Why Work With Me?

Brought product and service design thinking to a government-backed financial advice organisation

The organisation had the ambition but struggled to align its many departments, agencies and subject matter experts around a shared sense of what to build, and for whom. I ran discovery and definition workshops that cut through the noise and created that shared understanding.

Over multiple years and projects, that foundation allowed them to plan and test with more confidence — delivering products people actually needed, rather than solutions in search of a problem.

“He very cleverly facilitates the process of building a clear plan forwards that pretty much becomes the baseline to the project.”

Overhauled quarterly planning, strategic alignment and progress check-ins for a global delivery company.

Their quarterly planning had become a chore — status updates that didn't build alignment and check-ins that added friction rather than focus. I redesigned how they shared context, planned work and tracked progress, creating sessions people actually wanted to take part in.

Working across product and technical functions, I helped shift how work was framed and tracked — moving the conversation from activity to value, and creating a clearer shared language for what good looked like.

“Laser focused on value, he helps teams concentrate on aligning their output with the big picture, keeping the user front and centre throughout.”

Grew a founding designer into CPO and helped a science startup articulate its consumer proposition.

GlycanAge had a compelling product — biological age testing using glycan biomarkers — but no UX experience and a designer who needed mentoring. They were also struggling to translate complex science into a clear value proposition for B2B and B2C markets.

Over four years as interim fractional CPO, I coached their first designer all the way from junior hire to Head of Design — and eventually into the CPO role itself. The simplified checkout and sharper proposition reduced funnel loss, increased sales, and supported the funding round that secured $4M in venture capital.

“Spencer helped us to simplify and improve our sales and checkout process — dramatically reducing funnel loss, increasing sales and reducing related support queries to zero.”

Defined and delivered an MVP JavaScript IDE for a Swedish IoT hardware manufacturer — in weeks, not months.

The client needed a working JavaScript IDE integration but had no clear scope, conflicting priorities, and real doubts about whether it was achievable at all. I worked onsite with their management, technical team and product managers to cut scope to what mattered and get everyone aligned on what 'done' looked like.

The result: a releasable system integration delivered in a matter of weeks — something the client had believed might take many months, if it were possible at all.

Unified operationally opposed departments in a challenger bank to define a company-wide digital strategy.

The bank's product and commercial teams were pulling against each other — different incentives, different priorities, and years of accumulated mistrust. I designed and facilitated a series of workshops to rebuild understanding across the divide, using activities that made it easier to be human first and functional second.

With trust re-established, the conversation shifted from territorial debates to shared goals — giving both teams a focused digital strategy and a clear set of priorities to work from.

Applied a lean approach to product and service discovery for a Scottish government organisation.

A large-scale digital transformation rarely fails because of technology. This one needed a culture shift first. I worked with everyone from the C-Suite to frontline staff to map where the organisation was, where it wanted to get to, and what stood in the way.

The resulting visualisations gave senior leaders a clear picture of priorities, and gave each project team a shared starting point — making sure everyone understood the problem before anyone started building the solution.

“He took the time to speak to all areas of the business to thoroughly understand the processes, people and politics involved in change, coaching in lean approaches and fostering cross-departmental collaboration.”

Mapped and prioritised improvement opportunities for an over-stretched NHS mental health service.

An NHS mental health service was drowning — non-clinical staff overwhelmed with triage, disconnected systems creating information silos, and a waiting list it couldn't dent. Brought in as Lead Service Designer, I had to make sense of a complex ecosystem and identify practical interventions within real constraints.

I mapped the service end-to-end, ran research with staff and users, and facilitated a prioritisation workshop that turned the findings into a ranked list of actionable improvements — categorised by impact and feasibility. The work became the first service design case study within NHSx.

Coached a UX-curious product specialist into a service designer and gave a scaling SaaS team a shared view of its own product.

A rapidly growing TV Production SaaS company had no shared picture of their own product — different teams held different pieces, and new hires took too long to find their feet. They needed someone who could coach a promising team member and create the cross-functional alignment that was missing.

I coached their product specialist through a real discovery project, building a comprehensive service blueprint that mapped the full customer journey. The work aligned product, engineering, sales, and customer success around a shared understanding — and transformed how both the individual and the team approached product design.

“Spencer supercharged the career development and the quality of work being done by members of my team. Coaching someone who was UX-curious, he helped turn them into a burgeoning Service Designer, in the process transforming how the entire team works together.”

Helped a legal AI startup discover the more promising business already inside their product.

Avantia Law had strong legal expertise, a partially trained AI model, and a clear vision — but faced well-funded competitors and uncertainty about where to focus. Their initial target (helping paralegals appraise documents) seemed logical but hadn't been tested against market realities.

Through user research and a bespoke CEO workshop, I found that the original target market was too low-margin to justify, and surfaced an area of the business that already had product-market fit. Rather than pushing further into the wrong segment, I helped them refocus where revenue was already within reach.

“His versatility and blend of questioning, coaching, advising and proactivity quickly won the trust of the CEO and senior team and added value from the start across a range of disciplines.”

Delivered a pharmaceutical grants platform in two months — and converted waterfall sceptics into agile advocates along the way.

Albireo needed a grants application platform for a specific disease area, with two months to deliver something that would normally take several quarters. The challenge wasn't just the timeline — it was doing it inside an organisation rooted in waterfall approaches, where agile had to earn its place.

I led UX design and agile implementation, running collaborative discovery workshops, building a Wizard of Oz MVP, and keeping stakeholders focused on value at every step. The platform launched on time, attracted high-quality applications, and became an internal case study for how agile could work in a conservative pharmaceutical environment.

“In one 90-minute intro session for our clients he turned a room of sceptics into advocates. Making things simple to understand, and getting everyone involved in owning the outcome. Absolute consultancy magic.”