Sky Rivers UX Architect

Senior Product Strategy & UX Architecture

I help scaling platforms unlock feature value and drive user retention.

20 years turning complex product data, creator workflows, and multi-layered platform logic into effortless digital experiences. Available for contract, project-based, and fractional roles.

20+Years in Tech
50+Platforms Architected
$550k+VC / Angel Raised
Founder& Former CTO

The Problem I Solve

Your users aren't leaving because you lack features. They're leaving because friction is blocking the value.

When complex platforms scale, high-value features get buried, onboarding flows get bloated, and subtle workflow bottlenecks quietly drain daily active usage. I step in to fix the underlying product experience.

Identify what works

Uncover underutilized features and elevate them to build sticky, daily usage habits.

Remove friction

Streamline multi-step workflows, creator dashboards, and complex onboarding paths.

Optimise retention

Turn casual, confused users into engaged power users without months of discovery.

Deep Domain Expertise

Built for modern creator, productivity & media ecosystems

Creator Economy

Creator & media platforms

Streamlining publishing tools, analytics tracking, audience retention loops, and tier setup — so creators spend less time struggling with software and more time building community.

Productivity

Design & productivity suites

Uncluttering complex toolsets, refining team collaboration flows, and building intuitive design systems that accelerate time-to-value for new users.

Wellness & Audio

Habit-forming & wellness apps

Optimising daily activation triggers, audio/content playback journeys, spatial soundscapes, and community monetisation loops.

Modern Tech Stack

AI & automated workflows

Leveraging generative AI research (Gemini, Claude) and modern edge deployment (Cloudflare Pages, VS Code) to rapidly prototype and ship live solutions.

How We Can Work Together

Flexible engagement models for product & design leaders

I collaborate directly with internal product teams, design leaders, and engineering leads — whether you need an embedded specialist to solve a stuck feature, or senior UX leadership to guide a launch.

20–30 hrs / week

Part-time / contract

Embedded inside your team as a Senior UX Architect or Product Strategist.

Fixed scope

Project-based sprints

Targeted execution to solve specific UX bottlenecks: creator onboarding redesign, analytics dashboard simplification, monetisation flow fixes.

Advisory

Fractional PX lead

Senior strategic oversight to mentor design teams, review roadmaps, and align interface decisions with retention metrics.

Client Endorsements

What clients say about working together

Tom Brooks headshot

Sky was great to work with. She's incredibly smart, efficient and always delivers. Sky helped us get the business off the ground. She worked incredibly fast and was very data-driven, which is something we were focused on from the beginning.

Tom Brooks Co-Founder, Elder
Olivier Dion headshot

Sky knows exactly how startups operate, and we have been able to talk at a very high level about our tech and product requirements. Sky made strong UX propositions and worked closely with us to create a great product.

Olivier Dion CEO, OneCub
Stuart Sunderland headshot

We needed a project completed quickly and to a high standard, and Sky delivered. She asked all the right questions, has a fantastic understanding of the process and produced very high-quality designs.

Stuart Sunderland Founder/CEO, City Pantry
Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin headshot

Sky is an awesome designer, a true "design magician" who has a fantastic eye for detail. When Sky takes on a project, she is able to see the end vision instantly and comes up with creative designs that are intuitive and easy to follow.

Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin CEO, BlueChilli Technology
Alan Sharp-Paul headshot

Working with Sky was an absolute pleasure. She has the key quality in a designer of being able to very quickly understand a client's brief, even when the client is not necessarily clear themselves.

Alan Sharp-Paul Co-Founder & Co-CEO, ScriptRock
Andrew Jessup headshot

Sky is who you call when you want just the right balance of creativity, ingenuity and integrity. She's a consummate professional who is able to take a complex UX problem, distil it down to its bare essentials, and repackage it beautifully.

Andrew Jessup Founder, Noosbox
Nikki Durkin headshot

Sky did a fantastic job redesigning our website. She understood the brief very well and created a design that was exactly what I was looking for, whilst also improving the usability of the site. She was incredibly accommodating with feedback and changes, and always delivered on time.

Nikki Durkin Founder/CEO, 99 Dresses
Morten Lauritsen headshot

Sky's three main strengths are high quality, agility and efficiency. We engaged Sky to design our Foodlog website basically from scratch. She is a top-quality designer who was flexible to our changes during the process. Sky works very fast, and the whole web design process took much less time than anticipated.

Morten Lauritsen Founder/CEO, Foodlog