Work & Projects

Three cases

Three cases. The first is the design organisation I built and ran at Toyota, and what it produced. In the second I designed the products myself, at Songkick and then at Dopay. In the third I designed and built two AI products this year, one shipped and one in pilot.

The organisation, and what it produced

Case one

Building a design organisation then widening what it was allowed to own

Toyota Connected Europe  ·  2018 to 2026

I built it, ran it for seven years and sold every engagement it worked on.

  • 2 to 40+designers at peak, across six disciplines
  • £10minternal revenue in its peak year
  • 1 of 3recognised core competencies of the business
  • #1permanent retention rate in the company
Read the case

Products I designed myself

Case two

Two products, two markets as designer and as leader

Songkick and Dopay  ·  2008 to 2018

Eight years at Songkick from seed through Series C, then Dopay from concept to a live service. On both I designed the product myself and built the design team around it.

  • #7employee at Songkick, from seed through Series C
  • 10mmonthly active users on Songkick
  • 85%adoption three weeks after Dopay launched
  • $18mSeries A that followed at Dopay
Read the case

Case three

Two AI products this year one shipped and one in pilot

PrepCall and Emotrix  ·  2026

PrepCall, an AI voice coach I designed, built and shipped myself. Emotrix, middleware that interprets emotion signals from face and voice, now in a live pilot under NDA.

  • Solodesigned, built and shipped end to end
  • 20 minlive empathic voice conversation per session
  • Article 5the EU AI Act rule that set the product's direction
  • 2 productsdesigned and built, one live, one in pilot
Read the case

Toyota work is shown at the level it can be shown publicly. Internal commercial figures and unreleased interface work are held back. Happy to go deeper in person. Read all three cases on one page.

Projects

Things I've built

The PrepCall front page

PrepCall

An AI voice coach for interview practice.

Read more
The Emotrix website

Emotrix

Middleware for multimodal emotion intelligence.

Early stage, in a live pilot under NDA

Read more
nudge resizing a headline on a running page, with its panel open

nudge

A Claude Code plugin for the last stretch of building with an agent, the small visual corrections that are painful to describe in words.

Read more

Contact

I’m open to a VP, Head of Design, or Design Director role at a company where AI is reshaping what it builds and how. I also take on interim design leadership, and I’ve been working on AI that reads emotional signals since 2023, first at Toyota and now in my own products.

Email gideonb@me.com, connect on LinkedIn, or download my CV.