UX Leadership · Digital Optimisation · Design Systems
25 years designing and building digital products across maritime, finance, manufacturing, life sciences and travel. Currently Director of UX & Design at OneOcean, part of the Lloyd's Register group, where I built a 30-person UX and Learning Experience function and now lead UX.
About
I've spent 25 years across agency and in-house, leading UX teams that ship at enterprise scale — from premium bespoke interfaces for global brands to ecommerce platforms doing serious volume. My focus today: DesignOps, hiring frameworks, and the rituals that make design teams reliably ship.
Some organisations I've worked with
What I do
From research to ship. I've led the design of premium, bespoke interfaces used by some of the world's largest brands — usable, accessible, and engineered to scale.
See UX case studies20 years optimising ecommerce — from audiophiles to airlines. I help brands grow customer bases through measured, iterative improvement of the digital funnel.
See optimisation workScaling design at enterprise level: DesignOps, hiring frameworks, mentoring, and the team rituals that turn promising designers into senior contributors who ship.
How I lead"Design leadership isn't about taste — it's about reliably shipping outcomes the business can measure."
Selected work
A short selection. Happy to talk through any of these in detail — and to share work that's under NDA.
Modernised the booking experience for the British regional airline: a hero flight-search front door, a flexible promotions module to surface seasonal European routes from Bristol, East Midlands and beyond, and a fully responsive site across desktop and mobile. The conversion rate doubled, and online sales grew to 20% of all bookings.
Role: Head of IT & Digital. flybmi ceased trading in Feb 2019.
Read the flybmi case studyPassword protected — ask me for access
Created Helix — Ideagen's human-first design system — to unify the user experience across the GRC SaaS portfolio. Built the foundations from principles and tokens through accessible components, content guidelines and a governance model that lets product teams adopt and contribute. Spans web and mobile, with a roadmap into voice and AR.
Role: Head of UX & Design, partnering with engineering, product and brand.
Read the Ideagen case studyPassword protected — ask me for access
Built OneOcean's UX and Learning Experience function from zero to 30 people: a user research team of six getting out on board vessels with customers, Caspian, the design system behind every product, and a reinvented eLearning library for the world's seafarers. All of it carried through an acquisition and a merger into Lloyd's Register.
Role: Director of UX & Design. Built the UX and LX teams; now leads UX.
Read the OneOcean case studyPassword protected — ask me for access
Kind words
On craft
"Tim is a pleasure to work with. During our time working together at flybmi I found him to be smart, insightful, a great eye for detail and one of those guys that really rolls up their sleeves and just gets things done."
On mentorship
"Tim opened the door for me into the design world. He cares as much about the success of his team as he cares about the success of a project."
On leadership
"Tim took me on as an apprentice and supported my growth into an experienced UX designer. His inclusivity and accessibility-focused approach is something every business needs."
On growing leaders
"I’ve known Tim as my manager and mentor for the past two years now, and I can honestly say he’s shaped how I lead. He guided me through setting up Agile ceremonies and embedding best practice in my team, always with patience and a clear sense of what good looks like. He’s supportive and inspirational and a fantastic people leader who makes you feel both trusted and stretched. I’m a better leader for having worked with him."
Personal projects
Side projects I ship alongside my day job — all live, and most still in active development.
Find the nearest public toilet, fast — built with IBD and Crohn's in mind. No account needed.
The classic quiz board game for groups — join by QR code and buzz in from your phone.
Linked markdown notes with backlinks and a graph view — and long-term memory for AI assistants.
Draw and dimension floor plans, or trace one from a photo and let the app read the rooms.
Shuffle personas, situations, goals and challenges into UX scenario challenges.
A daily news digest curated to what you care about — no algorithm, no doomscroll.
Words
Hiring for the gap was the hard part. Keeping the team from filling it back in is the part nobody warns you about.…
Read on Substack"You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf."
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Get in touch
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