What 17 Years of Digital Product Work Has Taught Me About Impact

I've been working in digital product design and technology leadership for over 17 years. Looking back across that period — across the energy sector and fintech and healthcare and education and hospitality — a few consistent observations stand out.

Impact Comes From Understanding, Not Execution

The most impactful projects I've worked on were the ones where we genuinely understood the problem we were solving. The ESB RTV Platform succeeded because we understood how energy traders and plant managers actually made decisions under time pressure. The FBD Insurance transformation succeeded because we found the real problem — a failing brand connection, not just a failing quote journey.

Execution quality matters enormously, but it's a multiplier on strategic clarity. Excellent execution of the wrong solution produces impressive-looking work that doesn't move the needle.

The Products I'm Most Proud Of

The products I'm most proud of are the ones that genuinely made a difference to real people's lives. The An Post Money app gives Irish consumers — including people who were previously underserved by traditional banks — access to modern, affordable digital banking. The LUMA Vision platform improved the accuracy and efficiency of cardiac catheterisation procedures. The TCD student app made 18,000 students' daily university experience measurably better.

These are outcomes that I care about independently of their commercial metrics. That care — I'm convinced — is part of what made the work good.

What I've Changed My Mind About

Earlier in my career, I overvalued technical sophistication and undervalued simplicity. The most technically ambitious solution is rarely the most impactful one.

I've also changed my mind about the value of constraints. Early in my career, I experienced constraints — budget, timeline, regulatory requirements, legacy systems — as obstacles. Now I experience them as design inputs. The best work I've done has almost always been shaped by constraints that forced more creative thinking than an unconstrained brief would have produced.

What Stays Constant

After 17 years, the things I believe most strongly are the same things I believed at the beginning: that good product design starts with genuine curiosity about the people you're designing for; that the best teams are built on trust and candour; and that the work we do — digital products that people use every day — matters more than the industry tends to acknowledge.

• ESB — award-winning data visualisation that supports Ireland's Net Zero 2040 ambition
• 11Onze — a banking platform for a community that deserved better financial infrastructure
• LUMA Vision — clinical technology that improved patient safety in cardiac procedures
• An Post Money — modern digital banking for all of Ireland
• Workvivo — employee experience design that scaled to a Zoom acquisition
• AA Ireland & FBD — digital transformations that delivered transformational commercial results

There's more to do. I'm looking forward to it.

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