Design leadership for platforms where scale, complexity, & quality impact the business.
I'm Tom Smith, former Senior Director of Design at Condé Nast, leading the design of a global publishing platform used by more than 4,000 editors across 25 brands, 60 sites and 20 markets.
My work focuses on solving the customer and business problems that emerge when products reach this level of scale and complexity.
What I doI work where product, platform, and organisation start to break down. I bring structure, clarity and direction to complex environments.
I establish ownership across fragmented systems, set standards that hold under pressure, treat front-end quality as a business concern, and build platforms that scale across brands, teams, and markets.
A platform should work as hard for the business as the teams building it. That's where design creates lasting value.
Where I have impactI focus on solving the problems that emerge as organisations scale.
Whether it's improving customer experience, helping teams work more effectively or strengthening platform foundations, the problems are different every time.
My role is to bring clarity, raise quality and create measurable business impact through better products and better systems.
PERFORMANCE
84% faster page response times from 1.6s to 250ms across core platform experiences
SYSTEM THINKING
14x increase in engagement via syndication, scaling content reach from 35.8k to 494k minutes
RELIABILITY
75% reduction in system errors by removing fragmentation and introducing shared standards
COMMERCIAL
5–15% uplift in commerce CTR driven by more consistent and optimised front-end experiences
ENGAGEMENT
+30% increase in time spent across flagship brands through improved front-end quality
COST SAVING
$800k+ in cost savings through platform optimisation and tooling decisions
Business challenges solvedWhere I’ve led through complexity and scale in real environments.
How I operateEvery challenge starts with understanding the outcome the business is trying to achieve. From there, I look at the customer behaviours preventing success, identify the system conditions creating friction, and then work with others to build the capabilities that change those behaviours.
The work may change, but the approach rarely does.
Understand the objective
Start with the business outcome, not the solution.
Build capability
Solve problems once through scalable systems rather than through individual features.
Understand behaviour
Customer behaviour explains where value is created or lost.
Measure impact
Success is measured through behavioural and commercial outcomes, not delivery alone.
About meI'm at my best working with organisations tackling difficult product problems. Usually, where platforms have grown quickly, ownership is fragmented, or quality has become inconsistent.
Those environments need more than good design.
They need clear direction, shared standards and teams working towards the same outcome. That's the work I enjoy most.
Over the last 25 years, I've led design across global organisations including Aviva and Condé Nast, helping transform complex products into connected platforms that improve customer experience and business performance.
Why work with meI’m most effective where platform complexity starts to impact delivery, quality, and business performance.
I focus on:
Bringing structure to fragmented product or platform ecosystems
Raising the quality bar across teams, tooling, and front-end experience
Aligning design, product, and engineering around a clear direction
Turning platforms into scalable systems that support growth
Stabilising delivery and maintaining quality through organisational change