A card customisation tool when phones could barely render one. A premier banking service. Someone’s first ever investment. Different products, same argument — and the business case that got each one funded.
The current one is about AI, and it’s being had without them in the room.
Head of UX at Moonpig · 9 years at Lloyds · 3 brands · London
How I work
Evidence before opinion.
Qual, quant, A/B, or the stakeholder interview nobody wanted to run — whatever settles the argument fastest.
The business case is part of the design.
A proposition that can't be funded isn't a proposition. I've spent as much time on the case for building something as on the thing itself.
I've been designing with machine intelligence since before it was fashionable — including the parts that didn't work.
ML-powered savings forecasting when the alternative was a spreadsheet nobody trusted. Biometrics trials where my job turned out to be finding the fraud vulnerability before it shipped. Today I use an AI-assisted research and synthesis workflow to get from raw evidence to a defensible brief faster — then check its working, because it's frequently confident and wrong.
About Edward
I started out when "multimedia designer" was a plausible job title and mobile phones could barely render a greeting card. I did it anyway — animated content for Hallmark, then years freelance for anyone who'd have me, then Moonpig, where I ended up as Head of UX, building the research practice and the design team behind an awful lot of birthday cards.
The thread through all of it is arguing for the customer in rooms where the customer isn't. That was a card customisation tool people used on a phone before phones were ready for it; at Lloyds it was a premier service worth defending properly, and helping someone make their first ever investment without frightening them off it. The products have nothing in common. The argument barely changes: evidence first, then design, then the hard job of making the case fundable.
I'm looking for a design challenge, based in London. Sector matters less to me than whether the problem is real and whether the trade-offs get discussed honestly rather than smoothed over in a deck. I've led teams, and I've been happiest doing the work — it's the work I'm after.
Off the clock I ride in circles at Herne Hill Velodrome, where I'm quick for my age, and run when the track's shut. I cook vegan — improving. A highly excitable springer spaniel requires the green parts of south-east London walked daily, at speed. I'm good at committing to things and reliably bad at contributing to group chats.
One opinion I'll defend at dinner: AI is a blessing and a curse in roughly equal measure, and which one wins depends on how many people bother to form a view. If that stays with a small number of them, it divides us further.