Leading Design for 32Red

📣 Context

I joined 32Red in 2016 as Head of UX, reporting to the CEO, CFO and CTO. I designed the architecture the 32Red casino ran on, including the rules that personalised content and bonuses for each player.

In June 2017 Kindred Group acquired 32Red. Kindred already had a Head of UX, so from that September I was Lead Product Designer, reporting to the Director for the UK Market, and kept my focus on the UK: 32Red and Unibet, across Casino, Sports and Bingo. My team worked like a special-ops unit: spread across Sweden, the UK, Malta, Gibraltar, India and France, outside the central UX team, with our own remit and the autonomy to match.

Over the following years the scope grew from the UK to European products, 32Red moved from its own ecosystem onto the Kindred platform, and the paying player base grew from around 2,000 to over 10,000.

🏆 Outcomes

🥋 My Role

As Head of UX I owned the 32Red experience end to end and answered directly to the CEO, CFO and CTO and directors. After the acquisition I led design for the UK market: I set the direction for my team's products, agreed scope and priorities with the Director for the UK Market and the product owners, and represented design in front of directors and the wider company.

When 32Red migrated onto the Kindred platform, I was a stakeholder and owner of the migration. I had designed 32Red's architecture, including its content and bonus personalisation, so I owned what had to carry across.

👥 Building the Team

Over eight years I hired eleven people: six product designers, three researchers and two information architects. Every one of them moved up to mid or senior level.

The team ran on a steady set of rituals:

• Dailies and stand-ups, to keep work moving across streams.
• Design critiques and reviews, so quality was a team standard rather than one person's taste.
• Retrospectives, to change how we worked and not only what we shipped.
• 1:1s with everyone in the team, about growth as much as delivery.
• Regular alignment sessions with stakeholders and directors, so decisions were made with the business instead of presented to it.

In my final year I brought the team into Kindred's central UX team.

🧭 How I Set Direction

• Research before design. On every major project I set the research goals and methods before design started, so early decisions were informed instead of defended later.
• System first. On the 2024 rebuild, the design system and visual language started on day one, so the team was prototyping and reviewing with other teams from the first weeks.
• Secure where it matters, light everywhere else. When regulation added identity and affordability checks, we placed them where they protected players and kept every other step as short as possible.
• Work in the open. Development, Data & BI, Compliance & Player Safety, CRM, SEO, Customer Support and Sustainability saw the work at every stage, so they shaped it during projects, not after them.

📌 The Work

• Website & User Engagement (2024) — rebuilding the 32Red front-end with a team of eight: new visual language, design system and multi-market framework.
• User Onboarding & Account Dashboard (2023) — +27% desktop and +35% mobile registrations, +36% first deposits within 24 hours, −52% support contacts.
• Winston CMS (2022–23) — one role-based CMS in place of several ageing tools, later adopted by other brands and teams beyond 32Red: −59% time to market, +40% page-load performance.

🎤 Talks & Workshops

Presentations, workshops and talks inside 32Red, Kindred and FDJ, and a UX talk at GibDevs, Gibraltar's developer community, in 2019.

🧠 Takeaways

• Autonomy is earned in the open. A team outside the central structure keeps its freedom only while everyone can see what it is doing and why.
• Hire for range, then hand over real problems. That is how all eleven people stepped up.
• What I'd do differently: push for more user testing, earlier, and tighter feedback loops on key journeys.