Direct LIne Group

/ About

At DLG, I built and led a diverse team of 50 designers, writers, and researchers and served as a member of the DLG Digital leadership team. I was also part of the team that led the DLG transition into a company wide agile operating model in 2021/22.

The design team went through various iterations of growth and ways of working with us eventually being federated across the business, embedded into over 20 agile squads across the full gamut of DLG brands, products and services.

We also worked with partners including Nat West/RBS, VW Group and Peugeot.

What you see here are just a few examples of the breadth and scope of the work that I had the privilege to lead.

/ focus

// Agile leadership

// Talent development

// Capability building

// Digital transformation

// Brand development

// Product design

// Content creation

// Research

// Service design

// Proposition development

// Workshop facilitation

// Partnerships

Churchill.com

A brand new design and content language system.

Improved navigation.

All product information pages redesigned and optimised for SEO.

19 quote and buy journeys re-designed across direct and price comparison websites.

Improved performance - an average 25% speed uplift.

15+ Improved help and servicing journeys. Including my account, amendments, uploads, renewals, claims and emails.

Because we'd invested time and effort to get the foundations in place (design systems, principles etc) we were able to follow the same approach with Directline.com simultaneously.

A great example of operating at scale across brand silos.

Oh yes.

Privilege

For many years Privilege has been a well known brand in the UK.

It had however suffered in recent years from a lack of focus and direction and needed some love.

With this in mind we took the opportunity to re-invent the brand with a new positioning, new identity and refreshed tone of voice. As most of Privilege's customers come from comparison websites it was important for us to think digital first.

This entire re-brand was initiated and executed in-house.

RBS / Nat West

We needed to understand how we could make it easier for retail staff at RBS and Nat West to sell our insurance products in-branch. Not an easy ask as insurance is a grudge purchase and frankly people aren't usually in a bank to buy insurance.

After many hours of interviewing bank employees we crafted an iPad app experience which satisfied both the need to provide a compliant sale as well as making it easy and paperless.

Combining a user led approach to design alongside technical improvements like a using AWS, we succeeded in bringing an average quote time down from 15 minutes to around 5 minutes.

We also reduced a sale time down from 25 minutes to around 10 minutes.

Believing that everyone is a customer (including our own colleagues) and deserving of the best possible experience is one of the core values that I always look to embed into any team that I lead.

The work we did alongside partners like RBS and Nat West is testament to those values.

Darwin

It's always good to be involved in the creation of something new and Darwin was no exception.

We carried out research looking at what makes some of the challenger brands out there in the financial space tick. How they present themselves, how they speak, how they work hard to keep things simple, their honesty about being a work in progress, and how they involve their customers in improving their experience.

All really valuable stuff.

We also took care of developing the identity, tone of voice and overall user experience of Darwin.

Putting the little ® on the logo is akin to topping off a building - something strangely cathartic.

Green Flag

We made big steps in bringing simplicity, clarity and a higher quality finish to the Green Flag Digital portfolio of products. Below is a tiny taster of the huge improvements made to the overall customer experience.