About me
I'm a strategic creative leader who believes in thoughtful and holistic design, focusing on achieving outcomes, with a proven track record of execution, direction, & leadership for new & existing products. Committed to driving design transformation, growing design & product team’s influence, scale & output to improve business results & execute best-in-class customer experiences.
As an accomplished and adaptable design leader with international experience, I have spent more than 15 years working closely with teams and partnering with product and engineering departments to create outstanding user experiences. My expertise spans a wide range of platforms and industries leading in-house teams across the segments of consumer to business, business to business and business to consumer.
Current situation
Most recently, I was Group Design and Research Director for one of the fastest-funded startups in UK history, cinch is the UK’s leading B2C online used car marketplace, part of the larger Constellation Automotive Group, the largest vertically integrated digital car marketplace across 12 European countries.
Leading cinch and the wider Constellation’s entire 50+ design organisation encompassing UX Design, Visual Design, User Research, Content Design and Service Design. My responsibilities encompassed ideation, strategy development and design direction, in addition to leadership, coaching and people management.
Sadly, after supporting muliptle re-structures across Constellation due to overall market conditions in the automotive sector my role was eventually impacted by a large scale cost-reduction across design, product, technology and marketing. After taking some time out with family and focusing on a renovation project, I’m now looking for a new challenge and available effective immediately.
My values and leadership style
As a leader, I firmly believe that empowering designers in an environment where their creativity flourishes, have their voices heard, and their growth is nurtured, leads to exceptional outcomes. I actively cultivate an inclusive team culture centered on these principles, fostering an environment where every individual thrives, contributing to the creation of world-class work.
Developing empathy and prioritising understanding the needs of users while championing these in decision making is vital to delivering exceptional experiences for customers. While encouraging a mindset of thinking big emphasises the importance of ambitious and innovative thinking in the design process to challenge the status quo.
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Prioritise understanding the needs, behaviours, and motivations of users
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Champion the interests of users in decision making
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Inspire designers to question assumptions, challenge norms, and explore ideas
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Foster a culture of ambitious thinking and set high aspirations for the impact of design
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Design solutions with scalability in mind, anticipating growth and expansion of products or services
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Scalling, nuturing and leading a team around shared values and culture, driving clarity and confidence within our teams to empower them in achieving their goals.
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Developing careers paths and growth opportunities
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Caring about my team, peers, and partners as people
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Appreciate in open, critique in private
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Providing timely and helpful feedback
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Building inclusive and diverse teams that have diverse design skillsets and backgrounds
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I firmly believe that collaboration is the key to creating successful products. Enabling cross functional teams to have impact at scale by developing shared goals and vision.
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Ensuring design has a seat at the table is key to the product development process
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Ensure design, product, and engineering work well together
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Drive the business and operational goals as a team
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Surfacing issues early, and working through them together
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Cultivating an environment of trust and accountability
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Growing the design skills and developing domain expertise is essential in the success of creating products that deliver high business impact.
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Develop deep domain expertise to drive vision and strategy
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Learn from each other, sharing information, insights, and expertise
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Show and Tell vs. Preach
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Be open to exploring new ideas, and asking questions to deepen knowledge
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Be receptive to diverse perspectives and insights
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Emphasise the importance of feedback and self-reflection to refine and improve
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Following the right processes ensures we create impactful, consistent user-centered solutions with a focus on quality that scales across the team.
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Ensuring product development is customer-driven
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Setting clear priorities, ensuring team alignment on those goals
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Foster a culture of faster decision-making, identify and address any roadblocks or challenges
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Developing design principles, ensuring quality is upheld
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Representing design in town halls, strategy decks, planning cycles, and org design
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Helping designers prioritise competing priorities from multiple stakeholders across multiple projects
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“First & foremost, Dean is a first-class leader who is able to extract maximum performance from any team. This coupled with his depth of knowledge in UX, design & research makes him the only choice for any organisation that wants to be at the leading edge in this space. I had the pleasure of Dean reporting into me, his clarity of strategic thinking was critical in Constellation being first to market in a number of application areas. His commitment & dedication is second to none & if I ever again have the need for someone to spearhead this space, Dean would be my only choice.”
Dene Jones, Group Chief Marketing & Data Officer
I reported to him at BCA UK & EU
“Dean is one of the most talented Design leaders I have ever had the pleasure to work with. Not only he is highly technical on all design disciplines but he also has a rare entrepreneurial mindset which was key for the quick development of multiple products we launched as a team. Dean will be a huge asset for any company and I wouldn’t hesitate to hire and work with him again.”
Jose Gaspar, Group Chief Product Officer
I reported to him at cinch