Dan Appelbee

About me

 

About me

Linkedin

I’m currently a Senior Product Designer working at Wise (formerly Transferwise) in Financial Services. I support onboarding journeys and work on fraud and security initiatives.

I’ve proven experience helping cross-functional product teams speed up the time to deliver value. I help teams understand customer needs, prioritise opportunities and become more experimental with constant collaboration. To do this, I take a lean evidence-based approach to testing assumptions. I’m passionate about helping teams decide on the least amount of effort to learn the next most important thing. 

In my free time, I love a good countryside walk, travel and a spot of clay pigeon shooting. You can’t beat a bit of fresh air to clear the mind.

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Personal development

I’m passionate about learning and improving. Below are a few areas I’m currently working on. 

Improving the discovery approach 

My goal has been to get better at helping the teamwork through ambiguity in the desirability stage, before building too much. I’ve taken courses with Teresa Torres (Product Discovery coach) so I can help teams better understand opportunities and quickly test assumptions.

Impact so far - I helped the Zettle by Paypal team get into a bi-weekly cadence of testing and learning with customers through introducing proactive customer recruiting. I introduced an opportunity tree framework that helped the team focus. Perhaps more importantly, it helped us say no to a lot of things. 

Getting better at testing and understanding customer needs

My goal has been to get a better understanding of real user behaviour alongside planning more effective research. I’ve been mentored by Jim Collins (Product Discovery coach) and David Hamill (Ex Skyscanner head user researcher).  

Impact so far - The Zettle by PayPal team was much more involved with the whole process, from discovery, ideation and testing. We quickly tested black and white ideas to understand if customers understood the ideas and if they solved their problems. We then moved on to testing concepts in smaller chunks so we could get more specific feedback. I ran workshops so the team could synthesis and prioritise customer learnings as a group. 

Recent reading 

Testing business ideas by David J. Bland and Alex Osterwalder 

Escape the Build Trap by Melissa Perry 

UX for lean startups by Laura Klein

The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni

Work experience


Senior Product Designer
Wise (formerly Transferwise), Financial Services, 2021 to present

Support cross-functional product teams to help customers through onboarding journeys and help security and fraud teams. 


Product Designer
Zettle by Payal, Financial Services, 2018 to 2021  

Helped cross-functional product teams improve the lives of food and drink merchants through a SAAS Point of sale product.

  • Helped get a key go-to-market iOs reporting application back on the roadmap. Over 35% of all new customers were active and used the app daily. 50% of new sign-ups downloaded the application  

  • Increased customer paid SAAS subscription sign-up from a free trial by 5%. Reduced support tickets by 60%

  • Halved the time it takes to test assumptions with customers through introducing new customer recruiting and feedback processes

  • Ran a monthly initiative to expose teams to customer needs through live customer fireside chats

  • Led cross-functional teams on innovation weeks, winning the "Most valuable to the customer" award.

 

Product Designer
Side project, weelocals.com, 2020 

Launched a local business listing website called weelocals.com to help East Lothian businesses connect with their communities during COVID-19.

  • Over 10,000 views, featured in the local East Lothian press with 100+ businesses signed up. At it’s height, the site had 200+ daily active users

  • 25% of users are returning visitors

  • Validated the concept with 3 local Facebook groups before building the site

  • Implemented Google analytics to prioritise effort on high traffic pages. 

Digital Designer
Muscle Food, FMCG, 2018  

Supported project managers with discovering new revenue opportunities and helped launch the brand into new European markets.

  • Introduced a process to surface and prioritise new revenue opportunities, leading to a £15,000+ mobile e-commerce checkout opportunity 

  • Designed a lead generation funnel, converting 1,000+ targeted leads for the launch into Germany

  • Created new product launch landing pages generating £10k+ revenue

  

Product Manager, Product Designer
Freelance and set-up an e-commerce business, 2017 to 2018

Launched an e-commerce business selling physical products and worked with freelance clients.

  • Generated £5,000+ revenue through designing, sourcing and selling gym bags and dog walking leads through Amazon, Shopify and Facebook marketplace

  • Created 1,300+ targeted email leads and sold 250+ pet products 

  • Designed a responsive e-commerce website and branding for an apparel business

  • Designed a lead generation website and branding for a payments business.

 

Digital Designer
Paymentsense, Financial Services, 2016  

Helped generate small business leads for the sales team to convert over the phone.

  • Helped increase lead generation on mobile devices by +23% for two consecutive months. This steadied to around a 15% improvement

  • Helped generate 5% more leads for three consecutive months through supporting new display advertising campaigns

  • We increased lead generation by +6% through targeted customer segment landing pages

  • Increased landing page development efficiency through creating standardised design system components for designers and engineers. This enabled 5 new landing pages to be built per month instead of 2.

 

Digital Designer, Project Manager
Collinson Group, Financial Services, 2014 to 2016

Helped deliver loyalty programmes to airlines and develop the new Collinson Group internal brand across markets.

  • Speeded up the delivery of loyalty platform integrations by 20% to brands such as British Airways and Virgin Blue through introducing new processes

  • Saved the company £30K+ through designing and delivering the first digital newsletter microsite

  • Managed an internal branding project for 28 global offices 

  • Created print and digital brand assets for Columbus Direct insurance and the Collinson Group.

  

Digital Designer, Project Manager
Freelance 2014 

Helped the agency Mentally Friendly deliver the Soho House App and helped an accounting company generate more leads. 

  • Themed and designed brand assets for the Soho House iOs application 

  • Helped the accounting company generate 20+ leads, 2 became paying customers 

  • Designed the brand assets and responsive website for the accounting company 

  • Sourced and managed a team of remote web developers who built the accounting companies new website.

Digital Designer
Yoda London Digital Agency, 2013 to 2014  

Working with multiple small business clients from e-commerce to digital and print branding.

  • Improved conversion rate of an e-commerce basket flow by 8% (=£3,000)  

  • Managed and sourced remote developers  

  • Designed print brand collateral for clients.

Education

1st Class Product Design BA Hons, Sheffield Hallam University, 2010 graduation