

CO2 (carbon emissions) generated by workshop Post-its and Stickies today

5,600

physical post-its used

physical post-its used

136,700

digital stickies generated

digital stickies generated

36,700

trees cut down for 3M manufacturing

trees cut down for 3M manufacturing

10,302

hours saved not capturing physical post-its

hours saved not capturing physical post-its

120

CO2e (metric tonnes emitted)

CO2e (metric tonnes emitted)

8

genuinely good ideas

genuinely good ideas

* Data Source: a humorous/sarcastic self-reflection on whether all those workshops finally achieved the mythical state of "alignment"

* Data Source: a humorous/sarcastic self-reflection on whether all those workshops finally achieved the mythical state of "alignment"

If you'd like more details on work, leadership and the evolving state of technology & design or maybe you just want hang out and talk coffee recipes and retro synths, reach out via…
📧 Email | 🤝 LinkedIn