Simon I’Anson is a product design leader.

I help deliver strategic innovation projects as both an individual contributor and team lead. I use design to solve business, process, operational and customer interaction challenges.

I thrive on ambiguity; particularly when trying to solve old problems in new ways. I work best where the answer isn’t immediately obvious.

I’ve been doing this type of work for 25 years.

I am currently freelance but have worked in many London-based design agencies and product studios up to the level of Creative Director.

Some of my greatest hits

  • I co-founded the UK's first dedicated D2C coffee subscription business, Kopi, with Philip Wilkinson. We grew the business to multiple-thousands of subscribers before being acquired by Cafédirect.

  • I was Product Director for the world's first personalised, print-on-demand poetry book for Wonderbly and Faber & Faber: Pagesmith. I’ve since gone on to launch more books with Wonderbly.

  • As Head of Product for Provenance we saw our supply-chain transparency platform featured in the V&A museum's exhibition Food: Bigger than the Plate.

  • I helped design and run the UK's first charity digital accelerator for The Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology (CAST).

  • I led the team which undertook the first-in-its-history end-to-end customer experience evaluation of the world's biggest supermarket loyalty scheme - Clubcard.

  • I was the Product Designer on the Google Global Impact Challenge award-winning 'TaskSquad' for the youth volunteering charity v-inspired.

  • I designed the world's first social network for dogs ‘DoggySnaps’ for the charity DogsTrust.

  • I worked on the UK's first online car part-exchange platform for Direct Line ‘jamjar.com’ at the turn of the millennium.

How I work

  1. I believe in starting small.

  2. I don’t believe in grand reveals. I work collaboratively and in the open.

  3. I care about quality. Though every decision involves tradeoffs.

  4. I have a bias towards design, making and prototyping. Each time you turn an arm-wavy product or feature chat into tangible interaction flows and prototypes, all the previously-invisible sticking points and complexities emerge.

  5. My tool and process choices are in service to the goal of delivering a great product.

  6. I care as much about how things work as how they look.

  7. I believe in getting value in the customer, or service users’, hands quickly. Until you do it’s mostly assumptions.

  8. I believe in using just enough; technology, design, and research.

  9. I am very comfortable with ambiguity.

  10. I frequently ask ‘Why?’.