Design Leader · 30 years · Sony Music, Deutsche Bank, Aegon, Sanoma Learning, Alef Education

I never stopped making

Irish citizen · Full EU work rights · Fluent Dutch · Relocating to the Netherlands · Currently in Abu Dhabi

Design leader for complex products. I raise craft, build the systems, and ship tooling myself with AI. Open to Head of Design, Director and VP roles across Europe, plus advisory work.

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Selected Work

Four pieces of work where I owned the outcome end to end: finding the real problem, shaping what got built, and shipping it. Real numbers. Real decisions. The calls I would defend in a room.

01

Design System and Product Operations

Alef Education · 2022 to present

Alef’s platform had grown to over sixty templates with no governance, and product decisions were being made on gut feel. I cut the system to twenty-two disciplined components, then built a feedback analytics dashboard in Claude Code myself: the data pipeline, the chart rendering, and a 0.89 correlation that proved which user complaints actually mapped to drop-off. No waiting on an engineering team. The proof of concept became permanent infrastructure.

Outcome: £200K saved. 40% faster production. Decisions cut from 10 days to 3.
What mattered: I shipped the tooling with AI while I was teaching the team to do the same.
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02

Strategic Discovery for a 2M+ User Platform

Sanoma Learning (Iddink Group) · Netherlands · 2018 to 2022

Magister held 80% of the Dutch secondary-education market. By the time I arrived it had slipped to 60%, on a fourteen-year-old codebase with no path forward. I ran a top-task research programme that showed 95% of daily use sat in just six to ten tasks, then turned that finding into a phased business case and put it in front of the board.

Outcome: A three-year roadmap approved after three years of stalemate. €3M-plus secured. Market share stabilised.
What mattered: Six interviews unlocked more investment than years of feature requests. The board needed evidence, not enthusiasm.
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03

Making an Organisation AI-Native

Alef Education · 2023 to present

Alef had no AI literacy and no integration strategy. I built the capability from scratch: a five-level prompting framework, hands-on workshops for the international team, and research and automation workflows. The point was never the tools. It was teaching people to think with AI at the start of a task, not reach for it at the end.

Outcome: 40-plus colleagues trained. Research synthesis from days to hours. Manual work cut by over 60%.
What mattered: An AI-native team compounds. A team that merely has AI tools does not.
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04

Building a Team That Ships and Stays

Alef Education · 2022 to present

Seventeen people. Six nationalities. Twelve markets. I built a team where critique is normal, growth is the default, and people choose to stay: structured certifications, communication adapted to context, and the rituals that make psychological safety real rather than a slogan.

Outcome: Zero attrition over eighteen months. Junior-to-mid promotions across the team. Design earned its seat at the product table.
What mattered: People stay where they are growing. That is the whole retention strategy.
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30+ Years, Four Countries

Thirty years. Four countries. Every role added craft, and a sharper sense of how design earns its keep.

Sony Music Europe
Design Lead
1992–2005
Music · Netherlands
Digital Consultancy
Lead UX/UI Designer
2005–2014
Public sector · Netherlands
Freelance
UX/UI Designer
2014–2018
incl. Deutsche Bank (BE), Aegon
Sanoma Learning
Senior UX Designer
2018–2022
EdTech · Netherlands
Alef Education
Head of Design
2022–present
EdTech · Abu Dhabi

What Colleagues Say

Don brings a global design perspective that enhances products and resonates with users worldwide. He also led the charge in integrating AI into the design process, keeping the team innovative and efficient.
Philip Chesney · Former Product Manager, Alef Education

How I Work

I trained in the Swiss International Typographic Style and Spiekermann’s typographic principles. That foundation runs through everything I build: clarity is a functional requirement, not a stylistic preference. My north star for any piece of work is that it should be impossible to misunderstand.

I never stopped making

The best design leaders keep their hands in the work. I design product, write the words, and build the design systems and tooling alongside the team, because taste you do not use goes stale, and you cannot raise a bar you have stopped touching.

AI is my default, not my pitch

I build with AI every day: production tools, research synthesis, the systems that run my own week. I have taught it to a team of forty and shipped real tooling with it solo. The value was never the tool. It is what one person can build once thinking with AI becomes the default.

Evidence before opinion

I take research to the board, not concept decks. When a product needs a new direction, I start with what users actually do. Opinion earns its seat at the table. It does not get one by default.

Clarity is how I lead

My team spans eight nationalities. They do not need close management. They need context, honest feedback, and the trust that their decisions will hold. I set clear goals and make genuine room for critique, and the work gets better for it.

Credentials & Writing

Professional Development

  • UX Management Certification — Nielsen Norman Group
  • Strategic Design Leadership Masterclass — TU Delft (96% distinction)
  • Design Sprint Certification — AJ&Smart
  • Information Architecture & Facilitating UX Workshops — Nielsen Norman Group
  • Top 10% distinction across multiple UX courses — Interaction Design Foundation

Speaking and Writing

  • I publish on LinkedIn three to four times a week on AI-native design, design systems, and leadership, with a steady readership among European design leaders.
  • Guest Lecturer, The Hague University of Applied Sciences: design strategy and professional practice.

Senior design leadership and advisory across Europe

Open to senior design leadership roles across Europe, and to advisory work. I do my best work in complex product environments where there is real craft to raise, real systems to build, and the autonomy to ship. Head of Design, Director of Design, VP of Design.

Start a conversation →

Email: dccrowley [at] gmail [dot] com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/doncrowley

Irish citizen with full EU work rights · Fluent Dutch · Property in the Netherlands
Currently in Abu Dhabi · Available for relocation or remote
Portrait of Don Crowley