How I work

Tools & Processes

Product development is not a straight line. It's a set of overlapping loops — each one adding fidelity, reducing uncertainty, and getting closer to something that actually works. Here's the framework I've built over 10 years across government, fintech, investment, and ecommerce.

01 · Product Development

How products get made.

I've worked across every stage of the product development cycle — from the first rough conversation about whether something is worth building, through to testing and iterating on what's live. The process below is how I navigate that journey, adapted to the context of each project.

01
Problem Definition & Framing
Before anything is designed or built, I spend time making sure we're solving the right problem. This means working with stakeholders to surface the real constraints, challenge assumptions about the solution space, and define what success actually looks like. The outputs are a problem statement, a set of framing questions, and a clear scope for the discovery phase.
Stakeholder interviewsProblem framing workshopsHow Might WeJobs to Be Done
02
Discovery & Research
I believe you can't design for someone you haven't observed. Discovery is about getting out of the building — talking to users, understanding their context, mapping the existing journey with all its friction and workarounds. In my current role at Baymard I run this process continuously across ecommerce sites, building a deep evidence base before making any design recommendation.
User interviewsContextual enquiryDiary studiesHeuristic evaluationCompetitive analysis
03
Synthesis & Insight Generation
Research is only as good as what you do with it. I use synthesis to move from raw observations to patterns, from patterns to insights, and from insights to design principles. This is where I add clarity and structure to ambiguous problems — the step I find most satisfying and most often skipped in fast-moving teams.
Affinity mappingJourney mappingPersona developmentInsight framing
04
Ideation & Concept Development
With a clear problem and strong insights, ideation becomes focused rather than random. I run structured sessions that bring cross-functional perspectives together, push past the first obvious solutions, and stress-test concepts against user needs and business constraints before committing to a direction.
Design studioSketchingConcept mappingMoSCoW prioritisation
05
Prototyping & Iteration
I prototype to the fidelity the question requires. A paper sketch for a navigation concept, a clickable Figma prototype for a checkout flow, a coded prototype for an animation interaction. The goal is always to test the riskiest assumption as cheaply as possible — then build fidelity once the direction is validated.
Paper prototypesFigmaProtopieHTML/CSSInteractive mock-ups
06
Validation & Usability Testing
Testing is not the end of the process — it's the beginning of the next iteration. I run moderated and unmoderated testing sessions, analyse the results systematically, and feed findings back into the design. I'm annoyingly persistent about this: minor UX friction has major commercial impact, and I don't let small issues get deprioritised indefinitely.
Moderated usability testingThink-aloud protocolFirst-click testingA/B testing
07
Handoff & Build Collaboration
Design intent doesn't survive handoff unless you're deliberate about it. I work closely with engineering teams throughout the build phase — not just handing over specs and disappearing, but staying involved to answer questions, catch implementation drift, and make sure what ships is what was designed.
Figma dev modeZeplinDesign tokensComponent annotation
08
Post-launch Monitoring & Iteration
Shipping is not done. I stay close to what happens after launch — tracking metrics, gathering qualitative feedback, and running follow-up research to understand how the product is being used in the wild versus how we assumed it would be used. The living design system grows from this feedback loop.
Analytics reviewHeatmappingPost-launch interviewsBacklog refinement
02 · Design Thinking

The mindset beneath the process.

Design thinking is not a methodology I follow step by step — it's a way of approaching problems that's become instinctive. Empathy first. Ambiguity as information. Iteration as the default. Failure as data. These are the principles that run underneath everything I do.

Human-Centred Design
IDEO / Stanford d.school
Start with people. Not what we think they need, not what they say they want — what they actually do, what frustrates them, what they're trying to accomplish. I've conducted ethnographic research across the Western Cape, in-depth interviews in financial services, and remote usability sessions across ecommerce. The discipline is always the same: observe before you design.
Systems Thinking
Donella Meadows · Peter Senge
Products don't exist in isolation. They sit inside systems — organisational, technical, social — and what looks like a UX problem is often a system problem in disguise. I try to see the whole before I design the part: what are the feedback loops? Where are the leverage points? What happens downstream of this design decision?
Lean UX
Jeff Gothelf · Josh Seiden
Reduce the cost of learning. Ship the smallest thing that tests the riskiest assumption. Don't perfect a design before you've validated the concept. I've used this most actively in early-stage work at Luno and in my current project development, where the goal is to learn as fast as possible without building the wrong thing.
Jobs to Be Done
Clayton Christensen
People don't buy products — they hire them to do a job. Understanding what job a user is trying to do, and what's preventing them from doing it well, is the most reliable frame I know for generating product insights that actually lead to better design decisions. I use JTBD framing in discovery and to stress-test feature proposals.
03 · Research Methodologies

How I find the signal.

Research is the discipline of reducing uncertainty before committing resources. I've run research programmes across government services, financial platforms, and ecommerce — adapting the method to the question, the access, and the timeline.

Heuristic Evaluation
Expert review against established UX principles. My primary method at Baymard — systematic evaluation of sites against 700+ ecommerce guidelines derived from ongoing user research. I've completed hundreds of full-site audits producing detailed, prioritised improvement reports. Effective for identifying high-confidence issues quickly, especially on mature products.
Usability Testing
Watching real users attempt real tasks. Moderated and unmoderated, in-person and remote. I've run sessions from Cape Town to the Netherlands, across desktop, mobile, and tablet contexts. The think-aloud protocol remains one of the most reliable windows into how users actually understand a product versus how we imagine they do.
User Interviews
Deep qualitative understanding of context, motivations, and mental models. I've conducted hundreds of interviews across my career — from ethnographic fieldwork with rural government service users in the Western Cape to remote interviews with crypto investors and ecommerce shoppers. The skill is in listening past the stated answer to the underlying behaviour.
Journey Mapping
Visualising the full user experience across time and touchpoints. I map journeys to make the invisible visible — the workarounds users have invented, the emotional highs and lows, the moments where the experience breaks the user's mental model. Useful both as a research synthesis tool and as a communication device for aligning teams around the user perspective.
Persona Development
Research-grounded archetypes that keep design decisions human. I've co-authored published research on persona methodology for underserved government service users. I use personas as a synthesis artefact — not fictional users, but distilled representations of real research patterns. The goal is a shared understanding of who we're designing for that survives the life of a project.
Accessibility Auditing
Systematic evaluation of how products serve users with disabilities. Certified in accessibility standards (WAS, WCAG 2.2, EU Accessibility Act). I've spent 6 years developing Baymard's accessibility research catalogue and conducting accessibility reviews for clients across Europe and the US. Accessibility is not a compliance checkbox — it's the most honest test of how well a product serves the full range of human diversity.
Ethnographic Research
Understanding behaviour in context, not in a lab. My foundation in research comes from ethnographic fieldwork at the Western Cape Government — conducting research across rural communities, in environments where the usual assumptions about digital access and literacy didn't apply. It gave me a permanent instinct to question whose behaviour we're designing for and in what context.
04 · Design & Collaboration Tools

The instruments.

Tools are means, not ends. The right tool is the one that reduces friction between thinking and communicating. Here's what I reach for and why.

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Figma
Primary design tool
Wireframes, high-fidelity design, interactive prototypes, design systems, component libraries, dev handoff. My main environment for the past 6 years. I use auto-layout, variables, and components to build scalable, maintainable design files.
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Miro / FigJam
Workshops & synthesis
Affinity mapping, journey mapping, design studio facilitation, retrospectives. Essential for distributed team collaboration — I've been running fully remote workshops since 2020.
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Maze / Lookback
Usability testing
Unmoderated usability testing at scale, first-click testing, task-completion analysis. I use Lookback for moderated sessions where I want to probe responses in real time.
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Notion / Confluence
Documentation & PM
Research synthesis, project documentation, decision logs, backlog management. I use these to keep the strategic context of a project visible and accessible to the whole team.
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Zeplin / Dev Mode
Design handoff
Annotated specs, design tokens, component documentation for engineering. I stay close to the build phase — handoff is a conversation, not a file transfer.
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Adobe Suite
Visual & brand design
Illustrator, Photoshop, XD. Used throughout my earlier career and still reach for Illustrator for precision illustration work and complex vector assets.
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HTML & CSS
Prototyping & communication
Working knowledge of front-end code — enough to build interactive prototypes, communicate precisely with engineers, and understand the feasibility and constraints of design decisions.
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AI Design Tools
Emerging practice
Actively developing AI-powered UX research tools in my current role. Using Claude, Midjourney and Galileo AI for ideation and synthesis acceleration. The tools are evolving fast and I evolve with them.
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Jira / Linear
Product & sprint management
Backlog management, sprint planning, ticket writing. I've worked as a de facto product owner in several roles — comfortable owning the backlog and keeping delivery moving.
05 · Design Principles

What I believe.

These are the principles I apply regardless of the project, the industry, or the tool. They've emerged from 10 years of working across very different contexts.

01
Clarity over cleverness
The best design is invisible. If a user notices the design, something has gone wrong. The goal is always the simplest thing that works — and simplicity is much harder than complexity.
02
Evidence before opinion
Design decisions should be grounded in research. Opinions are a starting point for discussion, not a conclusion. I'm comfortable challenging assumptions — including my own.
03
Persistent until resolved
Small UX problems compound. I don't let things fall off the backlog because they're awkward to fix. I follow up — sometimes annoyingly — until the user experience is actually better.
04
Design for the edges
Design for the person who is least comfortable with technology, the user with a disability, the one in a hurry. If it works for them, it works for everyone. Accessibility is quality, not compliance.