Craig Woollard, Product Design & UX Leader
Over a seventeen-year career, Craig's been called many things (keep it clean, please): Human Factors Engineer, Interaction Designer, UX Architect, Product Designer, and Experience Designer (XD). All of them have sparked confused looks from family members, friends, and strangers at parties. These days, he goes by Product Design Director at Optimizely.
Titles aside, the common thread has always been designing things that make people's lives easier, more intuitive, and a little more delightful. He grew up in Great Britain and now lives in Stockholm, Sweden. His work, however, has taken him far beyond both.
Craig has collaborated with teams across the globe to design products and services used worldwide, spanning industries from finance and telecom to legal publishing and automotive. He has worked independently, through consultancies, and in-house, always with a hands-on approach and a strong belief in design as a team sport.
When he’s not deep in design strategy or mentoring teams, Craig finds inspiration in travel and photography, in the playful elegance of midcentury and Scandinavian aesthetics, and in the raw honesty of brutalist form. He dreams of creating his own aquascape one day and never passes up great tacos.
Industries
Digital Experience Platforms (DXP)
Telecom
Automotive
Consulting
Collaboration Software (GoToMeeting)
Finance
Construction
Consumer Products
Legal Publishing
Travel
Clients
Optimizely
Three (Tre)
Scania
Publicis Sapient
Citrix
Nordea
Sparebank1
NCC
Ericsson
Husqvarna
Avanade
LexisNexis
STA Travel
Markets
UK
US
Sweden
France
Norway
Denmark
Germany
Australia
Japan
Some nice things others have said about me
I have had the pleasure of working closely with Craig for the past two years, and in that time, he has consistently proven himself to be an exceptional design professional and an invaluable contributor to Optimizely's success.
Craig's vision and ability to think outside the box have consistently resulted in innovative and highly successful product designs and positive impact to strategy. I have been consistently impressed by his ability to understand complex user needs and translate them into user friendly experiences.
In his role, he has effectively led a team of designers, guiding them to deliver outstanding results and achieve lofty goals. Under his leadership and collaboration, our design team and design system has flourished, consistently exceeding expectations and making a positive impact on people and products.
I couldn't ask for a better partner in running a design organization and I wholeheartedly recommend him to any organization wanting to raise the bar.
Ron Severdia, VP Design, Optimizely
Craig is a designer who cares deeply about the product and it is reflected in his design craft, his valuable feedback, and his mentorship of other designers. When I worked with Craig, I always knew he would have valuable insights on my work that would enhance my designs and so I looked forward to getting feedback from him.
Craig is frequently able to bring external evidence and data to design discussions that help immensely to up level all our skills and understand how our design work fits into the broader context of design patterns.
Jeremy Knight, Sr. Staff Product Designer, Optimizely
Craig has a great way of balancing between business needs and what's best for the customer. He handles the strategic big picture as well as the every day quick fixes. He strives for insights to make the right priorities and is a very talented interaction designer with a feeling for cutting edge user experience design. With his sense of humor, he is also a great addition to your team. All in all, hire Craig.
Johan Gertell, VP Digital Channels, Tre
I had the pleasure of working and getting to know Craig when he joined Tre as our User Experience Manager. When Craig first joined, the internal talk amongst our colleagues were basically that we thought we'd be getting a new designer, but we got so much more. Craig has proven himself time and time again to the team that he is so much more than 'just' a designer.
Craig has a knack for quickly identifying new business opportunities and actually doing something about it rather than just talking about them, and with that really trying to push the business forward. But he always did it from a perspective with what was best for the customer, which is something I personally resonate strongly with, and really appreciated with his work at Tre.
I'd say what Craig has been doing is more in line with business development. Straightforward, to the point and always accurate in his descriptions of challenges and how to solve them. Its been great working with Craig and I hope to do it again sometime in the future.
Marcus Hallin, Analytics Manager, Tre
Craig and I have worked together on several customer projects where focus has been to improve the customer experience. Activities have stretched from auditing online experience on customers’ existing sites as well as to develop wireframes, visual design, and prototypes to show how a best in breed customer experience look like.
Craig has demonstrated excellent relationship-building and communication skills and a strong business leadership with an eye for detail and quality. He is excellent at translating and explaining what it takes to achieve a good customer experience, and this to both business and technical focused people. He has also demonstrated excellent team leader skills by guiding small teams and activities to success and at the same time nurturing colleges professional development.
Besides all his professional qualities he has also a great sense of humor and it is always fun and giving to work with Craig!
Erik Zackrisson, Business Consultant, SapientNitro
Craig was a designer on my team at Citrix and spearheaded UX design for the GoToMeeting iOS experience, amongst other projects. It was truly a pleasure working with Craig. He is an extremely talented designer and is dedicated to his craft. Craig is very proactive - he consistently went out of his way to inject user centered thinking in all project efforts he was involved in. He is conscientious, a consummate professional, and a delight to work with. I have no hesitation in recommending Craig as he'd be a valuable addition to any team.
Reena Merchant, UX Manager, Citrix
I had the pleasure of working with and learning from Craig at Citrix. His impressive interactive design knowledge was obvious from the start, as were his notable communication skills. He has a great ability to quickly understand the complexities of small and large design projects - no small feat when he usually worked on multiple projects at one time. I could always count on Craig to be level-headed, collaborative and positive. He's a great asset to any team.
Laura Martin, Lead Product Designer, Citrix
Craig has worked with me for the last two years on the LexisNexis Global Design Standards. He has co-led the development of a Design Pattern Library to create a consistent user experience across LexisNexis products worldwide.
Craig is studious and diligent and has developed a unique role and reputation in LexisNexis International as the leading authority on Human Factors, Information Architecture and Responsive Design. He is continuously called upon by our large team of designers and engineers to choose and approve the application of design standards and design best practice across the international product portfolio.
Craig has an exceptional ability to dissect a user experience design issue and pinpoint the causality in the various elements. He is extremely good at communicating the design and technical trade-offs in the solution options to helps designers, engineers and product stakeholders make effective decisions.
Craig has made his mark on LexisNexis product design worldwide through his legacy in the global design standards. I am very impressed by the depths of his knowledge and his ability to negotiate the best design solution with multiple stakeholders in a big organisation. He has a remarkable intellect and a real talent for design communication.