Paul Wilshaw

About

Paul Wilshaw is a fractional Head of Product Design who builds what he designs. He works inside product teams, using design systems and AI to get work into production in days, not quarters. He works with clients through Designed for Humans, his design and product consultancy in Manchester. He trains design teams, particularly in using AI tools, and created Design Systems for Humans, a design system platform with a Figma plugin and an MCP server for AI coding tools. He previously led design at Barclays, Blue Prism and UKFast/ANS, where he built a UX team from zero to 20+ and a design system of 1,000+ components used across 100+ products. His work has won 80+ industry awards. He has designed AI products since early 2023, including two years as chief product officer at an AI start-up. He co-hosts the Faster Horses podcast.

Focus: Design systems, Design tokens, Figma, User experience (UX), UX strategy, User research, Accessibility, WCAG, Product strategy, Design leadership, UX training, Design team coaching, Artificial intelligence (AI), Model Context Protocol (MCP), Service design.

Explore the site

• About: UX strategy consultant, Manchester: Product design leader and creative technologist in Manchester. I turn complicated products into experiences people use, and help teams build them.
• Portfolio · Product design consultant: I help product leaders decide what to build and give their teams the foundations to ship it faster. Selected work from Barclays, Blue Prism, ANS and more.
• From a disconnected voucher website to a complete cinema experience · Cinema Society case study: How I helped Network and Cinema Society take a new purchasing journey from initial prototype to production in two development sprints, with plans to reuse…
• Four brands. One design system. Experiments built in hours. · Design system across four brands case study: A bespoke design system delivered in three months. Experiment builds reduced from weeks to hours. Every new design and build was starting from scratch.…
• Giving the homepage room to work · Hero redesign across three brand sites case study: A compact, expressive hero with its own publishing controls, taken from design to working code in less than a day. The existing hero banner filled the entire…
• Building a UX function from zero · Blue Prism case study: I joined Blue Prism as its first UX designer and grew the design team to 20+ people. Along the way I set the strategy for modernising an automation platform…
• One shared design language · UKFast / ANS case study: Two brands. More than 100 products. No shared design language. After UKFast and ANS merged, teams were working across different technology stacks and…
• Making cyber threats easier to understand. And act on. · ANS Group case study: How we helped ANS replace an ageing cybersecurity product with a clearer, more accessible Managed Detection and Response experience. ANS's threat-monitoring…
• Making room for experiments · Barclays case study: Test the idea before committing to the build. Long release cycles meant opportunities could move on before features reached customers. The business needed a…
• CV: product design leader and creative technologist: Paul Wilshaw's CV: product design leader and builder. Led design at Barclays, Blue Prism and ANS, 80+ awards, founder of Designed for Humans.
• Apps and Figma plugins: Apps and Figma plugins by Paul Wilshaw for designers, engineers and AI: Design Systems for Humans, Design Systems for Humans for Figma, Accessibility for Humans, Icon Foundry.
• Free Figma resources: Free Figma and FigJam templates designed by Paul Wilshaw, used by 10,000+ people: icon sets, usability surveys, release phases and workshops.
• AI for design teams: How Paul Wilshaw uses AI in design work: an MCP server for design systems, automated UAT against Figma, Figma plugins and a portfolio game built with AI.
• Building a portfolio game with Claude Code: How Paul Wilshaw built a pixel-art portfolio game part-time: 272 commits, 228 written with Claude Code, and Manchester landmarks via Figma Weave.
• UX Tickets: Azure DevOps tasks in Figma: A Figma and FigJam widget that puts Azure DevOps tasks next to the design. Tick a task in Figma and the real ticket closes, saying who did it.
• Automated UAT: AI checks builds against Figma: A Claude skill that tests a live build against Figma at three screen sizes, grades each issue from Breaking to Low and hands the report to a person.
• Design system MCP server for AI coding tools: Design Systems for Humans has an MCP server, so Cursor, Claude and VS Code build with your real tokens and components and check their code for compliance.
• Icon and Type Foundry: fonts from Figma: Two Figma plugins that turn drawings into fonts: Icon Foundry builds icon fonts with CSS and a preview page, and Type Foundry builds installable typefaces.
• Claude skills for design teams: Claude skills that write down a design team's ways of working once, so AI follows them every time. Includes a free JTBD user stories skill to download.
• A GPT tour finder for On the Go Tours: In early 2023 Paul Wilshaw built On the Go Tours a GPT-powered tour finder that suggests a tour from your preferences and dates, then shows the itinerary.
• Free Claude skill: JTBD user story writer: A free Claude skill that writes Jobs To Be Done user stories for Azure DevOps, Jira, Trello, Notion and more, with hypothesis, metrics and scope.
• Contact Paul Wilshaw: Get in touch with Paul Wilshaw about product strategy, UX, design systems, accessibility or AI, or find him on LinkedIn.
• Design-system challenge: Three teams built three different buttons. Build a shared component that people can read, understand and comfortably tap: a small design-system challenge from Paul Wilshaw.
• Privacy and cookies: What paulwilshaw.com stores on your device or sends elsewhere, and why: cookieless analytics by default, and a cookie only if you say yes.
• How do you upskill a UX team on AI?: How to upskill your UX team on AI: what to hand over, what to keep human, and a five-step training plan that builds judgement first.
• What should go into a design system?: What should go into a design system? Components, plus tone of voice, icons, photos, research and docs, and the maths that proves duplication costs money.
• Is a design system a product?: Is a design system a product? Yes. How to give yours an owner, regular releases and a System Usability Scale score the business will believe.
• How do you scale a design team?: How to scale a design team, from someone who grew a UX team from nobody to 20+: skills maps, live design tasks and hiring people who'll challenge you.
• What does good creative leadership look like?: Good creative leaders clear the path, protect their team from noise and help people grow, even if that means leaving. Lessons from leading design teams.
• What are semantic colours?: What semantic colours are, why each should do one job in your design system, and how to test them in real screens.
• Making a case for digital accessibility: Why accessibility makes sense for people and for business, five quick fixes anyone can make, and over 50 colour contrast tools.
• Making hackathons more inclusive: A plan for a hackathon that welcomes people who are usually left out: framing the problem, removing barriers and rewarding learning over winning.
• Idea Graveyard: Habits worth retiring in product design, and what takes their place: lessons from Paul Wilshaw's Idea Graveyard.

Experience

• Founder, Designed for Humans (2023 – Present): A design and product consultancy for scale-ups, SMEs and enterprises: UX strategy, design systems, team training, product strategy, accessibility, branding and AI adoption. Its products include Design Systems for Humans.
• Chief Product and Experience Officer (CPO), Behavioural biometrics AI start-up (confidential) (May 2023 – May 2025): Led product and experience at an AI start-up using phone sensor data to recognise people by how they move.
• Advisory Board Member, Blake Mill (Present): Bringing product, digital and innovation thinking to a craftsmanship-led shirt maker (and its bold shirts).
• Co-Founder, GhostPosts.ai (Jul 2023 – Dec 2025): Co-founded an AI start-up whose prompt tool helped people new to AI write social posts, with inclusive and accessible writing built into the prompts.
• Head of UX Design, ANS Group (formerly UKFast) (Jul 2021 – May 2023): After the UKFast and ANS merger, brought two brands, two tech stacks and 100+ products onto one design system.
• Head of UX and UI, Blue Prism (Jan 2019 – May 2021): Joined a listed intelligent automation company that had grown by acquisition, with fragmented user journeys, several tech stacks and no UX function.
• Head of Creative Technology and Innovation, Barclays UK (Feb 2017 – Jan 2019): Ran the team that tested ideas with customers within weeks. Working prototypes came out of two-week sprints, so investment decisions were backed by what customers actually did.
• Head of Technology and Design, Order with Fork (May 2016 – Nov 2016): Joined a funded food-tech start-up that had an idea but no product, brand or architecture.
• Lead Creative Consultant, Barclays (Jan 2012 – Jun 2016): Led 12+ designers and developers internationally on Barclays Mobile Banking, Pingit and Barclaycard across iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Mobile Banking and Pingit were both rated five stars in the App Store while I was there.
• Senior Creative Producer, 2ergo group plc (Aug 2011 – Jan 2012): Designed user journeys, interfaces and HTML5 sites for Pizza Express, Ask, RAC, Phones 4U and HSS.

Apps and Figma plugins

• Design Systems for Humans: A design system platform that keeps designers, engineers and product working from the same components, with accessibility built in, generated documentation and an MCP server for AI coding tools.
• Design Systems for Humans for Figma: The Figma app that builds your design system's variables and components for you.
• Accessibility for Humans: A collectable card game that turns accessibility principles into a quiz teams actually remember, at three levels from easy to pro.
• Icon Foundry: A Figma plugin for creating consistent icon sets.

Free Figma resources

• The Value Proposition Canvas: Map customer jobs, pains and gains against what your product offers.
• Transparency and feedback roadmap: A public-facing roadmap that shows customers what's coming and what you heard.
• Product lifecycle journey mapping: Map every stage of a product's life, from discovery to retirement.
• A Better Opportunity Canvas: Frame the problem, the people and the outcome before you design.
• Ultimate technology icon set: A technology icon set with usage guidelines and a how-to guide.
• System Usability Score template: Run and score SUS surveys (with UKFast/ANS).
• Alpha, Beta, Early Access and General Access releases: Service design phases for staged releases (with UKFast/ANS).
• Problem exploration workshop: A workshop for exploring a problem before jumping to solutions (with UKFast/ANS).