Hi — I’m Harry.
I design experience‑led product platforms. Not features. Not screens. Not roadmaps optimised for shipping velocity.
What I believe
- Most product failures are not technical failures.
- They happen when business logic is locked into application assumptions.
- They happen when users lose control without understanding why.
- They happen when recovery is impossible, opaque, or delegated to support.
- Architecture must serve experience — never the other way around.
The Experience‑First approach
My work is guided by an Experience‑First philosophy: experience is the product, everyone impacted by a system is a user, control is first-class, business logic belongs to customers, and architecture must serve experience.
- Experience is the product, not a by-product of features.
- Everyone impacted by a system is a user — whether they log in or not.
- Control, authorization, and delegation are first-class experiences.
- Business logic belongs to customers, not software vendors.
- Architecture must serve experience — never the other way around.
What I work on
- Product strategy — defining what a system must enable, not just what it must do.
- Platform design — creating foundations that allow experiences to evolve safely.
- Systems thinking — understanding how decisions ripple across roles, workflows, and time.
I’ve spent much of my career in B2B and enterprise products, platform and modernisation initiatives, and AI-driven systems where ambiguity, automation, and scale intersect.
Why this site exists
experiencefirst.design is where I explore experience-led product and platform design, AI systems through the lens of human trust and control, real examples of where systems succeed — and fail — at scale, and practical ways to apply Experience‑First principles inside real organisations.
It’s not about trends. It’s not about tools. It’s about building systems people can rely on when it matters.
A note on AI
AI does not reduce the importance of experience. It increases it.
As systems become more autonomous and probabilistic, experience design becomes about making intent visible, setting clear boundaries, enabling safe recovery, and preserving human agency.
In short
I help organisations move from “It works.” to “We trust it.” Because trust is the hardest feature to ship — and the most valuable one to get right.