Hi, I’m Jo, a full-stack product designer. I think in systems, hold the craft and understand the build.
About
I’m a deep generalist with high empathy for users and a high bar for quality, comfortable with ambiguity and fluent in working with engineering.
How I work →With 17 years of experience as a full-stack product designer, across UX, UI, motion and content, I’ve built my craft in agencies, big tech and fintech. I studied psychology, and I started my career designing and coding Flash and HTML sites. That mix of understanding people and building things still shapes how I work.
I’m now at Lloyds Banking Group, leading design across the Halifax mortgage broker product suite. I’m modernising a 20-year-old B2B platform: working across teams to embed systems thinking and deliver cohesive end-to-end experiences, partnering closely with product and engineering, and building the design system that will underpin it.
Before fintech I spent four years at Meta, working across Workplace, internal productivity tooling and external Integrity tools. As a product designer I was also a business thinker, comfortable with ambiguity in a fast-moving landscape of priorities.
These days, AI has brought me full circle. I started out building, and now I can think, build and ship faster than ever, with all of that craft, judgement and taste behind what I make.
View my CV →Great work comes from strong partnerships. Here’s what the designers, engineers and leaders I’ve worked with say about me.
I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with Jo Butler on several high-impact projects, and her leadership, collaboration, and problem-solving skills have been transformative for our team. Jo led the design for key products like Notifications, Chat, and Search, delivering significant impact despite complex challenges. She worked closely with engineers to drive solutions and successfully rebuilt a difficult cross-org design partnership, enabling smoother collaboration across Product Design and Product Management. … Strategically, Jo played a pivotal role in delivering the North Star vision designs for one of our most important products, turning an ambiguous brief into a clear, actionable strategy that unified three product teams. … Most impressively, Jo’s efforts helped our team exceed its H1 goals for the first time. … Jo’s strategic thinking, collaborative spirit, and relentless drive for results make her an invaluable asset to any team. I highly recommend her.
Jo and I have worked together on a number of key projects at Meta. She was an exemplary design collaborator for several user research studies I ran in the signal to noise problem space. She provided context and support to ensure that the insights and recommendations from these reach optimal actionability. She also showed a remarkable work ethic and resilience to drive success for projects with tight timelines, even when we worked across time-zones (with stakeholders based in California) or when we worked across orgs (departments). She insisted that any work she undertook was user-centred … she was proactive in seeking out further relevant studies for big initiatives, proving contextual and big-picture thinking skills and she also led a 3 day-long workshop incorporating relevant user insights rather than basing it on assumptions.
Jo is a fantastic product designer and untangler of complex problems. I was fortunate to work with Jo for a long period during our time at Meta. Jo led design on several strategic initiatives that delivered significant impact for our product’s customers and their users. Collaboration with Jo was a breeze, even when she was (rightly!) challenging my perspective.
Jo is the kind of partner that not only drives work forward, but also makes you a better designer in the process. I had the pleasure of working directly with Jo on some high-level strategic initiatives that required a level of planning, systems refinement, visual fidelity, and communication that she consistently up-leveled. Her expertise in the projects we worked on was felt in every element. She sharpened my craft and made our whole team have better processes to have more consistent results.
As a strategic partner, she demonstrated exceptional communication skills throughout the project, always keeping the brief, notes, and meeting logs organized. Jo’s passion for quality and attention to detail were evident in her work. She went above and beyond by connecting us with other designers. Jo would be a tremendous asset to any team looking for a collaborative problem solver, and detail-oriented designer who consistently demonstrates a commitment to quality.
Throughout our collaboration, I was consistently impressed by her exceptional design skills and understanding of user experience principles. As an engineer working alongside Jo, I found her to be a delight to collaborate with due to her excellent communication abilities and capacity to effectively convey design to technical stakeholders.
Jo showed exceptional proactivity in engaging with cross-functional team members and senior stakeholders, fostering a collaborative and productive environment. Her craftsmanship and focus on addressing user problems make her a great Product Designer!
I had the privilege of hiring and managing Jo as a product designer at Meta. She tackled complex product design problems gracefully and skillfully, consistently elevating our products. Joelle’s leadership and collaborative spirit earned her the admiration of teammates and stakeholders.
The perfect blend of product design, personality and care in her work. Jo joined a project that was inflight and part of a larger programme of work hitting the ground running and adding value immediately. Her attention to detail, creative thinking and generally bright and positive attitude made each conversation, meeting and workshop constructive but enjoyable.
Always a pleasure to work with, Jo possess a strong attention to detail which brings rigour and consistency to her work. She crafts the finer details whilst also keeping an eye on the big picture.
Jo is a master of craft. She’s got a fantastic eye for detail and a focus on generating tight, precise visuals. Always challenging the brief for a better result or user experience.

I’m based near London in leafy Surrey.
You’ll usually find me outdoors with my young family, tending to my house plants, or planning the next renovation or interior design project for our home.
Away from the UK, my Peruvian husband and I run a small organic cacao plantation in the Amazon, growing beans to make chocolate. It sits on a piece of rainforest we rescued from deforestation, and we’re protecting most of it.
How I work
Focused on delivering impact. I sit where product strategy, craft, engineering excellence and high-stakes delivery meet.
Skills
Tools
AI tools
My guiding light: build the right thing, and build it well.
Knowing what’s worth building, and who it’s for.
AI makes building cheap, so the value is in the decision: what to build, what to leave out, and whether it feels right. I use AI to prototype quickly, then spend my time on the thinking and the taste.
I put myself in the user’s shoes and keep a deep empathy for the people I’m designing for, so we deliver solutions that are effective and that people want.
Embracing change and letting new technology shape how I work.
I’m not tied to a traditional design process. I use AI as part of creative exploration early on, playing with ideas, thinking outside the box and making decisions faster.
I stay close to the technology and the engineering team so I understand what’s possible, can ideate from what the tech enables, and then shape and validate it.
Pushing boundaries, and pushing for the right thing.
I aim higher than the obvious answer and push past the way things have always been done, using new ideas and technology to stretch what a product can be.
I stay focused on the outcome rather than the noise around it, keeping the right result for users and the business in view and pushing for it, constructively.
Making deliberate decisions that hold together and last.
I keep my eye on the bigger picture, staying mindful of the business’s strategic goals and stakeholder needs, using KPIs to guide my efforts and creating visions, strategies and roadmaps for the team. I’m just as intentional with my design decisions and time, continuously reprioritising to where I can add the most value.
I design for the long term: unified experiences that stay consistent with the wider ecosystem and scale, from a large 0-1 project to a single reusable component, helping my team and others move faster over time.
Projects start with workshops and brainstorms to bring in diverse ideas, and a sketchpad always close (day or night!), then I iterate through critiques and feedback.
Clear thinking that makes experiences feel effortless.
I bring clarity to complexity, so that what I design is easy to use, feels natural and makes sense as a whole.
That clear thinking shows up in the structure, the flows and the language, so each part fits together and people always know where they are and what to do next.
With years of industry experience I value familiar interaction patterns, whilst approaching new design challenges and patterns with a thoughtful, well-tested approach.
Crafting with care, quality and precision.
I sweat the small details and the overall experience, from aesthetics and usability through to launch, and take a hands-on approach to keep the bar high.
You’ll often find me refining designs and reviewing engineering outputs myself. At Meta, I established and managed a program to increase the adoption and usefulness of tools that help design and engineering review product quality together before launch.
Gathering feedback and using data to deliver effectively.
I test early and often and use feedback loops to make sure designs are efficient and effective for the user, making data-driven adjustments based on analytics and performance metrics.
I create a safe space for collaborative feedback, leading sessions with team members, stakeholders and clients to make sure the design meets requirements and expectations.
Rarely a straight line. I loop back as the work needs.
Explorations
AI hasn’t changed what good design needs: empathy, judgement and taste. But it’s brought me full circle, back to building: I can think, build and ship faster than ever before.
Case study
Supporting leadership’s drive to cascade information to employees.

The shift to remote onboarding of new starters and the increased use of videos to cascade company wide information led leadership to call for a centralised place for employees to consume videos. I led the design for the creation of Workplace Watch - a feature that enables the creation and consumption of videos and playlists.
Utilise data and insights to understand business goals and user needs
Drive product thinking, strategy and stakeholder alignment alongside PM
Lead collaborative sessions with team and leadership
Own end to end visual and interaction design and delivery
Partner with engineering for build, testing, review and release
Increase the discovery, consumption and engagement of videos on Workplace
Our mission was to help leadership connect employees to company wide information by increasing the discovery of video communication at Meta.
Onboarding new starters remotely is difficult and there is no destination to house video content.
Leadership have no way to create playlists of videos.
Videos located in a soon to be sunset product need to be migrated.
Videos on Workplace are easily missed and quickly get buried in users’ Newsfeed.
Videos are not easy to find or searchable.
New joiners don’t have an easy way to find videos to onboard.
Videos are highly impactful, but their reach is limited by poor discoverability and lack of a proper destination.
Leadership create monthly all hands and have dedicated internal content creators who make videos for employees and post them on Workplace. These videos aim to create a sense of community, keeping employees up to date with trends, latest happenings and information around the globe. However, these videos exist independently on Workplace in Groups and Profiles and in the sea of noise and notifications on Workplace, employees can easily miss them if they are not following the content creators. Videos are also not easy to find or easily searchable.
Videos are increasingly used to onboard new employees remotely after the pandemic ended in-person onboarding, but onboarding reps have no effective way to create and collate videos together to provide a great onboarding experience for remote joiners.
Videos are one of the most commonly used formats of communication for larger groups and audiences at Meta, and engagement increases 2x when a video is included in a post. Additionally, studies have proven that when a human brain views a video, it retains 95% of a message as against 10% retention while reading. If we can improve the creation and discovery of videos, we can cascade information to those who need it, build a sense of community and increase video engagement at Meta.
I developed personas representing different areas of the business, enabling us to focus on the diverse needs and perspectives.
Create a centralised place to create and consume videos and playlists on Workplace
Increase discoverability and engagement of videos by creating a new video surface on Workplace called Watch. Support leadership and remote onboarding programs with the ability to create high quality, themed, video playlists within Watch.
Enable the discovery and consumption of videos that are relevant to employees.
Implement a feature that allows users to create and link videos into a playlist.
Build a destination where videos from Hack TV can be migrated to.
Watch on Workplace
A new destination on Workplace to centrally house video content, enabling the discovery and consumption of videos across the company.
Watch concepts
The initial phase was to create a proposal for a new video surface on Workplace, called Watch. I led the design efforts, utilising a shared design system across Facebook and Workplace. I partnered with teams working on Facebook Watch and the core Workplace surface to reuse components where possible and align with the wider ecosystem.
Phase 1 · Watch concepts
A proposal for a new video surface on Workplace: a home with a featured carousel, continue watching and trending videos, plus channels.


Search results, saved videos and a video menu with a live popup, built with components shared across Facebook and Workplace.



Watch delivery
The initial concepts were designed as an internal only feature, which allowed us to utilise the far left hand column to house an entry point to Watch. However once we aligned with partner teams across Workplace it was decided the Watch feature may roll out externally and therefore I reworked the concepts and moved the side menu into the submenu.
In the discover tab videos were arranged in categories. I partnered with engineering to define the categories and write the algorithms for which videos should appear and when.
Phase 2 · Watch delivery
Once Watch looked set to roll out externally, the entry point moved from the far left column into the submenu.



Introducing Workplace Watch to employees on Discover and in News Feed.


Watch playlists
To enable leadership and onboarding to create themed video playlists I designed a new playlist creation feature in Workplace. Admins would be able to create and manage playlists of videos, by choosing videos that existed on Workplace, compiling them together, giving the playlist an identity and sharing it with an audience. Using Workplace to enable playlist creation gave us the ability to share with predefined groups of employees that existed within Workplace groups.
Phase 3 · Watch playlists
Admins start from an empty playlist and manage all of their playlists in one list.



Search groups for videos, add them to the playlist and drag to reorder.




Playlists are shared with predefined groups of employees that already exist within Workplace groups.

Those who had playlists shared with them would be able to view and consume them within the Playlist tab on Workplace Watch.
Playlist consumption
The Playlist tab on Watch features playlists shared with you, and each playlist page lists all of its videos.


Great for onboarding, and lightweight use but general employees are too busy to watch videos
Although playlists allowed content creators to build destinations for their content and we made finding videos easier through search and discovery, most employees simply don’t have time to watch videos. As always there were many power users or types of job roles that utilise the feature, but overall Watch did not become the destination leadership envisaged to help cascade information to employees.
Next case study
0–1 MVP
Access Manager
Empowering employees to share documents safely across the business.
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