Head of Digital Product Design
I joined Animal Friends to lead the digital product design team and help put customer experience at the centre of how its products and services were designed.
I was responsible for the design direction across a broad digital estate, including the website, quote and purchase journey, customer account, veterinary platform and partner experiences.
A key part of my role was building a stronger user centred design culture. I introduced clearer UX processes, strengthened research and validation, and helped teams use customer insight to make better product decisions.
As Head of Digital Product Design, I led and mentored the design team while working closely with product, engineering, commercial teams and external partners. Together, we took work from early discovery and research through to design, testing and delivery.
Client
Animal Friends
Year
2022
Project Scope
Mobile-first redesign
Identifying user hurdles
Delivery for peak traffic
Tools
Figma, Adobe CC, Trello, Miro, Axure, Jira, Teams
- Leading and mentoring the digital product design team
- Setting UX and product design direction across the business
- Leading discovery, research and usability testing
- Improving design processes, tools and ways of working
- Working across product, engineering and commercial teams
- Overseeing design from early concepts through to delivery
Growth & recognition
Defaqto
Pet Insurer of the Year 2024/25
Personal Finance Awards
Best Pet Insurance 2024/25
Forbes Advisor
Best Pet Insurance 2025
More than 50,000 Trustpilot reviews, with an Excellent rating.
Redesigning the quote experience
Pet insurance can be complicated, and our existing quote journey made choosing the right cover harder than it needed to be. We redesigned the experience around clearer choices, simpler interactions and a better way for customers to understand what they were buying.
Scaling design across Animal Friends
As teams and products grew, inconsistent patterns and fragmented design files were making it harder to work efficiently. We created a shared design system that brought consistency across our digital products and gave designers and developers a common foundation to build from.
Rebuilding the Animal Friends website
The existing website was constrained by an ageing platform, technical debt and an experience that had evolved over many years. We used the move from WordPress to Optimizely as an opportunity to rethink the site, creating a faster, more flexible experience built to evolve with the business.
