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Product-minded design leader. HCI and UX teams that deliver for businesses where everyone is now a product builder. 

Vanessa Kirby
Head of Design for businesses where everyone is now building. 

Founders, PMs and engineers can all prototype now. Someone has to turn that into good products. I build the design team, the standards and the ways of working that make it happen.

 

Design & UX leadership · HCI teams · Product delivery
Ex M&S · Argos · BT Financial · SeedLegals

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Strategic capabilities icon

CORE EXPERIENCE

Strategic Capabilities

Hire me to build the team, set the standard, judge the work and get it shipped.  Every customer journey runs through the whole business behind it. I work across all of it - commercial, operations, engineering, brand and customer support - to find what’s really holding growth back and fix it. Unclear strategy, too many priorities, fragmented teams: I can walk into the mess and make it workable.

Building UX Teams

  • Design practice built from scratch at SeedLegals - embedded in every product and engineering team.

 

  • Competency framework across every UX discipline, with a craft route and a management route.

 

  • Teams of 30+ at M&S, Argos and BT, in complex matrix organisations.

Design when everyone can build

  • Figma to AI prototyping,

 

  • Stories written for agents as well as engineers.

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  • PM-owned evals for AI features.

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  • A route for founder and exec prototypes into the backlog - without derailing delivery.

Finding the actual problem

  • Service blueprints to find the manual work behind the screen - 3+ headcount freed, HMRC submissions 200% faster.

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  • Company-wide collaborative discovery, so teams agree the problem before building the answer.

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TRACK RECORD

Proven Impact

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£250m+

Shifted online retail revenue from 33% to 66% share

£50k/m

New revenue stream SaaS. Three weeks.  Immediate increase

300-450%

Seasonal (golden quarter) revenue uplift YoY through design leadership

£3m+

+16% conversion using digital tools to visualise their sofa

CURRENT POSITIONS

Current position icon

Director of UX Design & Product Ops

April 2022 - Present

SeedLegals  London
LegalTech SaaS scale-up 

Member of the Extended Exco, with chief of staff responsibilities to the founder and CEO - translating company priorities into coordinated delivery across the business. Accountable for UX, visual design and product management across the SaaS platform, connected services and commercial website.

 

Strategy and operations

  • Introduced strategic planning, OKR and GTM rhythms, creating a clear operating cadence across product, design, engineering, marketing and CX

  • Translate founder and CEO priorities into cross-functional execution, aligning teams without formal authority

  • Co-sponsored, with the Director of Strategy, an exco-level programme on AI-driven change across engineering, product and CX, with material implications for company structure

  • Led AI integration programmes to improve operational efficiency and reduce support costs

 

Product and growth

  • Led delivery from concept to GTM for two major bets: US market entry for the founder product, and a regulated investor marketplace (deal flow to portfolio management)

  • Product and feature launches supporting 15% year-on-year revenue growth

 

Design and delivery

  • Built the UX and product design practice, embedding design in every product and engineering team and moving to company-wide collaborative discovery

  • Introduced service blueprinting to find manual processes to automate on platform

  • Moved from Figma to AI prototyping, with stories written for agents as well as engineers

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View my full CV >             View case studies > 

My footprint
World map of places I've worked

International, in country experience

Who I have worked with
Logos of companies I've worked with
SL Logo

'If you can make things easy to use, then the world will love you'.

Making Websites Win, Karl Blanks & Ben Jesson

Conferences   

Occasionally I soap box - all my slides are available to view (if you feel the need).

2019 ECommerce Digital conference  - Journey Mapping

2019 UX Roundabout, London - Agile & UX

2015 Interact, London - UX Unicorns -fables or legends?

2014 Digital Delivery  - Wealth Management

2012 OzChi - Agile & UX

2012 Agile UX - Sydney

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