The written version
I built the front of this site as an assistant that answers as me, and I know that is not everyone鈥檚 idea of a good time. So here is the same knowledge as a document you can read, scan or print.
Every answer my assistant can give is below, grouped the way people tend to ask. Nothing here needs JavaScript, an API key or a working microphone (just the scroll wheel).
I am Peter Kerr, a UX Writer and Product Designer in Newcastle upon Tyne. I write the words, design the interface and build the thing, which is why this site is a bot rather than a PDF.
These are the products I shipped and the numbers they moved.
I joined Picsart in 2022 to write the words and stayed until 2026 designing the product. I was the sole UX writer for every Editor and GenAI feature, the core designer across many of the AI flows, and I grew the writing practice into a team. The AI Logo Maker and the Batch Editor rework are the two I would show you first.
I designed and wrote the AI Logo Maker end to end, then we launched it on the main stage at WebSummit Lisbon. 50% of monthly active users tried it, with a 75% export rate. The trick was turning a form into a conversation, because solopreneurs care about the result and not the word 'prompt'.
I inherited the Batch Editor as a tool nobody understood and reworked the whole flow around what the research told us. Renaming 'Upload' to 'Home' gave people somewhere to come back to, and conversion went from 2% to 30% with a 12% lift in paying monthly actives. Familiar language beat clever language every single time.
I built a Python crawler and analysis tool that reads our Google Play reviews, over 39,000 of them going back to 2018. You search a term and see how real users actually use it, with context like average review length and an emoji filter for emotional state. There was no tooling budget, so I designed and coded it myself, and I still use it most days.
Writing for AI means writing for uncertainty, so I anchor people to the outcome rather than the technology. We tested eight different labels for the generate action and 'Generate' won every time, whatever the design around it. Artificial problems still need human solutions.
I was Principal Product Writer at Turnitin from 2014 to 2022, and the first UX writer they ever had. I built the discipline from nothing, set the information architecture across 13,000 help articles that are still in use, and shipped integrity features used by millions of students daily. That is where I learned to make quality propagate rather than police it.
Document Flags gave instructors a way to spot contract cheating without us accusing anybody. I wrote every flag with its own explanation, made zero flags a positive state rather than an empty one, and harmonised the language across both platforms. Instructors wanted evidence they could judge for themselves, so that is what the copy handed them.
Roster Sync arrived as an MVP with every piece of information present and no way to understand it. I split the workflow into steps you can leave and return to, and wrote the waiting states honestly, because syncing a student information system can take hours. Administrators do this once a year, so the copy has to teach as well as instruct.
Users had nowhere to check whether a problem was theirs or ours, across 32 different access paths. I designed a self-serve Known Issues page with a hierarchy that starts at the thing people do know, an RSS feed per path, and four status pills so progress is visible at a glance. A support ticket should be the last resort, not the only one.
Yes, on both sides of the job. At Picsart I was the writer and designer on the GenAI features, including the AI Logo Maker, and on my own time I built ChatYourBook, an AI reading companion with streaming answers in the margin. The assistant you are talking to right now runs on Claude, and I wrote and built that too.
I have spent over a decade leading UX design and writing teams, including building the writing discipline at Turnitin from a team of one. At Picsart I set the framework a world-class team could work inside, which meant hiring, critique, and standards people actually wanted to follow. Growing other writers is the highest leverage thing I do.
The Batch Editor rework is the one I am proudest of, because 2% to 30% conversion came out of language and structure rather than a rebuild. The AI Logo Maker launch at WebSummit Lisbon is a close second for the sheer nerve of it. If you want the personal answer then it is ChatYourBook, because I designed, wrote and coded every part of that one.
This is how I get from a vague problem to words and interface that hold up.
I'm an adaptable writer who has dipped their toes into many different forms of writing. My Masters in Creative Writing taught me that everything comes down to telling a good story. That could be writing a podcast (like I did with The Written Word for Turnitin), press releases, technical white papers, or designing whole GTM campaigns around features like Picsart Playground.
Yes, and not in a make-a-prototype-then-hand-it-over way. I build in React, TypeScript and CSS, I write Python for research tooling, and I have four live products of my own as the receipts. This site is the most recent one, so you are standing in the evidence.
At Turnitin, I built the voice and tone system every product team wrote with, as principles and patterns rather than a list of banned words. It had to work when I was not in the room, so I wrote it to be teachable and gave people examples they could argue with. Application of that voice is the real trick. I've led seminars in teams to upskill them on how to speak as the company and even created Claude Skills to act as an agentic layer to create a baseline standard.
I care about standards that keep working after I leave the room, so I write them down and put them where the work already happens. That has meant component copy standards, annotated patterns, and taking design through Turnitin's adoption of Shape Up so the process served quality instead of the calendar. Quality has to be a team's first thought, not its last.
Research is a design material for me, not a gate I have to clear. I run moderated sessions to hear people use their own words, unmoderated language tests to check whether a phrase carries, and I build tooling when the dataset is too big to read by hand. The point is always to replace my opinion with theirs.
Accessible writing and accessible code are the same discipline to me, which is clear structure and no surprises. I build with real buttons, live regions for anything that streams, visible focus states, and full respect for reduced motion. If it only works for people like me, it does not work.
I prototype in code because motion is something you feel rather than something you can review in a static file. Everything I ship rides one easing curve and one composited transform, with the camera state living in a ref so React never re-renders mid-animation. Figma tells you the idea, the browser tells you the truth.
This site is a Next.js and TypeScript app where the head, the bubbles and the dock are all one assistant. Common questions never touch the network, because I wrote them into a local knowledge base with a small NLP matcher, and anything genuinely new streams from Claude in my voice. If you would rather just read, the whole thing exists as text at /classic.
A portfolio is usually me guessing which questions you have and writing two thousand words around all of them. This way you ask the one you arrived with and I answer it, which is much closer to the conversation we would have anyway. It also happens to be a working demo of the AI product work I want to keep doing 馃檪
This is the route I took into the job, and what I build when nobody is paying me.
I'm Peter Kerr, a UX Writer and Product Designer who engineers his own ideas. I spent 2022 to 2026 at Picsart as Staff UX Writer and Content Designer and the eight years before that at Turnitin. Words, interface, and code all parts of the jigsaw that makes up my job.
I studied a BSc in Computer Forensics and then an MA in Creative Writing, both at Northumbria. Forensics taught me how a machine actually works from the hardware up, and my MA taught me that voice is something you build rather than something you find. I found technical writing that mixed the technical with creative in just the right way. Everything I do sits where those two meet.
I designed, built and shipped four products that are live right now, from chatyourbook.com to airport-guesser.com. Each one went from buying the domain to real users with nobody to hand the hard parts to. Shipping 0 to 1 is how I learn what my design decisions actually cost.
ChatYourBook is an AI reading companion for classic literature, and it is live at chatyourbook.com. You highlight a passage, ask a question in the margin, and never lose track of a character again, which is the thesis behind every AI product I like, because the collaborator belongs inside the work. I designed it, wrote it, coded it and run the freemium side of it.
I am the person in critique who asks the question nobody else thought of, and I would rather be usefully wrong on Monday than politely vague for a fortnight. I work in the open, write things down, and bring research instead of taste when we disagree. Expect directness, jokes, and an unreasonable number of links.
My strength is that I can take an idea from a sentence to a shipped screen without a handoff, so the intent survives the journey. I am unusually good at making standards other people actually want to use, and I move fast because I can build the thing rather than describe it. Words, interface and code in one head saves a lot of meetings.
I have not shipped WebGL at scale yet, so if you need deep GPU rendering on day one then I am not that person (though I would learn it in public, loudly). I also default to writing the standard before the stakeholder is ready to read it, which I have had to learn to slow down. And I get attached to a nice sentence, so I edit ruthlessly to compensate.
A Principal UX Writer I worked with said most writers focus on the words on the page while I build systems instead, which is the kindest accurate thing anyone has said about me. A Product Design Director called me the person in critiques who asks the question nobody else thought of. A VP of Product said my work on an AI launch was the difference between confusion and clarity.
Off the clock I am at the theatre, deep in a fantasy novel, or chipping away at Korean language and culture (slowly, stubbornly, mostly vocabulary). The sassiest thing about me is that I will rewrite your error message in my head while you are still talking. I also built a theme park ride height checker, so rollercoasters are a personality trait now.
These are the logistics, from where I live to how fast I reply.
I am looking for a role where writing, design and code count as one job, ideally on an AI product where the interface is still being invented. Staff or principal level, high trust, close to real users. If your team keeps saying it needs someone who can do all three, that is the conversation I want to have.
I am in Newcastle upon Tyne and I work remotely, travelling for the things that genuinely deserve a room. I am open to conversations right now, for permanent roles or contract work. My hours overlap comfortably with the UK, Europe and the US East Coast.
Email me at me@peterkerr.co.uk and I will reply quickly, because I would always rather talk than tidy my portfolio. LinkedIn works too, if that is where you live. If you want the long written version first, /classic has the whole site as text.
Yes, let's put something in the diary. Pick whatever slot suits you and I'll be there, and half an hour is usually plenty for a first chat.
I have written up six projects in full. Each one has the problem, what I did and what it changed.
Picsart 路 Staff UX Writer & Product Designer 路 2022 to 2026
I rebuilt a logo tool around solopreneurs and reacquired the users who had grown out of us.
Launched on the main stage at WebSummit Lisbon. 50% of MAU tried the tool, with a 75% export rate.
Picsart 路 Staff UX Writer & Product Designer 路 2022 to 2026
I turned a tool nobody understood into one people paid to keep using.
Conversion went from 2% of users to 30%, with a 12% rise in pMAU from people subscribing to use it more.
Picsart 路 Staff UX Writer & Product Designer 路 2022 to 2026
I built a Python tool to read 39,000 reviews and tell me how people really use our words.
39,000 reviews analysed, and I still use it most days to back the changes I take to the C-level.
Turnitin 路 Principal Product Writer 路 2014 to 2022
I wrote integrity flags that hand instructors evidence without ever calling a student a cheat.
Turnitin 路 Principal Product Writer 路 2014 to 2022
I broke an unforgiving cross-system setup into steps an administrator can leave and come back to.
Turnitin 路 Principal Product Writer 路 2014 to 2022
I designed, wrote and built one self-serve page covering 32 different integration paths.
Turnitin 路 Principal Product Writer 路 2014 to 2022
I built the voice every product team wrote with, and the guides that made them want to.
Email is the fastest way to reach me and I answer it myself. I am based in Newcastle upon Tyne and I work remotely.
Ask me anything and my assistant answers in my own words.
My previous portfolio, kept exactly as it was, with the full case studies, my CV and references.
A whole application built as a Miro board, because a cover letter was never going to show the work.
These are live, they are mine end to end, and they are the reason I can say I ship.
Talk to the book you are reading.
Height rules for theme park rides, in one answer.
A quiz that gives you something real to talk about.
Guess the airport from the runway.