Max Rickards
Good design is mostly deciding what to remove.
I've spent eight years doing that with the complicated systems people depend on.
Designing services people have to trust
Steering a team through the shift to AI
Rethinking how people access healthcare
Fixing how the NHS App asks for notifications
Building the design system that scaled
Undoing 20 years of built-up friction
Me
Senior Product Designer at IBM
I've spent eight years on complex systems at scale, from healthcare to energy to government. I enjoy the visual side, but I spend most of my time in the complex system below. Right now that's the NHS App.
The way I work
I design by building with users
I don't trust a design until I've felt the real deal and tested it. That means code prototypes, not just Figma. Lately I've been prompt-engineering native and HTML prototypes for various clients, because you only really know a design once it's running on the device.
I bring the team with me
I led the education that got my team fluent in the tech stack the job now demands. AI is changing how products get built, who builds them and what's possible in the first place, and the fastest way I know to keep up is to learn it, do it, and teach it.
I'm a Londoner, and I love how much design this city puts into the world. Outside work I'm usually behind a camera (Fuji X100VI) or out of the city with friends for air that hasn't been through a tube tunnel.
Who I've worked with
Multi year projects, AI-first bids, client designathons, quick discoveries. Different opportunities, same design process.