Returned to Umi Digital, a specialist agency for the hospitality and travel sector, as Head of User Experience, leading UX research, service design and information architecture across the agency’s client base while reshaping its own sales and delivery model.

Digital Strategy & Transformation

• Led adoption of Growth-Driven Design at Umi Digital, restructuring the agency’s sales-to-delivery model around evidence-first prototyping rather than upfront full-scope estimates, still the agency’s default operating model.
• Identified that GDD’s official material had no hospitality relevance and built a bespoke industry-specific framework, Direct Booking Strategy, combining a colleague’s paid-media expertise with authored conversion, persona and journey-mapping content into one published three-pillar strategy document.
• Self-initiated a CRO practice within a hotel-agency client base where day-to-day experimentation was structurally difficult, producing a detailed, funnel-mapped UX/CRO audit for a multi-vertical OTA specialising in travel to Middle East, across 5 business lines.

User Research

• Delivered a 665-observation evidence-first UX audit for Fullers, Smith & Turner across 200+ pub and hotel microsites, converting a non-guaranteed research-only tender into a retained design partnership.
• Conducted qualitative research directly challenging Kirker Holidays’ internal assumptions about their own customer base, reshaping the site’s information architecture and content strategy.

Product Design & Information Architecture

• Designed shared information architecture and taxonomy systems across multiple content types for complex, multi-property hospitality clients, including Kirker Holidays, Good Hotel Guide, and The Stafford Collection’s WordPress Multisite platform spanning the group hub and individual property sites.
• Led UX & UI design of custom booking-engine product, since adopted into live client deployments.