Finding the right opportunity
not just the right interface
When Alignment Becomes the Product
2025
Helping a top 10 UK university deliver six digital transformation projects across multiple teams, agencies, and stakeholders, without losing accessibility, consistency, or momentum.
I contributed to experience strategy while leading much of the UI strategy, accessibility, and delivery thinking across a six-project digital transformation programme for a top 10 UK university. Alongside the interfaces themselves, I focused on stakeholder alignment, capability building, and creating documented systems and components that internal teams could confidently maintain and evolve long after delivery.
Project Snapshot
Scale
6 interconnected projects delivered in under 4 months
Top 10 UK university with Dean-level governance and WCAG AA standards
Cross-agency collaboration across internal teams, UX strategy, branding and engineering
Complexity
Navigated multiple stakeholders, ambiguous ownership and competing priorities
Balanced cutting-edge design with strict accessibility and governance requirements
Increased long-term capability through scalable systems and documentation
Impact
Delivered a complex transformation programme at pace
Introduced responsive design principles using the Utopia framework
Left internal teams with documented systems they could confidently evolve
Context
A top 10 UK university commissioned a digital transformation programme spanning six projects across strategy, fundraising, and the core university experience. I worked as part of the product team at Clearleft, a renown design strategy agency.
The work involved another external agency, multiple internal product owners and specialists, and governance reaching all the way to the Dean. Everything needed to meet the highest accessibility standards while reflecting the university's ambitions around science, medicine, and innovation. The projects ranged from delivering a new strategy website to a revised homepage.
The timeline: three to four months.
The Problem
The challenge wasn't six projects. It was navigating complexity across multiple agencies, internal teams, and senior stakeholders, each with different priorities, ownership boundaries, and definitions of success. At the same time, the work needed to balance accessibility, ambitious visual design, and delivery timelines measured in weeks rather than quarters.
My Role & Constraints
Working alongside the UX strategy lead, I contributed to the broader experience strategy while focusing on UI strategy, interface design, accessibility, and delivery.
I facilitated workshops to build alignment across teams, contributed to UX strategy and wireframing for the university's flagship strategy microsite, and worked closely with engineers to ensure accessibility standards were built in from the start.
One of the biggest challenges was navigating ownership. Internal designers brought deep institutional knowledge, while external agencies brought specialist expertise. A large part of my role was understanding where my contribution added value without creating friction or dependency.
Because internal design capacity was limited, I treated handover as part of the design problem itself. I created heavily documented Figma files, implementation guidance, and reusable component patterns so internal teams could confidently maintain and extend the work long after the programme finished.
Alongside delivery, I shared approaches around typography scales, semantic colour systems, and responsive design using the agency's (Clearleft) Utopia framework, helping internal teams think more systematically about how digital experiences could scale.
The Real Challenge
Digital transformation isn't simply about redesigning websites. It's about helping large organisations evolve without losing trust, accessibility, or momentum. Success depends as much on aligning people, governance, and long-term capability as it does on the quality of the final interface.
The most valuable contribution wasn't always the interface itself. It was creating enough clarity, trust, and shared understanding for multiple teams to move quickly without losing consistency or ownership.
The goal wasn't simply delivery. It was leaving the organisation with the capability to continue evolving independently after the project finished.
Key Decision
Invest heavily in documentation.
Why?
The organisation needed capability, not dependency.
Trade-off
Accessibility without compromise. We balanced ambitious visual design with rigorous WCAG standards instead of treating accessibility as a constraint on creativity.
Traction
Delivered six projects within a three to four month programme.
Embedded accessibility into delivery rather than retrospective compliance.
Introduced scalable approaches to responsive typography, spacing, and layout.
Left behind documented systems and patterns that internal teams could confidently maintain and extend.
Received strong positive feedback from both university stakeholders and agency partners.
What this reinforced
The work wasn't simply about designing interfaces. It was about creating the conditions for good design collaboration, not just in the short-term, but to continue after the agencies had stepped away.
For me, that's increasingly what senior product design looks like: not just shipping work, but increasing the capability of the teams around you while you do it.
Results
Accessibility Standards
WCAG AA-A
Scalable frameworks
Documented systems
