Over a decade designing products users love.

I help companies grow with products that deliver real user value. I shape product direction and raise design standards across teams, driving better decisions and higher quality outcomes at scale.

  • I’m the person you hire when design needs to level up across the company.

    I’ve operated as a Principal Product Designer and as Head of Design, partnering closely with product, engineering, and senior leadership teams to improve product quality, decision-making, and design maturity.

    My experience spans start ups, scale ups, and established organisations, with a focus on complex digital products and cross functional collaboration.

    I’m comfortable owning design direction, mentoring designers, contributing at a highest level of craft, and helping teams scale without unnecessary process.

    Role fit

    • Principal / Staff Product Designer

    • Head of Design (hands on / player coach)

    Skills

    • Product strategy & UX leadership

    • High level UI & interaction design

    • Cross-functional collaboration

    • Design quality & highest of standards

    • Mentoring and team development

    Experience

    • 15 years in product design

    • B2C and B2B products

    • Scaling teams and products

    • Remote and distributed teams

  • I’m a product design leader with over a decade of experience helping product led companies raise the quality, clarity, and impact of their design work.

    I’m typically brought in when design needs to level up — when teams are shipping, but decisions feel reactive, quality is inconsistent, or design isn’t influencing product direction as strongly as it should.

    My work sits at the intersection of strategy and craft. I shape product direction, set design standards, and partner closely with product and engineering leadership to improve how decisions are made, not just how interfaces look.

    I’ve worked across start ups, scale ups, and established organisations, helping teams move faster with more confidence, reduce rework, and build products that balance user needs with business goals.

    Whether operating as a Principal Designer or Head of Design, I focus on creating lasting impact: stronger teams, clearer direction, and a higher bar for quality that remains.

  • I lead and scale product design, improving quality, speed, and confidence in decision making.

    I work with C-level teams when design is no longer a nice to have, but a lever for better product decisions, faster execution, and stronger customer outcomes.

    I’m typically brought in when companies are scaling, changing direction, or feeling the cost of inconsistent product quality, where teams are shipping, but confidence is low and rework is high.

    My role is to raise the bar without adding unnecessary process; clarifying priorities, improving how decisions are made across design, product, and engineering, and setting a clear quality standard teams can align around.

    I partner closely with product and engineering leadership to translate business goals into product direction, ensuring design is a strategic contributor rather than a delivery bottleneck.

    The result is teams that move faster with more confidence, make better trade offs, and ship products that feel intentional, coherent, and aligned with the company’s goals.

Head of Design & Principal Product Designer

VEO PLAY

DESIGN LED GROWTH

Creating network effects, to add new revenue and reduce of churn, through a world class viewing experience

    • +10M growth ARR in Consumer sector

    • -8% YOY Churn

    • Opened new customer segment

    • +25% Monthly active users

Case study

Scaling a small Design team, from Three to Fourteen Designers, whilst establishing a dedicated UX Research function.

  • When I joined Veo, the user experience was still immature. I championed a cultural shift toward deep customer understanding, holistic UX, and problem focused design, ensuring that solutions were grounded in real user needs, not just assumptions.

    • Lead Expansion into new sports

    • +$12M growth ARR in Strategic accounts

    • Launched Design System

    • Created foundation for Design and UX Research

Case study

Head of Design

LABSTER ANDROID

OPEN BUILDER

Established Design thinking into the company, scaled Design Team from 3 to 12. Expanded growth in India and US High Schools and Colleges.

  • While Labster placed equal value on UX and Game Design, the overall experience was fragmented. I focused on unifying these disciplines and fostering a design culture that consistently delivered cohesive, engaging learning experiences across all products.

    • -6% Churn

    • +$10m growth in Highschool sector

    • +$20m in funding with Meta

Case study

Speeding up creation of building Lab simulations by opening a Community led Science simulation builder using the Unity engine.

  • A key bottleneck at Labster was that simulations often lagged behind the school curriculum—they were never ready in time for the school year.

    We needed a way to speed up the creation of simulations and empower scientists to build them without requiring expertise in the Unity Engine.

    • Led Expansion into Science Community

    • +10% Growth in US Highschool segment

    • 2x Speed in Lab creation

    • Landed potential future funding from Google and other VCs

Case study

Lead Product Designer

BP PODS

Led the digital transformation of a titan in the Oil industry. Our team operated end to end across the design spectrum.

  • We conducted deep research to uncover user needs, translated insights into clear visions, roadmaps, and service blueprints, and facilitated workshops and design sprints to rapidly prototype and validate new tools, products, and services.

    Outcome: BP’s workforce is now able to operate with greater accuracy, improved sustainability, and enhanced safety—driven by solutions designed around real user needs and tested in real workflows.

Case study

Senior Product Designer

SAMSUNG KICK / GOAL.COM

Creating an award winning sports technology ecosystem to drive hardware sales in time for the Euros.

  • I worked on this project for two years. What began as a single product designed for the Surface tablet quickly expanded as we continued to deliver value. With each successful release, the client extended the contract and commissioned additional products, ultimately evolving the engagement into an integrated football ecosystem.

    • Winner of WEBBY Awards

    • 5M App Downloads

    • 400,000 MAU, rising 5% MoM

Case study
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Think

Digital strategy
Stakeholder workshops
Data, analytics and insights
Competitive analysis
Brand strategy
CX strategy

What I do

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Make

Digital product design (UX, UI)
Visual design
Service design
Journey mapping
Service blueprinting
Prototyping and testing
User testing
Design systems

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Grow

Design operations
Org design
Team Building and acceleration
Design & Experience training
Playbooks

Contact me.

Chris Houghton

mychoughton@gmail.com

Copenhagen, Denmark