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About
I’m a Senior Product Designer with over 15 years of experience designing complex, high-risk digital products across fintech, crypto, health, and operational SaaS.
I work as a senior individual contributor, typically owning a critical product area end-to-end. My role spans problem definition, research, interaction design, UI, and close collaboration with engineering through build and release. I’m most often brought into areas where clarity, accuracy, and trust matter more than novelty — financial data, compliance workflows, healthcare access, and operational tools.
Most of my career has been spent working with startups and scale-ups, often as the sole senior designer partnering directly with founders and small engineering teams. In these environments, I’ve led 0→1 product design, helped shape product direction, and shipped usable MVPs under tight time and resource constraints.
Alongside this, I’ve worked in enterprise and public-sector contexts, including government and NHS trusts, where the constraints are different but the stakes are just as high. These projects required navigating regulation, accessibility, legacy systems, and multiple stakeholders, while still delivering clear, usable outcomes for real users.
Across both settings, my role has remained consistent: take ownership of complex workflows and make them understandable, reliable, and usable.
What I typically own
Framing ambiguous problems and defining what actually needs solving
Designing core workflows that sit on critical user paths
Reducing failure states, edge cases, and user error
Partnering closely with engineers to ensure designs hold up in production
I’m comfortable operating without heavy process, but equally at home working within structured environments when needed. I don’t manage teams, but I do take responsibility for design quality, decisions, and outcomes within my scope.
I prioritise
Clear system feedback over clever interactions
Fewer, well-designed flows over feature density
Early validation over speculative polish
Design decisions that respect time, budget, and delivery constraints
This often means making tradeoffs — removing functionality, simplifying interfaces, or pushing back on requirements to reduce cognitive load and risk for users. The goal is not just to ship features, but to ship confidence.
I use AI as a practical tool to accelerate parts of the design process, particularly research synthesis, exploration of workflow variations, and early prototyping. It helps compress feedback loops and test ideas sooner, but it doesn’t replace product judgment or user understanding.
Robs eye for creative and consistency...
helped us to create a seamless, recognizable brand in everything we did.
Paul Garland
Marketing Lead ZenLedger
He understands the full spectrum of requirements, feature effectiveness...
and development friendliness and comes up with great design that are generally great at one shot.
Krishna Parajuli
Product Manager at ZenLedger
Rob has worked with Affinity for over 3 years and is expert in the delivery of Discovery tasks.
His design and UX skills deserve a special mention here.
Jonathan Duval
Director at Affinity Digital
Rob approaches projects from a practical, end user perspective and gives honest...
insightful reasoning and feedback. Most importantly, his design skills are second to none.
Rhea Sheedy
Digital Marketing & Ecommerce
Rob did a great job understanding our brand, messaging and brief.
Taking an interest in our wider business strategy, something that other designers didn’t really express an interest in.
Aimee Binstead
Marketing Manager, Really B2B
His ability to build prototypes and collaborate effectively...
with developers ensures seamless implementation.
Mike Roads
Product Manager at ZenLedger
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Outside of design, I teach, speak about UX systems, and coach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It shapes a lot of how I work — staying calm under pressure, focusing on fundamentals, and finding creative solutions when the obvious path isn't working.
Ready to explore more work?
Discover other case studies or get in touch to discuss your project.
Back to Home
About
I’m a Senior Product Designer with over 15 years of experience designing complex, high-risk digital products across fintech, crypto, health, and operational SaaS.
I work as a senior individual contributor, typically owning a critical product area end-to-end. My role spans problem definition, research, interaction design, UI, and close collaboration with engineering through build and release. I’m most often brought into areas where clarity, accuracy, and trust matter more than novelty — financial data, compliance workflows, healthcare access, and operational tools.
Most of my career has been spent working with startups and scale-ups, often as the sole senior designer partnering directly with founders and small engineering teams. In these environments, I’ve led 0→1 product design, helped shape product direction, and shipped usable MVPs under tight time and resource constraints.
Alongside this, I’ve worked in enterprise and public-sector contexts, including government and NHS trusts, where the constraints are different but the stakes are just as high. These projects required navigating regulation, accessibility, legacy systems, and multiple stakeholders, while still delivering clear, usable outcomes for real users.
Across both settings, my role has remained consistent: take ownership of complex workflows and make them understandable, reliable, and usable.
What I typically own
Framing ambiguous problems and defining what actually needs solving
Designing core workflows that sit on critical user paths
Reducing failure states, edge cases, and user error
Partnering closely with engineers to ensure designs hold up in production
I’m comfortable operating without heavy process, but equally at home working within structured environments when needed. I don’t manage teams, but I do take responsibility for design quality, decisions, and outcomes within my scope.
I prioritise
Clear system feedback over clever interactions
Fewer, well-designed flows over feature density
Early validation over speculative polish
Design decisions that respect time, budget, and delivery constraints
This often means making tradeoffs — removing functionality, simplifying interfaces, or pushing back on requirements to reduce cognitive load and risk for users. The goal is not just to ship features, but to ship confidence.
I use AI as a practical tool to accelerate parts of the design process, particularly research synthesis, exploration of workflow variations, and early prototyping. It helps compress feedback loops and test ideas sooner, but it doesn’t replace product judgment or user understanding.
Experience
1
Years
Toptal
Product Designer for startups.
5
Years
ZenLedger
UX/UI Designer for Crypto Tax SaaS app.
4
Years
Affinity Digital
UX/UI Designer for software studio.
6
Years
Slightly Different
Head of Design for web design studio.
Robs eye for creative and consistency...
helped us to create a seamless, recognizable brand in everything we did.
Paul Garland
Marketing Lead ZenLedger
He understands the full spectrum of requirements, feature effectiveness...
and development friendliness and comes up with great design that are generally great at one shot.
Krishna Parajuli
Product Manager at ZenLedger
Rob has worked with Affinity for over 3 years and is expert in the delivery of Discovery tasks.
His design and UX skills deserve a special mention here.
Jonathan Duval
Director at Affinity Digital
Rob approaches projects from a practical, end user perspective and gives honest...
insightful reasoning and feedback. Most importantly, his design skills are second to none.
Rhea Sheedy
Digital Marketing & Ecommerce
Rob did a great job understanding our brand, messaging and brief.
Taking an interest in our wider business strategy, something that other designers didn’t really express an interest in.
Aimee Binstead
Marketing Manager, Really B2B
His ability to build prototypes and collaborate effectively...
with developers ensures seamless implementation.
Mike Roads
Product Manager at ZenLedger
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Outside of design, I teach, speak about UX systems, and coach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It shapes a lot of how I work — staying calm under pressure, focusing on fundamentals, and finding creative solutions when the obvious path isn't working.
Ready to explore more work?
Discover other case studies or get in touch to discuss your project.