The opportunity

ECA International provides data, software and advisory services for organisations managing global employee assignments — from cost-of-living and salary data to housing, taxation and expatriate allowances.

Relocation estimates are inherently complex. Costs vary by country, city, salary, housing, taxation, allowances and individual circumstances.

The opportunity was to explore whether AI could make that complexity easier to navigate — without losing the accuracy and expertise ECA's customers depend on.

Brought in to explore what was possible.

I was brought in as a contractor to work on an innovation project exploring how AI could transform the relocation estimation experience.

Working from an early-stage concept, I explored different interaction models, product opportunities and ways AI could change how people interact with ECA's complex data.

The work involved moving quickly from ideas to tangible prototypes — using design to explore, communicate and test what a future AI-powered experience could look like.

Making complexity feel simple.

The challenge wasn't simply to add an AI interface to an existing product.

It was to understand where AI could genuinely reduce complexity — and where human expertise, transparency and control still mattered.

Using prototypes to make the future tangible.

Because the project was exploratory, the prototypes became a way of thinking. Rather than trying to define the entire product upfront, I used interaction design to explore different possibilities, expose assumptions and communicate ideas with stakeholders.

The goal was not to create a finished product. It was to discover what the product could become.

AI is most useful when it removes complexity — not when it simply adds intelligence.

For ECA, that meant exploring how AI could sit between the user and a highly complex body of data — helping people get to useful answers without needing to understand everything happening underneath.

Reducing emissions at sea.

Silverstream Technologies provides air lubrication systems for ships — technology that reduces friction between a vessel's hull and the water, cutting fuel consumption and emissions significantly.

As the company scaled, they needed a digital layer to make their ALS technology visible, trackable and understandable — for a diverse audience of ship operators, marine engineers and executive teams.

There was no existing design system, no product precedent. Everything had to be built from scratch.

Head of Design on a greenfield product.

I led the design of a digital performance web application and iOS app for Silverstream's Air Lubrication System — working across a cross-functional team of data scientists, marine engineers and front-end developers.

The application displays live ALS performance metrics, enables vessel tracking and supports maintenance monitoring — all designed for a diverse range of shipping users with very different levels of technical familiarity.

In my first week, I also presented to the company's town hall — proposing an updated colour strategy to align the brand's visual identity with its environmental mission.

Designing for a world most designers never see.

Shipping is a highly specialised, technical domain. Users range from ship captains checking operational performance to data scientists reviewing emission metrics to sales teams calculating ROI for prospects.

Designing for all of them — simultaneously, in a greenfield context, under a tight deadline — required a design approach that was systematic from day one.

Immerse, collaborate, iterate.

Designing for a highly specialised technical domain requires genuine immersion. Before drawing a single screen, I worked closely with marine engineers and data scientists to understand what the ALS system actually does — and what would make it meaningful on screen.

Running parallel workstreams across hub, estimation tool and iOS required constant prioritisation — designing foundational patterns first, then letting each application inherit and extend them.

Great design in unfamiliar territory starts with genuine curiosity.

Building the Hub as a foundation also taught me the long-term value of investing in architecture early. Every hour spent on the platform saved multiples of that time across every product that followed.

The scale of the challenge.

SAP is one of the world's largest enterprise software companies. The challenge across four years was helping design next-generation SaaS products that would be used by thousands of professionals across UK, Poland and Germany.

The work spanned two major projects: the CDS suite — a complex enterprise product that contributed to a £3.5M acquisition and still sells at £1.5M per licence — and BoSh, a next-generation AI-powered self-healing operations platform.

Each required translating probabilistic AI outputs into interfaces that non-technical users could trust and act on — without losing the depth that expert users demanded.

Lead designer across two major product lines.

I led UX/UI design across multiple workstreams — running user research, designing interaction models, building prototypes and working directly with engineering across distributed teams in UK, Poland and Germany.

On BoSh, I introduced conversational design as a core interaction model — challenging the team's approach to language and completely changing how the product gathered information from users via chatbot.

The role required operating simultaneously as researcher, designer, communicator and strategic partner — keeping design intent intact as requirements shifted across long delivery cycles.

Making AI trustworthy at enterprise scale.

The hardest design problem across both products was trust. Enterprise users don't act on AI recommendations they can't explain to their team or their auditors. Every design decision had to balance automation with transparency.

The four key tensions I worked through:

Design as competitive advantage.

Four years at SAP reinforced something I believe deeply: in enterprise software, design is not decoration — it's the thing that determines whether a product gets adopted or abandoned. Users have no choice but to use the software, but they have every choice about whether to trust it.

The £3.5M acquisition and £1.5M per-licence pricing of the CDS suite are a direct reflection of what happens when design takes a seat at the strategic table from day one.

Play by design.

Monkey Nuts is a creative studio built around one idea: games should feel like something worth coming back to. Not because they trap you — but because they genuinely connect people.

Every project is shaped closely with its community — brainstorming, testing, and refining ideas with real players before anything ships. The result is experiences that feel authored, not assembled.

From social bonding games to AR accessibility tools to long-form prediction platforms, Monkey Nuts spans a wide range of formats — united by a commitment to craft and a low tolerance for filler.

Building things that matter.

Monkey Nuts isn't a commercial studio in the traditional sense — it's a personal commitment to making things that are genuinely worth someone's time. Each project starts with a real problem, is shaped by real users, and ships as something real.

The through-line across all three projects: design as empathy in action. Whether that's helping someone connect with another person, see the world through different eyes, or just enjoy a long evening of competitive predicting.

The machine speaks back.

Candyspace is a London-based digital agency specialising in user-centred digital products for global brands. Through Candyspace, I was brought in as Lead Product Designer on a proof-of-concept for Rolls-Royce's mtuGo application — a mission-critical tool used by engineers to monitor and maintain MTU engines.

The goal: integrate generative AI and natural language processing into the application to create a voice-first assistant capable of real-time diagnostics, fault identification and engineer support — reducing the dependency on manual troubleshooting and dense technical manuals.

Due to the confidential nature of this engagement, specific design artefacts cannot be shared. The work presented here reflects the process, contributions and outcomes of the project.

Bridging AI capability
and human need.

Engineers using mtuGo relied on manual troubleshooting and dense technical manuals — a process that was slow, inconsistent, and demanding across varying levels of technical expertise. My role was to design an AI system that felt like a trusted expert, not a chatbot.

Measurable outcomes
for complex systems.

Designing at the frontier.

Working on a project this technically complex — and this confidential — required a high level of trust from the client and a high level of discipline from me. Every design decision had to be grounded in real engineer need, not technology novelty.

The most important lesson: voice UX is not a UI that happens to accept speech. It is a fundamentally different design medium — one where flow, pacing, and error handling matter as much as layout. Getting that right for an audience of Rolls-Royce engineers is a challenge I'm genuinely proud to have taken on.

The opportunity

GGMR is a fast-paced agency delivering scalable solutions across telecommunications, government and financial services. As an implanted contractor at Vodafone through GGMR, I was brought in to work directly with the Head of Customer Service on a persistent problem: customers were consistently unhappy upon receiving their bills.

User feedback revealed a clear pattern — the existing bill design was overwhelming. Customers found it difficult to locate the information they actually needed, and the visual language actively triggered negative emotions before they'd even read a word.

The task: a full redesign of the bill with no restrictions, to be presented to Vodafone's leadership team. The goal was to reduce negative emotion and fundamentally improve the customer's experience of receiving and reading their bill.

Seven problems.
Seven solutions.

Each element of the redesign responded to a specific piece of user feedback — translating frustration into a clear design brief.

01

Date Information

02

Bill Total

03

QR Code

04

Plan Summary

05

Positive Pay-Off

06

Monthly Charges

07

Usage Charts

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Design as emotional regulation.

This project was a reminder that design isn't always about screens or products. Sometimes the most impactful design work happens on a piece of paper that millions of people receive once a month — and dread opening.

Every decision in this redesign was anchored to a specific emotional state: reducing anxiety, building clarity, and ending on a positive note. The concept was presented to Vodafone's leadership team as a blueprint for improving customer satisfaction and reducing billing-related complaints at scale.

Try the working prototype

The full Zen Educate flow - 5 screens, animated transitions, interactive throughout.