Luke Dacey | VP of Design | Advisor to founders
Build it right before you scale it wrong.
I’ve spent two decades inside companies that moved fast. I’ve seen where clarity slips and decisions get expensive. Now I work with founders and leadership teams to bring structure and judgement before that happens.
$1 Billion+
Contributed to $1B+ GTV while leading product design
70 million+
Directed product experiences for 70M+ users across MENA
5 orgs
Repeatedly scaled design across global organisations
50%
Faster execution by embedding AI into decision workflows
In-house roles, scale-ups, enterprise and global partnerships
23 years shaping product direction
When growth accelerates, judgement matters more than speed.
Most of my experience comes from high-growth environments, the kind where direction lags behind ambition and smart teams start second-guessing themselves. I’ve seen what that costs. Work gets redone, priorities shift weekly and decisions that should’ve been made early become expensive later.
That’s shaped how I work. I step in as a fractional design leader when companies need senior judgement without a full-time hire. I focus on clarity, not as messaging, but as a way to reduce rework and make better decisions earlier.
How I work
High-leverage involvement
Direction before velocity
Growth exposes weak thinking. When direction isn’t explicit, smart teams fill the gap themselves. Work gets duplicated. Priorities shift weekly. People start optimising for optics instead of outcomes.
Clarity is not a slogan. It’s protection. It reduces rework and stops drift before it compounds.
Fix the structure, not the symptoms
Most product friction isn’t creative, it’s structural. Ownership is blurred, dependencies are hidden and decisions are escalated because no one is sure who can make them. Design becomes output instead of leverage.
I focus on the layers beneath the work, so when the structure is right, the product improves.
Ship with intent
In high-growth environments, pace increases before clarity does. That’s when standards slip and trade-offs go unexamined.
I work alongside product and engineering to align roadmap to strategy, remove ambiguity before execution and protect quality while moving quickly.
From concepts to results…
Delivering exceptional experiences
Repositioning design from execution to strategic influence
I restructured how design interfaced with product and leadership, shifting it from execution support to strategic partner.
+30%
+300%
Team satisfaction
Faster delivery
+40%
Design involvement
Unifying fragmented legacy systems into a single intelligent experience
Working hands-on to re-architect core journeys across web and app, aligning product, engineering and design around one operating model.
+27%
+18%
Upsell conversion
Garage bookings
43%
Fewer recovery calls
Iterating flows wasn’t enough, we had to rebuild confidence.
Directed design across 140 features to restore reliability at scale across MENA
+12%
23%
Fewer cancellations
Ride completion
95%
CSAT scores
If you need a design leader who builds clarity, culture & systems that scale - let’s talk.
luke@makeitaconversation.com