About me
AI-Forward Founding Designer.
Seed to Series A. Design Leader.
Thinker & Talker.
Available from May 2026 | UK & US time zone
London + Midlands, UK | 07939 513 876 | darrensarson.co.uk
darren@light-bold.co.uk | linkedin.com/in/lightandbold
Profile
Currently working with two early-stage startups, helping founders go from concept to product. One, a B2C platform rethinking how American families navigate probate, weaving in a collaborative layer to supercharge the EQ side of the product. The other, a B2B aviation platform building infrastructure for both the General Aviation and drone economy. Both are pre-Series A. Both needed a designer who could define the product, not just execute the delivery.
That’s where I tend to work best. The early stages, when there’s no team yet, no process, and the founders are making consequential decisions at pace. I’ve been the person in the room when the MVP gets defined. I’ve shaped requirements, run customer research, and taken the output directly into dev briefings. The whiteboard sessions, the hard conversations about scope, the moments when someone needs to say “we’re solving the wrong problem” — that’s the work I’m drawn to, and where I add the most value.
I’m a founding designer and design leader. I work across brand, UX, product design, and design systems. I’ve built teams from scratch and been the only designer in the room. Both require a different gear. I know what each demands.
My workflow is AI-forward. I use Claude, Cursor, Lovable, and Claude Code daily. Not to cut corners but to move faster, think more clearly, and spend more time on the decisions that actually matter.
Before the startups, I spent years delivering in larger organisations: John Lewis Financial Services, Mettle, Vitality, Canada Life. Compliance-heavy, politically complex, high-scrutiny environments. I know how to read a room and adapt to how a business thinks. That range means I don’t need a long runway wherever I land.
If you’re building something and need a designer who can lead, build, and ship, let’s talk.
Core Skills
Design strategy, stakeholder management, workshop facilitation, team mentoring, design operations, roadmap planning, resource forecasting, agile delivery
Claude, Cursor, Lovable, and Claude Code, AI-assisted prototyping, AI-powered UX research synthesis, AI content generation, prompt engineering for design workflows
End-to-end product design, UX design, UI design, interaction design, responsive design, mobile-first design, design systems, component libraries, brand alignment
User research, guerrilla testing, heuristic evaluation, competitor analysis, journey mapping, information architecture, accessibility audits, A/B testing
Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Miro, Jira, Linear, Confluence, prototyping tools
Agile, Lean UX, design thinking, design sprints, double diamond, Jobs to be Done, AI-integrated design workflows, workshop facilitation
Financial services, insurance, e-commerce, fintech, SaaS, aviation, non-profit, retail
Current Role
Independent design consultancy working with startups and established businesses across product design, UX, brand, and design leadership.
Butterscotch | Dec 2025 – Present
Co-founder and founding designer in a senior leadership team of six, building a modern AI-powered platform for American families navigating the US probate process. Working directly with the CEO from day one across product strategy, brand identity, tone of voice, and end-to-end UX. Brought Claude and Figma AI tooling into the design and delivery process. Delivered a working alpha in 8 weeks from a standing start.
SmartSkies Aviation Platform | Jan 2020 – Present
Founding Designer on a B2B platform building operational infrastructure for the General Aviation industry and commercial drone economy. Responsible for product design direction, UX strategy, and brand across a technically complex, regulated environment.
John Lewis Financial Services | May 2023 - May 2026
Senior UX consultant embedded across compliance, product redesign, and customer experience strategy. Delivered FCA-compliant customer journeys during a major operational remodel, led the redesign of the home insurance end-to-end experience, and ran a full CX review across all insurance products. Also acted as design leadership mentor across the team, improving ways of working and raising the visibility of design within the wider business.
Career History
Mettle — Design Consultant | Feb–Jun 2023
- Delivered a full website redesign aligned with an ongoing rebrand — hands-on UX design, information architecture, and UI direction working closely with the Lead UI Designer.
- Conducted guerrilla usability testing to validate design assumptions and iteratively built a working prototype, establishing a more structured UX methodology for the team.
- Completed the project within budget in a 12-week turnaround — all pages and templates shipped live on schedule.
Reed In Partnership — Lead Product Designer | Aug 2022–Jan 2023
- Led end-to-end product design for a new CMS across two agile delivery phases. Deliverables included user research, stakeholder interviews, journey mapping, information architecture, wireframing, UI design, and interactive prototyping.
- Built and owned the CMS design system, ensuring development consistency and successfully selling its value to stakeholders as a critical product enabler.
- Embedded within the development team, building strong relationships with engineers and business analysts to challenge legacy patterns and push better UX outcomes.
- Championed user research to uncover workarounds and pain points, running feedback sessions that drove multiple design iterations significantly improving on initial concepts.
BigLight — Experience Design Director | Mar–Oct 2022
- Provided hands-on design leadership on two critical client projects, delivering UX and UI direction on time and to budget. Both projects progressed to second-phase commissions — £346k in retained business.
- Led the UX, UI, and UX Research teams (covering for the Head of Design). Introduced bi-weekly design critiques, stand-ups, and retros — improving collaboration, workload visibility, and output quality across the team.
- Created a design team playbook covering mission, values, and process to align the team on what good product design delivery looked like.
- Began developing a training and growth framework for designers, defining roles, expectations, and shared design knowledge resources.
Canada Life — Senior UX Designer | Apr 2020–Jun 2021
- Owned UX and UI deliverables for the Canada Life insurance portal serving advisers and customers across UK and international markets. Worked within a third-party platform, aligning product design decisions to the broader design strategy.
- Maintained SUS usability scores of 80+ through iterative testing cycles, harvesting user research insights to continuously improve the product experience.
- Co-produced the design process and future product design vision with senior leadership, defining the design team structure for short- and long-term delivery — shaping the next phase of the business's product strategy.
JML Software — Design Consultant | May–Nov 2020
- Led the UX and product design for a major product evolution — working with the product owner, stakeholders, and customers to define functionality, reduce complexity, and improve usability.
- Delivered rapid prototypes and iterated UI designs based on direct customer feedback, leaving the product on a strong trajectory validated by positive user and developer response.
Legal & General — Head of Digital Design | Jun–Dec 2019
- Initiated a design system sprint that delivered 25% of design production and 10% of development production within two months. Secured senior leadership buy-in and a financial commitment to continue the work the following year.
- Championed user research practice, building an MVP research hub with a small team to give the wider organisation easy access to shared UX insights and resources.
Barclaycard International — Director of Design, Data & Digital Services (Formerly Lead UX Designer) | Jul 2014–Jun 2019
- Managed a multi-discipline product design team of 55 across multiple global locations, doubling team size to meet growing demand. Won competitive pitches against third-party agencies.
- Drove design strategy evolution: transitioned the team to agile delivery, reworked the design process to support creative product thinking, built an in-house UX research function, and reduced reliance on external agencies.
- Developed and shipped Barclaycard's design system — delivering a 50% efficiency uplift in production, stronger brand consistency, more reliable outputs from junior designers, and a 50% reduction in cost to business.
- Led finance process improvements that increased resource recoverability from 75% to 85%, unlocking an additional £1.2 million directed to product development and team training.
Beyond work
Family man, rugby coach, and someone who’s happiest when moving; on a bike, on a run, or on a walk that ends at a pub.
Additional Roles
Further positions and descriptions available on LinkedIn