Nathan Beck

Staff Product Designer Amsterdam, Netherlands

Summary

Staff product designer with 18 years in design, including 6 years on consumer productivity products at scale, and 18+ months focused on AI-native SaaS.

Founded Quillbot's Writing Studio, an integrated AI-powered writing environment (that converts 2x vs standalone tools), and rebuilt the design function of a 15-person organisation following leadership departures. I work end to end: product strategy and research through to high-craft UX and coded prototypes.

Skills

Product design: product strategy, end-to-end product design, design systems, information architecture, interaction and visual design, accessibility (WCAG)

AI product design: agentic and conversational UX, generative UI (genUI), LLM evaluation design, prompt and response interfaces

Research and data: generative and evaluative UX research (UXR), usability testing, opportunity solution trees, experimentation, funnel and conversion analysis

Technical: prototyping in code, HTML and CSS, front-end collaboration, Figma

Leadership: hiring, mentoring, design quality standards, cross-functional facilitation, stakeholder influence

Experience

Staff Product Designer — Quillbot, Amsterdam

Apr 2025 – Present

AI writing platform used by millions of students and professionals.

  • Founded the Writing Studio, unifying core writing tools into a single integrated surface that converts ~100% more users to premium than the separate tools it replaced.
  • Co-led the introduction of agent skills, running continuous discovery to shape claim verification, AI grading, and literature review capabilities; developed a new library of scalable generative UI components that can be dynamically rendered by AI models across the entire product ecosystem.
  • Introduced the Modular Design Framework, which drove strategic alignment around the bet to consolidate capabilities and progressively redesign the broader web ecosystem for visual and architectural coherence.
  • Recruited the Netherlands design team and raised the craft bar across the wider design org; credited by leadership with 'restoring the company's faith in design'.
  • Doubled Grammar Checker conversion YoY by overhauling the entire user experience and introducing richer writing features and an improved upsell framework.

Senior Product Designer II — WeTransfer, Amsterdam

Sep 2023 – Dec 2024

File-sharing platform serving 40–60 million monthly active users.

  • Led design for Request and Receive, the company's principal bet of 2024: lifted M1 retention from 70% to 75%, cut M1 churn by 16% among requesters, and achieved faster adoption than any recent feature launch.
  • Represented the product org on the cross-functional working group that informed WeTransfer's company-wide AI strategy in 2024, reporting to the CEO and board.
  • Wrote the Product Writing Guide, adopted as the shared tone-of-voice reference for designers, product managers and marketers.
  • Built the Universal Accessibility knowledge hub as one of WeTransfer's 'accessibility champions', and mentored junior designers across both web teams.

Senior Product Designer — WeTransfer, Amsterdam

Feb 2020 – Sep 2023

  • Originated multi-member Workspaces from a research programme into how teams organise and share files; quarterly net seats added rose 94% YoY and workspace monthly actives grew around 5% per month.
  • Audited the distributed design system and consolidated into two new libraries, alongside managing continuous accessibility improvements to the company's shared library.

Creative Director — Bliss, Manchester UK / Amsterdam

May 2013 – Feb 2020

Boutique digital agency. Promoted to board member during tenure.

  • Led design and creative direction across client portfolio; managed ~4 person production team.
  • Shipped apps (eg. for Umbro, Jaguar Land Rover, AstraZeneca) and large-scale content systems (for The New Humanitarian I redefined the IA for 80k+ reports across 90+ categories).
  • Ran conversion optimisation programmes, including one that raised a client's YoY goal conversion rate by over 200%.

Earlier — Lead Designer, Bliss (2011–2013). UX Designer, Bliss (2010–2011). Web Designer, Flame Digital (2008–2010).

Education

  • MA (Cum Laude), Comparative Cultural Analysis

    University of Amsterdam — 2021

  • BA (First Class), English Language and Literature

    The Open University, UK

Certifications

  • d.MBA

    Business programme for experienced designers — 2025

  • Design Leadership and Innovation

    Delft University of Technology — 2022

  • Data-driven Product Management Simulator

    GoPractice