Simon Carney

About Me

UX Strategist and Enterprise Product Designer

Simon Carney is the founder of Consortium UX, a boutique UX strategy consultancy based in San Francisco. He has spent over thirty years designing products for Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Nokia, Capital One, and Bayer's Climate Corporation, before building Consortium UX to focus on a problem he kept watching early-stage companies get wrong: misdiagnosing the product experience before burning through their runway.

He has been on both sides of the acquisition table: three times acquired, and many more times the first hire brought in to manage the integration aftermath. That experience is what shaped the diagnostic instinct he brings to the work.

He works with VC-backed founders in complex, regulated industries like fintech, agtech, and climate tech, where the stakes of a wrong diagnosis are measured in wasted quarters and lost enterprise pilots, not redesign costs. His clients don't need a builder. They need someone who has been inside the machine at scale and can tell them what is actually broken before anyone writes a line of code.

Simon is based in San Francisco.

Why Founders Misdiagnose Their Product Problems

The founders I work with are smart. They've done the research, built the roadmap, and landed the meetings. What trips them up isn't ambition or effort.  It's that they solved the wrong problem. They built an answer to the question they understood instead of the one their enterprise buyers were actually asking.

I've seen this from the inside. At Capital One, I rebuilt a small business enrollment flow that was completing at 26%. We found the real problem (it wasn't the UI) and got it to 92%. At Climate Corporation, I led the design of tools that thousands of farmers depended on to make decisions that affected their livelihoods. The complexity was real. The cost of misunderstanding the user was real. That experience is what I bring to every diagnostic conversation.

I am not a neutral party. I will tell you what I see, including the things that are uncomfortable to hear. That is the job.

Experience

Where I've Worked

Over thirty years across five industries, from consumer internet in the late 1990s to founding Consortium UX. The companies below represent the sectors where Simon has shipped products, led design teams, and solved complex adoption problems. 

 Fintech:  Capital One · World Savings

 Agtech: Climate Corporation / Bayer

  Tech & Platform: Microsoft / MSN · Nokia · Hearsay Social

 Consumer: AOL / Netscape · Gamespot · Zip2 · PCWorld

 Advertising: Publicis Dialog · Godfrey Q & Partners

Career Timeline

Founder and
Principal UX Strategist

Consortium UX · San Francisco, CA · Sep 2024–present

Boutique UX strategy consultancy serving VC-backed startups in complex, regulated industries. Diagnostic-led approach:  identify the real adoption problem before any design work begins. Client verticals include fintech, agtech, and climate tech.

Director of User Experience

Climate Corporation / Bayer Crop Science · San Francisco, CA · 2023–2024

Promoted to Director of UX following five years across the organization. Led UX strategy across the Climate digital platform and directed a team of 25 UX designers, strategists, and researchers. Climate tools were used by farmers across the United States to manage crop planning, risk, and financial decisions at scale.

Senior Manager, UX Strategy and Research

Climate Corporation / Bayer Crop Science · San Francisco, CA · 2020–2023

Led UX strategy and research for the Climate platform's core product experience. Directed design activities and cross-functional team workflow to develop concepts aligned to customer goals and company KPIs across one of the largest agricultural data platforms in the US.

Senior UX Design Manager           

The Climate Corporation / Bayer Crop Science · San Francisco, CA · 2018–2020

People manager and design lead for the Retail segment of the Climate product. Oversaw a cross-functional UX team delivering experiences for a non-traditional, high-stakes agricultural user base: farmers making real economic decisions on real land. The work required dismantling twenty-five years of conventional product design assumptions to serve users for whom software failure has consequences that go well beyond inconvenience.

Senior UX Design Manager, Small Business Banking

Capital One · San Francisco, CA · 2016–2018

Led a full-stack UX design team of seven (three UX designers, a visual designer, a research resource, a content designer, and a prototyper) focused on the small business digital application process. Rebuilt the enrollment flow from 26% to 92% completion by diagnosing a problem that was not interface-level. Delivered a 350% improvement in overall customer journey through the application. Integrated the design team's work across operations, risk, fraud, and customer experience,  removing the wall between product design and the business consequences of the product.

UI/Visual Design Manager             

Hearsay Social · San Francisco, CA · 2012–2015

Owned the full visual direction of a B2B SaaS application serving insurance and wealth management sales teams,  a product that aggregated multiple social media platforms into a single, consistent interface. Led a complete information architecture redesign of the core product, set the visual language for Android and iOS, and managed a team of three direct reports through three large-scale releases that eliminated accumulated interface technical debt. Every initiative completed during this tenure was adopted into the product and served as the foundation for the work that followed.

Senior Visual Designer / UX Designer

Nokia · San Francisco and Sunnyvale, CA ·2009–2012

Created the visual language and style for third-party social apps (Facebook and Twitter) on MeeGo and Symbian platforms, and for Nokia Games Services including N-Gage and Ovi Games. Applied brand guidelines across PC Web, Mobile Web, and Mobile Device UI. Worked across international teams spread across multiple continents and time zones,  one of the earlier experiences that shaped Simon's understanding of designing for users he would never meet in person.

UX Designer III

Microsoft / MSN · Mountain View, CA ·2006–2008

Lead designer on a strategic, client-facing redesign with global reach:  the first effort to unify the fractured social experiences across MSN properties. Introduced Web 2.0 standards (blogging, inline comments, user-generated content) into a cohesive suite for the first time at Microsoft scale. Key contributor to UX strategy for new features integrated across the MSN brand.

Interactive Art Director                  

Godfrey Q & Partners San Francisco · San Francisco, CA · 2005–2006

Contributed to major client campaigns including the Borland 2006 Advertising Campaign and the Freescale Semiconductor collateral redesign. Developed brand guidelines, interactive storyboards, and CRM-focused outbound email campaigns.

Interactive Art Director

World Savings · Oakland, CA · 2002–2005

Delivered frequent direct email campaigns under strict brand standards. Direct email performance was evaluated against the same parameters as print campaigns; in every instance, email outperformed. Average click-through and conversion rate across campaigns: 6.1%.

Associate Creative Director of Interactive

Publicis Dialog · San Francisco, CA · 2000–2002

Designed consumer relationship programs for HP, Whirlpool, Microsoft, Del Webb, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, and Garnier across a full-service agency handling PR, media, branding, and strategic planning. Consistently delivered on tight advertising deadlines without sacrificing quality.

Early Career (1995–2000)

Sr. Web Graphic Designer and related roles at AOL/Netscape (1999), PCWorld (1999), Gamespot.com (1996–1999), Zip2 (1996), and Dimension X (1995). Continuously employed in web design since 1995, when some of my eventual colleagues were still in diapers.

Education

Academy of Art College, San Francisco
McKinsey Management Accelerator · Bayer Crop Science · 2022