Michael Thomas

Senior product designer with a track record of making life simpler for users, teams, and the business. Pragmatic, collaborative and evidence based, from A/B testing at scale to deep qualitative research with high-needs users. Recently redesigned a complex, multi-path registration and onboarding journey. Reducing abandonment by 53% and reduced completion time by 85%.

UX Designer at Brain in Hand (Present)

Sole UX designer in a cross-functional product team delivering complex, regulated digital services where usability decisions intersect with clinical safety, eligibility rules, and data-protection requirements. Led end-to-end design from discovery through delivery across user-facing and internal systems.

• Led the evolution of a mobile app content model for neurodivergent users, restructuring how support strategies are created, organised, and reused to enable more flexible, personalised, and scalable experiences.
• Improved discoverability and real-life relevance of in-app mental health support by designing a searchable library, richer multi-format content views, and flows linking support strategies to user calendar events.
• Redesigned a complex, multi-path referral & registration flow spanning different funding routes reducing user abandonment by 53% and cutting average completion time by 85%. Reworking complex question sets to make them easier to answer, but also to be more valuable to the business.
• Simplified high-volume internal referral tools by shadowing customer support staff and mapping cross-system workflows. Reduced a 10-page process to 3 pages and cut system switches from 8 to 2, significantly reducing cognitive load and handling time per referral.
• Challenged unnecessary data collection and influenced product direction by building stakeholder relationships and making evidence-based arguments for usability improvements, reducing form complexity and improving data quality.
• Used AI prototyping to run usability testing earlier and more frequently than traditional methods allowed, accelerating design decisions in a resource-constrained team.
• Worked closely with product, engineering, clinical, operations, and data stakeholders, balancing user needs with safety, regulatory, and technical constraints in a highly sensitive domain.

UX Designer (remote) at Car & Classic

Sole designer in a 'test and learn' team, responsible for identifying opportunities to improve user experience and meet business goals. Also co-led a user research project for our first mobile app.

• Identified that our auction end-stage experience was leaving users underprepared at the highest-stakes moment of a purchase. Validated through competitor analysis, finding around 40% less engagement than leading competitors. Built the business case, secured stakeholder buy-in and delivered high fidelity designs.
• Redesigned identity verification onboarding to front-load the process, removing a critical drop-off point that was causing users to miss live auction opportunities entirely.
• Co-led research for C&C's mobile app MVP, uncovering that users' primary behaviour was habitual casual browsing rather than active buying, shaping the product strategy and feature prioritisation.
• Redesigned information architecture, navigation and structure for international sites.
• Regular checking in on data with Analytics, HotJar, Posthog & Metabase

UI Designer at Direct Online Services

Sole designer in a data-driven ecommerce team, running weekly optimisation cycles across conversion, cross-sell and upsell iterating based on A/B tests, analytics and heatmaps.

• Completely redesigned our flagship website, repositioning the brand as aspirational and trustworthy, having a meaningful impact on conversion and enabling a luxury pricing model.
• Improved a bespoke worktop configuration tool (used by DIYers to spec and order custom-cut worktops) using analytics and user testing to significantly improve usability and performance.
• Ran a sustained programme of experimentation, using A/B testing and behavioural personalisation to continuously improve conversion, cross-sell and upsell across the site. Iterated fortnightly based on analytics and test results.
• Presenting work to and collaborating with the exec team
• Built design systems for 4 brands during a full platform replatform, refreshing and standardising each in the process, including one complete redesign.
• Working closely with developers, creating detailed handover documents and proofing work

Web Development Supervisor at Direct Online Services

Managed a team of 3 junior front-end developers. My role involved prioritising, solving problems and wireframing solutions before handing over to my team for delivery.

• Translated problems into wireframes to A/B test
• Search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Implemented new processes for efficiency and error reduction
• Front-end development (HTML & CSS) & cross-browser testing