The move from an agency Producer to a UX Lead may appear to be a shift from execution to strategy, but I found the reality was far more integrated. The fundamental skills I developed in the agency environment, particularly the discipline of constraint, were not just transferable; they were the essential foundation for effective product leadership.
In 2017, the conversation around digital delivery had crystallised. The era of the fixed-scope, fixed-budget project was waning; everyone was talking about the product mindset. The difference, I realised, was simply in the time horizon and ownership. Projects end; products evolve.
The Producer’s Mindset: Constraint as a Creative Force
As a Producer, my primary job was to deliver a complex digital solution on time and within budget. This forced a relentless focus on efficiency and prioritisation. We did not have the luxury of endless exploration; every design decision, every sprint task, had to be ruthlessly justified against the project’s tight constraints.
This is the producer’s secret weapon, and it is perfectly suited to a UX Lead role. UX is not about simply creating the ‘best’ experience; it is about creating the most valuable experience within a set of real-world constraints: technology, resources, and business objectives.
I learned to ask the hard question immediately: What is the smallest, most impactful thing we can ship to deliver the required business outcome? This question, drilled into me by agency deadlines, became the core of my product-led UX approach. It forces you to move beyond abstract design concepts and organise your efforts around measurable output. You stop designing features and start designing solutions.
From Handoff to Ownership: Analysing for Value
The critical difference in the Product world is that the work never truly finishes. In an agency, the project concludes with a handoff; in a product team, the handoff is merely the beginning.
My career shift meant I had to stop seeing the final delivery as the objective. Instead, I began seeing it as the first hypothesis. In 2017, tools for behavioural analytics, A/B testing, and user feedback were mature enough to integrate into any development cycle. My focus moved from managing the delivery of the wireframes and prototypes to managing the impact of the live product.
A Producer ensures the team hits the deadline; a UX Lead in a product environment ensures the team hits the metric. This required a fundamental shift in how I valued time:
Old Value: Time spent on delivery.
New Value: Time spent on analysis and iteration.
My production skills ensured the build was efficient and organised; my new focus on UX leadership meant that I channelled that efficiency into a continuous cycle of build, measure, and learn. We began using data from the live platform to analyse user journeys; identifying where our design decisions were falling short, or where we had over-engineered a solution. That continuous loop, focused on measurable value, is the essence of a product-led career.
Strategic Focus: Leveraging the Live Sports Environment
My experience working with high-volume, live sports and broadcast systems intensified this constraint-based thinking. In live sport, you have zero tolerance for failure, and you have non-negotiable deadlines: the game starts when the game starts. The production mindset is inherently about operational excellence under pressure.
As a UX Lead in this domain, this translated into an absolute priority on the core user journey. We could not afford technical debt or frivolous features. Every single design choice, from the navigation structure to the smallest micro-interaction, had to be robust, performant, and add unquestionable value to a user who is likely under time pressure to find information quickly. My producer’s background was the perfect preparation for this high-stakes, high-efficiency environment.
The career transition was not about discarding old skills, but repurposing them. I did not stop being a Producer; I simply started producing better outcomes by leveraging constraints to focus the design strategy. The discipline of the delivery became the clarity of the design.