ABOUT / TORONTO, CANADA
I design products—and the systems that make great products possible.
I’m Owen Mullings, a principal designer and product design executive based in Toronto. Over the past 15+ years, my work has spanned product design, consulting, entrepreneurship, and enterprise design leadership.
01 / SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE
My engineering background shapes how I approach design. I look beyond the interface to
understand the people, processes, incentives, and technical constraints influencing an
experience. That systems perspective helps me turn ambiguous challenges into clear
models that business, product, design, and engineering teams can use together.
As a leader, I focus on creating clarity, developing people, strengthening
cross-functional partnerships, and building practices that make quality sustainable. My
goal is not simply to help teams produce better designs; it is to help organizations
become better at designing.
02 / CAPABILITIES
What I bring
Product and design strategy
Design organization and operating-model development
Team building, coaching, and career development
Executive and cross-functional alignment
Product discovery and facilitation
Design systems, quality, and accessibility
Experience in complex and regulated environments
Experience, framed by outcomes
20
YEARS AS A DESIGNER
Product, platform, and service design since 2006, from individual contributor to executive.
13+
YEARS IN MANAGEMENT
Leading teams at National Bank and Scotiabank, founding valet, and leading the Graduate Engineering Society at Guelph.
HEAD OF PRODUCT DESIGN & RESEARCH
National Bank Independent Network
2021 — Present
2021 — Present
Lead design for Compass, NBIN's next-generation platform for Canadian wealth management
firms. Built the extensibility model, navigation model, and design language; grew the
team from a single senior designer into a full product design and research function.
Aligned internal and external teams on a common product vision and secured a $31M raise
across four years to fund the roadmap.
DIRECTOR OF USER EXPERIENCE
Scotiabank Global Banking & Markets
2017 — 2021
2017 — 2021
Promoted from Principal UX Specialist to Director. Transitioned UX from a service
function into a core integrated discipline for the Derivatives Platform Modernization
program. Formalized a design system and a shared process of discovery, design reviews,
and personal development across a 60+ person delivery organization.
SENIOR PRODUCT DESIGN CONSULTANT
Rangle.io
2015 — 2017
2015 — 2017
Led discovery, product planning, design, and front-end development for enterprise
clients. Established a lean, reusable design practice—clarity canvases, story mapping,
design systems built in code—and championed it internally and externally to strengthen
Rangle's position in the product strategy market.
FOUNDER & CEO
valet
2013 — 2015
2013 — 2015
Started a local services marketplace after winning Lean Startup Machine and Startup
Weekend. Designed, built, and marketed a responsive web app that turned customer
research into a catalog of well-curated services, growing the business to 26 service
providers across Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, and Guelph.
PRODUCT DESIGNER
D2L Brightspace
2009 — 2013
2009 — 2013
Designed the flagship Brightspace learning management system used by 15M+ daily active
users. Led the roadmap and prototype for the shift from a suite of apps to an integrated
platform, ran a customer roadshow, earned two patents, and won the D2L Superstar peer
nomination award. Author of two patents on automatic task time estimation and scheduling
(US20140278686 A1) and systems for providing learning modules (US20120276516 A1).
STRATEGIC PROCUREMENT ANALYST · BUSINESS ANALYST
Shoppers Drug Mart
2006 — 2007
2006 — 2007
Supported enterprise procurement strategy, analytics, and technology transformation
across IT, HR, finance, operations, and corporate services. Contributed to $3M in
savings in under a year through strategic sourcing and analysis of 100,000+ transaction
records, and served as business analyst for the Lawson procurement system implementation
from requirements through go-live, including approval workflows, org structures, and
end-user training.
GRADUATE RESEARCH & STUDENT LEADERSHIP
University of Guelph
M.A.Sc. 2009 · B.Sc. 2006
M.A.Sc. 2009 · B.Sc. 2006
M.A.Sc. in Systems Engineering & Computing and B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering.
Graduate research applied user-centered design, systems engineering, and multi-criteria
decision analysis to complex public-health information: I designed and built a
decision-support system for prioritizing food-borne pathogens affecting the Canadian
population, translating scientific evidence on health, market, and social impact into an
information-rich prioritization experience. As President and Vice President External of
the Graduate Engineering Society, I represented graduate students across department,
university, and student-government forums, managed budgets and services, launched
research-sharing sessions, and built an alumni career-networking application and a
digital collaboration platform for engineering students.
Interested in working together?
I’m open to conversations about design leadership roles, design transformation, organizational design, and product strategy.