CASE STUDY
UX/UI DESIGN LEAD
UX/UI reimagined for 3million users.
Confidential · Website/platform ux/ui redesign · Insurance
UX/UI Design Lead · Navigation update to full web redesign · Dec 2024 - May 2026
UX/UI design
Anayltics and discovery
UX research
Design systems
Responsive web design
Creative direction
Stakeholder management
THE CHALLENGE
A world-leading platform
with a navigation problem.
This is one of the most significant financial marketplaces on the planet. Its digital presence carries real institutional weight — serving brokers, underwriters, investors, regulators and the global press simultaneously. With over 2.6 million annual site visits, every percentage point of engagement has commercial consequences.
When I joined as embedded UX/UI Design Lead, the site's navigation was underperforming sharply. Users were failing to find what they needed. Core content areas were being bypassed. The homepage — the institution's most valuable digital real estate — was generating a hero banner engagement rate of just 0.55%.
The organisation needed a designer who could move fast, work with data rather than assumptions, align diverse stakeholders, and deliver something that would hold up to executive scrutiny. My mandate was clear: redesign the navigation and homepage, prove the results, and establish the foundation for a full site transformation.
That is exactly what I did.
Mark · Senior Digital Manager
THE IMPACT
Numbers that made
the case for more.
The navigation and homepage redesign delivered results that were measurable, significant, and fast. Every metric moved in the right direction. The data was drawn from analytics infrastructure I helped establish and maintain. The story was grounded in evidence from day one, not retrospective justification.
The results did not just validate the design decisions. They unlocked the budget for a full website redesign. That is what good design at senior level looks like: work that pays for itself and opens the next door.
+19.2%
HERO BANNER
From 0.55% to 19.2%. The most valuable real estate on the site, transformed into a high-performing asset.
+35%
HOMEPAGE ENGAGEMENT
More meaningful actions driven into core content areas. Greater ROI from existing content, without additional spend.
HOMEPAGE & NAVIGATION REDESIGN BEOFRE/AFTER
Confidential. Visuals available on request.
HOW I WORKED
Senior-level rigour.
Boutique craft.
Being embedded at this level means more than doing good design work. It means showing up as a trusted voice in the room, whether that room has a product manager, a developer, a comms director, or an exec in it. Every decision I made was traceable back to data, and every presentation was built to hold up to serious scrutiny.
I used a sprint-based delivery model with design and development running in parallel throughout. Approved work went straight to the development team without waiting for a design freeze. That kept the project moving and got real value in front of stakeholders faster.
Measurable results within weeks, not quarters.
DESIGN SYSTEM - COMPONENT AND DOCUMENTATION
Confidential. Visuals available on request.
WHAT I DELIVERED
End-to-end ownership,
start to finish.
My role covered the full design lifecycle. Research and discovery at one end, component handover, documentation and post-launch support at the other. I was not parachuted in to produce screens and leave. I was accountable for outcomes at every stage, working directly with developers, business analysts and senior client stakeholders the whole way through.
What started as a navigation fix became the proof of concept for a full institutional website redesign. The deliverables below reflect how far that scope grew.
WIREFRAMES & UX MAPPING
Confidential. Visuals available on request.
HI-FI PAGE DESIGNS
Confidential. Visuals available on request.
UX/UI
Navigation redesign
Full UX and UI redesign of the site navigation, grounded in analytics. Delivered measurable results within weeks and made the case for full-site investment.
UX/UI
Full Site UX/UI
End-to-end UX/UI design across 60+ page templates for the full website transformation, spanning priority pages through to long-tail content templates.
Systems
Design System
A component-based design system built for scale: ~80 components, interaction states, accessibility documentation, and usage guidelines for development and internal teams, along with training workshops.
DESIGN SYSTEM & DEV HANDOFF
A system built to
outlast the project.
Enterprise design at this scale stands or falls on the quality of the handoff. A design that cannot be built consistently, or maintained without the original designer around, is not finished. It is a problem waiting to happen. I kept that in mind throughout.
I built a full token-based design system from scratch: colour, typography, spacing, elevation and motion tokens, with light and dark mode support built in from the start. The component library followed atomic design principles, from atoms through to full page templates, so every element had a clear place in the structure and a clear owner in the codebase.
Every component shipped with interaction states, accessibility annotations, usage guidelines and developer notes. When Duncan described it as "the most precise and detailed documentation I've ever worked with," that was deliberate. A good handoff is a design deliverable, not an afterthought.
DESIGN SYSTEM - COMPONENT AND DOCUMENTATION
Confidential. Visuals available on request.
INTENT FRAMEWORK
Three behaviours.
One coherent site.
One of the site's deepest structural problems was not visual — it was purposeful. Users arrived with clear intent but the site offered no corresponding journey. There were no stories to follow, no paths that matched how people actually think when they visit an institutional marketplace website.
I developed an intent-based framework built around three primary user behaviours observed across the site's analytics and research: Learn, Access and Evaluate. Each mode represents a distinct mental model — what a user is trying to do, what they need to find, and how they expect information to be structured.
From this framework I created a methodology I called "reasons to crossover" — deliberate design moments that guide users from one intent mode into another. A broker arriving to Access market resources might be nudged to Evaluate Lloyd's capabilities. A journalist arriving to Learn might be guided toward Evaluate thought leadership. The crossover moments transformed isolated pages into connected journeys.
This was the structural fix the navigation redesign alone could not provide.
UX FRAMEWORK & METHODOLOGY
IN THEIR WORDS
"The most precise and detailed designs and documentation I've ever worked with. It made our whole dev process faster and cleaner — and the designs themselves were something else entirely."
Duncan
Development Lead, Technology partner
THE ENGAGEMENT
Contracted in.
Kept on.
This engagement started as a focused day rate contract for a navigation and homepage sprint. As the work delivered results, the scope grew. The day count was extended multiple times, each time driven by a new problem to solve or a new opportunity the early work had opened up.
That is how good client relationships tend to work. You solve one problem well, and it reveals the next one worth solving. The goal throughout was the same: help the organisation get more value from its most important digital channel.
The contract ran from December 2024 through May 2026, starting with the navigation and homepage sprint and growing into the full site transformation.
MODEL
Day rate contract
Engaged directly on a day rate. The contract was extended multiple times as the scope grew and the work proved its value.
SCOPE
Navigation fix to full site redesign
Began with navigation and homepage hero. The results unlocked the budget and the mandate for a complete redesign.
Ready for design that earns its keep?
This is what embedded senior-level design looks like: rigorous, data-grounded, and built to move the needle. If that is what you need, let's talk.