
Craig Willers
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Sheffield, United Kingdom
Toptal member since December 2, 2021
Craig Willers is a principal product designer with 25+ years' experience solving complex product challenges across SaaS, marketplaces, AI, publishing, and enterprise software. He specializes in product strategy, information architecture, content design, and design systems, helping organizations simplify complexity and scale with confidence. Many clients have worked with him for years, returning as their products and businesses evolve.
Portfolio
Work Experience
Product Designer
Studio JCI
- Designed a seven-tab client portal from scratch for a Toronto-based architectural consultancy, covering financials, scheduling, tasks, documents, and team management.
- Built a custom design system on IBM Carbon with a three-layer token architecture, monochrome visual language, and Geist typeface, structured for reuse across multiple products.
- Defined full UX flow across onboarding, feasibility assessment, fee proposal, and project portal, incorporating DocuSign, Global Pay, and role-based access patterns.
- Produced developer-ready specifications for a Gantt chart, calendar, and financials components, including frozen column behavior, monochrome data encoding, and real client data as dummy content.
- Led UX strategy and design direction across a six-month engagement, translating stakeholder requirements from meeting transcripts into structured, buildable product decisions.
Principal Product Designer
SchoolsCompared.com
- Led the end-to-end redesign of SchoolsCompared, modernising the user experience while improving content structure and discoverability.
- Introduced subscription journeys, user accounts, and premium content experiences supporting the platform's evolving commercial strategy.
- Redesigned advertising placements and content hierarchy to improve engagement while balancing editorial and commercial objectives.
- Simplified long-form editorial experiences using modular layouts, tabbed content, and reusable design patterns.
- Collaborated closely with the founder and engineering to continuously evolve product direction based on user feedback and business priorities.
- Established scalable UX foundations supporting future product expansion and ongoing feature development.
Lead UX/UI Designer
Creative Fabrica
- Re-architected marketplace information architecture and global navigation across consumer and enterprise experiences, improving discoverability while supporting rapid product growth.
- Co-developed a scalable token-based design system, evolving primitives, semantic tokens, and reusable components that aligned design and engineering while accelerating delivery.
- Partnered directly with executive leadership, product managers, and engineers to balance commercial experimentation with long-term product coherence and usability.
- Reduced UX and information architecture debt by establishing reusable interaction patterns, governance principles, and scalable design foundations.
- Re-engineered subscription sales gateway for multi-tier pricing, simplifying user decision-making and increasing adoption of higher-value annual plans.
- Designed and refined high-impact Marketplace experiences, including navigation, discovery, category pages, product detail pages, subscriptions, and growth experiments.
- Helped create a shared design language that enabled multiple cross-functional teams to ship independently without fragmenting the overall product experience.
Lead UI/UX Designer
Tallarium
- Partnered with founders to define product strategy and UX for a B2B energy trading intelligence platform, transforming complex market data, messaging streams, and trading workflows into intuitive decision-support tools.
- Simplified high-volume trading information through scalable dashboards, visual analytics, and interaction patterns that improved speed, clarity, and confidence during high-value trading decisions.
- Designed workflows supporting natural language data capture, algorithm-assisted deal matching, and structured trade records, helping bridge trader communication with operational execution.
- Created modular information architecture supporting market summaries, order books, portfolio management, and analytics dashboards capable of evolving alongside the platform's growing feature set.
- Worked closely with founders, engineers, and data scientists throughout product discovery and delivery, translating specialist trading knowledge into scalable enterprise user experiences.
- Established reusable design patterns and UX foundations supporting long-term platform growth while balancing technical complexity with intuitive interaction design.
Head of Product and Design
Reach by ChannelPro
- Led product strategy and UX for Reach, an AI-assisted enterprise SaaS platform helping global CPG and technology brands educate, motivate, and activate indirect sales networks through learning, incentives, and performance analytics.
- Helped define the product from concept through delivery, translating complex business requirements into scalable workflows supporting brand managers, distributors, and channel partners across multiple international markets.
- Designed AI-assisted user journeys combining personalized learning, configurable incentive programs, dynamic rewards, and sales enablement into a unified enterprise product experience.
- Created dashboards and reporting experiences, translating sales, engagement, and learning data into actionable insights, enabling brands to measure campaign effectiveness and partner performance in real time.
- Established scalable UX patterns supporting multilingual deployments, configurable workflows, and multi-brand implementations while creating a product foundation capable of supporting future enterprise growth.
- Worked directly with founders, engineering, and commercial stakeholders to prioritize roadmap decisions and contributed to product improvements supporting approximately 400% growth in monthly recurring revenue.
Independent Design Consultant
Twelve Column, Brand & Design
- Led cross-functional teams across design, UX, and engineering, fostering a collaborative, open approach that led to the dovetailing of team skills.
- Established with great success technical methodologies to help clients grow demand for products and services through experience design, product design, product strategy, and creative leadership.
- Scoped, analyzed, and documented product requirements via stakeholder and business owner interviews on customer behavior.
- Mentored by promoting a growth mindset throughout teams, enabling efficiency, openness, and collaboration.
- Owned and delivered major design projects for startups, governments, and Fortune 500 multinationals across a wide range of industry sectors.
- Established and maintained long-lasting relationships with corporate clients, third-party print and engineering suppliers, and potential partners.
- Maintained my multi-disciplined craft and skill set, constantly and consistently staying abreast of new platforms, technology, and design culture.
- Built, maintained, and extended design systems over ever-involving software such as Figma and Sketch.
- Prioritized key product components against resources and milestone limitations while planning release iterations.
- Led major design projects for Accenture, Arab News, Al Arabiya, Alshaya, Kearney, Competitiveness Office of Abu Dhabi (Gov.), Etihad, Shurooq, Lime Tree Café, M&C Saatchi, Omobono, Oracle, Prime Minister's Office, Qatar Diar, Al Shaya, and more.
UX Research Lead
National Bank of Fujairah
- Scoped key user stories for retail banking app redesign. Sorted by KANO and MoSCoW.
- Conducted competitor and industry design research.
- Uncovered user needs through journey mapping and usability testing.
- Recommended UI/UX design improvements and enhancements.
- Created personas to define digital banking consumers and their desires.
UI/UX Strategist, Product Owner
EdStatica / Edinforma Pro
- Challenged the initial reporting concept, helping redefine the product as an interactive SaaS platform for education benchmarking and analytics.
- Designed dashboards, workflows, and comparison tools, translating complex educational datasets into intuitive user experiences.
- Defined scalable information architecture supporting benchmarking, reporting, subscriptions, and future platform expansion.
- Helped establish the broader product ecosystem connecting WhichSchoolAdvisor, SchoolsCompared and Edinforma into a unified education platform.
- Worked directly with the founder throughout product discovery, strategy, and delivery to align commercial objectives with user needs.
- Created reusable UX patterns supporting long-term product evolution across multiple education products.
Principal Product Designer
WhichSchoolAdvisor
- Led redesign workshops and co-creation sessions, resulting in a 114.60% increase in UPVs.
- Redesigned school profiles, reviews, and user journeys, improving content discovery across thousands of editorial pages.
- Introduced a scalable design system, evolving from Sketch to Figma to improve consistency and delivery speed.
- Defined premium school features and commercial user journeys supporting new monetization models.
- Partnered directly with the founder and engineering team to shape long-term product strategy and roadmap.
- Optimized responsive experiences across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
- Improved advertising placement and page layouts while maintaining editorial integrity.
UI/UX Consultant
Leo Trippi
- Recreated the onsite calendar-booking feature across all devices, introducing greater functionality for the user.
- Redesigned the entire back-of-house inventory admin system, creating functionality that saved the admin considerable time while reducing risk.
- Overhauled the back-of-house booking admin system, creating functionality that saved the admin considerable time while reducing risk.
- Led the third-party Ukraine-based development team as the project manager.
Chief of Design and Product, Co-founder
Mokus.io
- Co-founded an early machine learning startup exploring how AI could bridge the gap between business stakeholders and software delivery teams by translating business goals into structured product requirements and intelligent delivery workflows.
- Helped evolve the concept from AI-assisted recruitment into a broader SaaS platform capable of recommending team composition, analyzing communication patterns, and predicting delivery risks using machine learning concepts.
- Defined product vision, commercial strategy, and user experience while leading branding, customer discovery, investor presentations, and fundraising alongside the founding team.
- Designed workflows translating non-technical business requirements into structured product delivery, helping reduce ambiguity between stakeholders, product teams, and engineering.
- Proposed intelligent recommendation models based on technical capability, stakeholder communication styles, team compatibility, and previous project outcomes, years before AI-assisted product development became mainstream.
- Self-funded product development through consultancy work while pitching investors, including Wamda, DTEC, and Rockfirst Capital, producing an early prototype before founder misalignment brought development to a close.
Lead Designer (Application)
Scoutsss
- Created the new design of the mobile applications for iOS and Android, building out more than a dozen market research-specific user flows.
- Redesigned the look and feel, creating a friendly yet functional design system.
- Directed the UX team and the development project as the project manager.
Creative Director
ITP Media Group
- Recruited and mentored a multicultural team of 30+ creatives and engineers.
- Pioneered UX, UI and content strategy based on data analysis and financial response.
- Pitched and won client-side advertising contracts worth well in excess of US$1 million.
- Accelerated YoY traffic growth up to 1,000%+ across on both ArabianBusiness.com and TimeOutDubai.com.
Creative Director
Oryx Real Estate / DPC
- Directed the organizations' communication and presentation efforts with client-side investors and property developers for two real estate companies.
- Led discussions and managed all vendor and supplier relationships, advertising, architecture, tech, and videography.
- Onboarded and directed third-party web design companies, printing presses, architects, 3D artists, and copywriters.
Managing Art Director
ITP Media Group
- Campaigned for and established the company's design department, growing a team from me to 30+ in three years.
- Launched Time Out Dubai as the art director (Time Out London later took the design templates to adapt their own publication).
- Hired and mentored photographers, junior designers, and, later, as the creative director, grew the tier management of the creative team, with design directors, art directors, picture desk editors, and more.
Education
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communication Design
University of Portsmouth - Portsmouth, UK
Foundation Course in Art and Design
Shephalbury Art College - Stevenage, UK
Skills
Tools
Sketch, Adobe CC, Zeplin, InDesign CC, QuarkXpress, Illustrator CC, Photoshop CC, Google Analytics, Adobe InDesign, InVision, Miro, Adobe Illustrator, Trello, Google Slides, Apple Keynote, Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Experience Design (XD), Claude, Jira, GitLab, GitHub, Asana, FigJam
Platforms
Figma, iOS, Android
Industry Expertise
Fine Arts
Other
Experience Design, Typography, Graphic Design, Art Direction, Creative Strategy, Creative Direction, Brand Identity, Editorial Design, Mobile UI, UI Design, Prepress, Production, Printing, Book Binding, Packaging, Pitch Decks, System UI, Responsive UI, Design Direction, Digital Publishing, Technical Hiring, UX Strategy, Strategy, DataViz, Product Strategy, Design Systems, Dashboards, Product Design, UX Design, Web App UI, Web App UX, Prototyping, Wireframing, Web App Design, Brand Design, Data Visualization, Marketing Design, Dashboard Design, Package Design, Print, Corporate Design, Publishing, Magazine Cover Design, Magazine Layout Design, Report Design, Brand Books, Landing Page Design, Mobile UX Design, Printing Press, User Experience (UX), Visual Design, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Mobile App UI, User Interface (UI), Branding, Information Design, Information Architecture (IA), Web Design, Mobile App Design, App Design, B2B, B2C, UI Components, Presentation Design, Digital Design, Infographics, Pitch Presentations, MVP Design, Proof of Concept (POC), SaaS Design, Web UI Design, Web UX Design, UX Research, Brochure Design, Advertising Design, Email Design, Logotype, Logo Design, Food Packaging, Product Packaging, Material Design, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), eCommerce, Visual Storytelling, Design Leadership, User Stories, User Flows, Brand Guidelines, High-fidelity Mockups, Presentations, Information Visualization, Web UX, UX Flows, Mobile UX, User Journeys, Marketplace Design, Mobile Web, Mobile Design, Mobile UI Design, App UI, App UX, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Collaboration, Design Workshops, Mockups, User Workflows, UX Workshops, UX Wireframes, Ideation Workshops, User Experience Design, User Experience Strategy, K-12 Education, Educational Portals, UX Review, Business to Business (B2B), Enterprise Design, Enterprise, Design, Print Design, Real Estate UI, Commercial Real Estate, Residential Real Estate, Leadership, UX Leadership, UX Audits, Proptech, Business to Consumer (B2C), Journey Mapping, Fintech, CPG, Fintech Design, Pitch Deck Design, Investor Presentations, Enterprise Software, Onboarding, User Journey Maps, User Onboarding, Design Thinking, UX Prototyping, Product Owner, Photography, Screen Printing, Sculpture, Semiotic Analysis, Luxury Industry, Startup Consulting, Project Management, CX Strategy, Business, Startups, Lean, Charts, Analysis, Analytics, Market Research, User Research, Web Project Management, Token Design, Service Design, Copywriting, Business Strategy, Pitch Preparation, Book Design & Illustration, Interaction Design (IxD), Iconography, Software, CRM Design, Squarespace, PowerPoint Design, Direct to Consumer (D2C), Personas, User Interviews, Usability Testing, PowerPoint Templates, Notion, Discovery Workshops, User Personas, Interactive Prototypes, User Workshops, SaaS, Software as a Service (SaaS), Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Workflow Design, Systems Thinking, AI-powered Product Design, Textiles, Filmmaking, Art History, Social Hubs, Agile, Data, Chart.js, Illustration, Pitch Books, Growth, ChatGPT, Base44
Experience
- Graphic Design - 20 years
- Creative Direction - 20 years
- Creative Strategy - 20 years
- Typography - 20 years
- UI Design - 15 years
- Experience Design - 15 years
- Sketch - 5 years
- Figma - 3 years
Tools
- Sketch
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring





