All mentors

Ben Walsh

Product Designer for Tech Startup and Scaleup Growth

Manchester, United Kingdom (+00:00 UTC) Englishfrom Manchester, United Kingdom
Usually responds in 1 day
$80 / hour
Price per hour
15 min30 min
Time Blocks Available
5.00
11 reviews / 12 sessions
Fri
16
Next availability

Bio

Hey, I'm Ben, a designer and developer with two decades of experience. I help tech companies get off the ground and scale with product led growth and nail their product design and product strategy. I’ve worked with teams like Prolific, Zego, Decipad, Owaves, Cloudfm, The Train Line, CarFinance247, Tesco, ParalympicsGB, and more… If you're part of a product team in a startup, scaleup or enterprise, I'm here to help. When I’m not filling any of these roles—founder, marketer, product designer, UX designer, or UI Designer—I have a deep passion for startups, design, and making software accessible to all. I’m here to share my insights and help you build your product right first time.

Expertise

  • Branding

    I ran a branding agency for two years and worked with some big names. They were all absolutely thrilled with our work on visual identity, positioning, and messaging.

  • Conversion rate optimisation

    Several years of first-hand experience in CRO for e-commerce and now for tech companies rebranded as growth experiments. I've ideated and implemented these solo and as part of a product team workstream.

  • Design / UX

    20 years of using data to inform design decisions and running design teams. I still actively design new features and enjoy spending time speaking to users about their needs.

Toolkit

  • Figma logo

    Figma

    Extensive experience building comprehensive design systems, UI components and complex prototypes to tell stories about optimal user journeys and communicate value.

  • Miro logo

    Miro

    I've used Miro extensively to run workshops that cover ideation and decision making. I also use it to create information architecture diagrams and organise my thoughts.

  • Webflow logo

    Webflow

    My team have built a number of webflow websites for our clients, and most recently have build 4ptgrid.com in webflow too. We extend the functionality using custom CSS and JavaScript too.

Experience

  • Design System Tools

    Partner + Staff Product Designer

    I build Figma plugins for designers, alongside client work. Three are live on Figma Community. Perception checks text and icon contrast against WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 at AA and AAA, including the cases most tools skip: gradients, image fills, blending modes, and effects. Select frames or components, scan, get a pass/fail breakdown, and jump to any failing node. Free tier plus a paid tier, with licensing I built on Netlify Functions, Supabase, and Lemon Squeezy. Text to Lorem Ipsum (6,300+ users) replaces draft copy with placeholder text while keeping punctuation, structure, and length, so stakeholders review the design rather than the words. Video (3,500+ users) embeds YouTube, Vimeo, and Loom on the canvas. I run the whole thing: product, pricing, licensing, support, and roadmap. Building tools shows me what slows designers down. Working with product teams shows me what tools are missing. designsystemtools.com

  • 4pt Grid

    Founder + Product Designer
    •4ptgrid.com

    4pt Grid is my passion project to share my product and design experience. Helping product teams learn about: → Product Led Growth → Growth Design → Growth Loops → UX Design → UI Design → User Research → Usability Testing (User testing) → User Interviews → Wireframing → Journey Mapping → Prototyping → Observational Studies → Information Architecture → Interaction design → Inclusive Design → Heuristic Evaluation → Design Sprints

  • Prolific

    Senior Product Designer

    Came back to design a new internal tool from a blank page: an AI-assisted participant-matching tool that helps Prolific's research team find the right participants for customer studies. Discovery, flows, and dev-ready specs through to a working tool used by the internal team.

  • YLD

    UX and Product Designer
    •yld.io

    UX, Product

  • Pearson

    Lead Product Designer - Design Systems

    Design system lead for a learning platform used across a large product estate. Set the system strategy and the token and component architecture, and got design and engineering working from one shared model. Built the enablement loop that made adoption happen: rollout workshops, office hours, documentation, and contribution guidelines. Ran decision forums with design, engineering, and senior stakeholders to agree principles and prioritise system work, and introduced a contribution workflow (intake, review, QA, docs) so teams could ship consistently without a central bottleneck.

    EdTechB2BSaaS

  • Prolific

    Senior Product Designer

    Cross-squad product design for a user research platform. Redesigned sign-up and onboarding and the repeat-visit journey, iterating through testing. Led design across three squads over fifteen months, delivering research-backed, dev-ready flows with edge cases and clear build requirements. Mentored four designers, ran weekly critique, and introduced working agreements with Product and Engineering to reduce late changes.

  • Darkside

    Partner
    •benjaminwalsh.co.uk

    Branding and Brand Strategy for Tech Startups and Not-for-profit organisations.

  • Enzai

    Lead Product and UX Designer
    •enz.ai

    - Crafted a full-featured design system in Figma to help the engineering and design team work faster. - Building well-researched product flows and wireframes based on user interviews. - Facilitated Workshops with Stakeholders to refine ideas.

  • Decipad

    Senior UX and Product Designer
    •decipad.com

    - Used user testing and knowledge of human behaviour to drive design decisions. - Created platform prototypes and designs based on user needs in a design system. - Worked with engineers and other designers to iterate on ideas.

  • Cloudfm

    Lead UX and Product Designer
    •cloudfmgroup.com/

    - User research and discovery to reimagine their registration portal and native apps. - Branding concepts and a complete multi-brand design system for their product repositioning. - Training senior stakeholders on effective agile practices and the product design process.

  • Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s

    Senior UX and Product Designer
    •yld.io

    - Ideation and build of interactive design system components. - Heuristic user experience audit and accessibility training. - Mentoring the design team and teaching them how to create components.

  • Zego

    Lead UX Designer
    •zego.com

    - Leading the design teams' effort to update their brand for their websites and native apps. - Using the product design process to plan and build a prototype for them to aim for in 3 years. - Creation of a comprehensive Figma based design system to support scaling up.

  • ThinkMoney

    Senior Product Designer
    •thinkmoney.co.uk/

    - Founding UX within the business. - Bringing research, design and product teams together. - Leading workshops with teams on key user journeys and features. - Service design improvements in part by moving the team to Figma. - Auditing and updating the design system for the business to scale. - Mentoring designers and developers across 3 squads.

  • CarFinance 247

    Lead UX Developer
    •carfinance247.co.uk/

    - Hired a team of 4 developers to build accessible and robust interfaces. - Leading workshops with stakeholders, and teams on our user journeys. - Mentoring the design team on the nuance of digital vs traditional products. - Workshopping with five product teams to discover and prioritise solutions. - Created a design system and taught developers how to use them. - 31% website conversion increase. - 30% speed improvement. - 20% boost in completed applications.

  • Party Delights

    Product Design Manager
    •partydelights.co.uk/

    - Introduced user centered design and brought them into the design process. - Running UX testing sessions and facilitating workshops with the team. - 51% Increase in conversion rate. - 5% Increase in average order value. - 30% Speed improvement. - Trained and mentored two UX designers. - Party City Holdings is an FMCG company that sells party supplies B2C and B2B.

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