Product, Design, Leadership, & Consultancy

Headshot of Chris

Chris Pattison

Current Status: Available for freelance or contract work

I'm a SaaS and web design expert who's skilled at growing, managing and mentoring teams of talented designers, researchers, developers, and QA's.

Currently I'm building Squeaky Analytics alongside various consulting and freelance gigs, but over the years I've lead product and design teams in fintech, health tech, and digital asset management, as well as holding senior roles in a variety of other technology companies.

Recommendations

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Experience

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Cofounder at Squeaky

April 2022 to Present

I took 6 months off from regular employment to found and manage Squeaky, which is a privacy-first web analytics suite. From a blank canvas to a fully realised business, I set the vision, strategy and goals for the company, along with researching, designing, validating, project managing, QA'ing every element of Squeaky's web application and website.

Head of Product at Dyme (Ad Interim)

September 2021 to March 2022

I joined Dyme to help them professionalise their product delivery, introduce a structured and strategic approach to planning and decision making, and find a talented permanent hire for the role. Key achievements included:

  • Running strategy and goals workshops to define ambitious and achievable 3 year goals, and the strategic workstreams best suited to help Dyme deliver on their vision for personal finance.
  • Updating the agile delivery process with the introduction of formalised sprints, and ritual scrum meetings.
  • Proposal and implementation of new project management workflows and tooling. Improvements were adopted for company-wide project management and documentation.
  • Simplifying and improving Design -> Developer collaboration by switching from a combination Sketch and Zeplin to Figma.
  • Creating and maintaining a 6 month product roadmap aligned with OKRs and strategic workstreams.
  • Hiring Dyme's first dedicated QA Engineer to help professionalise the testing process and improve the quality of product delivery.
  • Hiring a long term successor to lead Dyme's Product Team for the years ahead.

Product Design Manager at Bynder (Ad Interim)

March 2021 to August 2021

I worked with Bynder for 6 months in 2021 to help manage their distributed Product Design team, consisting of 7 members across 3 countries. Business and project work aside, the primary focus was on introducing clearer team structure, processes, practices, and support - including, but not limited to:

  • Introducing an updated meeting rhythm to increase touch points and collaboration across a team in 2 time zones.
  • Providing weekly individual coaching, support and mentorship to the team.
  • Defining progression matrices for both Product Design and UX design roles, to help team members understand their current role, as well as where and how they can grow professionally.
  • Hiring 2 additional team members, both UX designers to balance out a Product and UI heavy team.

Product Design Manager at Castor

October 2018 to March 2021 | Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Lead Product Designer at Castor

October 2017 to September 2018 | Amsterdam, The Netherlands

I joined Castor as Lead Product Designer before building their UX & Design team as Product Design Manager.

The company grey from 10-100 people in my time there, and we went from being EU-grant funded to closing a $45m Series B. It's impossible to cover the breadth of work undertaken, but stand-out projects include: re-designing the flagship EDC product, designing and launching an eConsent platform, updating the marketing website, creating new internal and external brands, achieving a whole host or regulatory/compliance milestones, and having an awesome time bringing medical research technology into the 21st Century.

Senior UX Designer at Deskpro

April 2016 - September 2017 | London, United Kingdom

I joined Deskpro to lead the redesign of their web app, introduce and specify components for a new front-end framework and re-brand the business. As my workload grew I ended up completing over 40 projects and, aside from the aforementioned, other stand-out work included: designing an amazing new android app, designing Deskpro's new VOIP (voice) channel, completely redesigning the instant messenger feature and the email template management UI.

Lead Interaction Designer at Jobsite

April 2015 to April 2016 | Havant, United Kingdom

My work included a variety of UX, UI and Interaction design projects on the b2b side of Jobsite. Key projects included:

  • Redesigning the Jobsite Candidate Search experience.
  • Shortening and improving e-commerce journeys.
  • Researching, designing and introducing recruiter personas.
  • Driving the adoption of a new frontend framework and UI component library to more easily and quickly share code across the recruiter app.
  • UX Lead for various innovation projects within the Stepstone.

UI Designer at Crunch

September 2014 to April 2015 | Brighton & Hove, United Kingdom

During my time at Crunch I lead a redesign of our marketing website as well as a major visual update to the Crunch web app.

Though nominally working as a UI designer, my remit included UX, Interaction, Visual and Graphic Design work, generating screens flows, sitemaps, and prototypes in high and low fidelity alongside user testing and project refinement.

Lead Designer at Nice Design

January 2013 to May 2014 | Chichester, United Kingdom

Managed the creative direction of all web design and branding projects as well as redeveloping the Nice branding, before returning to freelance.

Freelance Graphic Design

August 2009 to September 2014 | London, United Kingdom

I spent 5 years working a variety of freelance graphic and web design projects whilst completing my degrees, ranging from software systems and websites to branding proposals and graphic design.

Education

MA in Fine Art at The University of Chichester (Distinction)

September 2012 to September 2013 | Chichester, United Kingdom

During my MA I developed timed-installations and sculptures using reclaimed materials and objects. These large scale (up to 10 x 20 metre) installations addressed various socio-political concepts and topics, such as Bradley Manning's Wikileaks Trial, Animal Welfare Management, Environmentalism & the climate crisis.

BA in Architecture at The University of Greenwich (2:1)

September 2012 to September 2013 | Chichester, United Kingdom

Whilst studying architecture at the University of Greenwich I worked on a wide array of projects, such as designing a theatrical retreat that was set within the disused slate quarries of LLanberis, Wales, and a Coffee Shop/Caffeine-Den located in the meat-packing district of Manhattan NY.

Skills

Management, Leadership & People Skills

Strategy Product Management Workshop Creation & Facilitation Team Leadership Management Mentorship Hiring Coaching Training Culture & Inclusivity Stakeholder Management Planning & Operations Agile & Lean Project Management

Design & Research Expertise

Product Design UI Design User-centered Design UX Design Interaction Design UX Research Rapid Prototyping Wireframes User Journey Mapping DesignOps Design Systems Usability Testing Visual Design Branding & Identity Illustration

Platfrom & Domain Expertise

Good design is domain and platform agnostic, but I'm experienced working in following areas:

SaaS Web Apps Web Design Software Design Mobile App Design FinTech Health Tech Telecoms Customer Service Software CRM Marketplace Search Products Charity & Not-for-profit Environmentalism & Sustainability

Software & Tools Expertise

Figma Sketch Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop UXPin Miro Invision Notion Google Workspace Microsoft Office JIRA Confluence Wordpress Shapr3D Airtable Google Analytics Amplitude

Portfolio

Below you'll find a small collection of projects that I either have permission to share, or I'm confident are already in the public domain.

Analytics Web App Design for Squeaky

Analytics Web App Design for Squeaky

2021 - 2022

B2B Marketing Site Design for Squeaky

B2B Marketing Site Design for Squeaky

2021 - 2022

Design Roles Workshop for Bynder

Design Roles Workshop for Bynder

2021

Pair Designing for Bynder

Pair Designing for Bynder

2021

eConsent Web App for Castor

eConsent Web App for Castor

2020 - 2021

Covid Mobile App for Castor

Covid Mobile App for Castor

2020

Careers Website for Castor

Careers Website for Castor

2019 - 2020

Community Web App for HackerStash

Community Web App for HackerStash

2020

Helpdesk Web App for Deskpro

Helpdesk Web App for Deskpro

2016 - 2017

Brand Design for Deskpro

Brand Design for Deskpro

2016

Recruiter Web App Proposal for Jobsite

Recruiter Web App Proposal for Jobsite

2017

Personas for Jobsite

Personas for Jobsite

2016

Get in touch

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