The experience to lead. The skills to deliver.
Sparq is a design partner for product teams, bringing strategic direction and hands-on delivery to your digital products.
We combine experienced design leadership with the imagination to develop new ideas and the AI expertise to turn them into working experiences you can test.
With experience in broadcast and big tech, we specialise in interaction design across mobile apps, connected TV and web. Human judgement sets the direction. AI accelerates the work.
Let’s talkYour ambitions need a team that can act on them.
Product teams carry responsibility for improving today’s experience while deciding what comes next. Agencies may be delivering individual projects, but someone still needs to establish the design direction and maintain coherence across your digital estate.
Sparq provides that leadership and the ability to execute. We work alongside you to understand your priorities, develop ideas and carry the design forward. You gain a partner who can take responsibility, without having to build and manage a design team yourself.
From a possible direction to something you can experience.
Working out what to do next takes design imagination as well as analysis. A new proposition needs a compelling idea. An existing product may need a different approach to a familiar problem.
We explore those possibilities through design, developing concepts that show how an experience could work. Our expertise in AI-driven execution lets us take those ideas further, turning them into living, interactive experiences your team can use, question and test.
That makes the discussion more concrete. You can assess an idea through its behaviour, discover where it falls short and develop it before committing to delivery.
Design experience directs the work. AI helps us deliver it.
Sparq’s AI capability is built into how we design and make things.
Founder Darren Bennett develops and runs structured AI workflows that support the design process, from research and story mapping through to interactive prototypes. He specifies how an experience should behave, directs the tools building it and reviews what they produce.
That expertise allows him to take more of the work into a functioning form himself, keeping the design intent close to its execution.
We also help in-house designers and partner agencies develop these capabilities, introducing practical AI workflows that build on their existing craft.
Find out what deserves investment.
An idea can sound convincing before anyone understands how it will work. An established product can have familiar problems whose causes are less obvious.
We investigate the experience and make possible solutions tangible. That might mean examining how a design system is being applied, following a customer journey across platforms or testing a concept with the people who would use it.
The purpose is to give your team stronger grounds for deciding what to change, where to invest and what needs more evidence.
Keep the whole experience in view.
When several teams contribute to a product, each can deliver its brief while the overall experience drifts.
Sparq provides continuity across those contributions. We develop the flows and prototypes that give agencies a clear starting point, work through design questions with them and review the results against the intended experience.
You have someone who stays across the work, resolves the details between teams and keeps decisions connected to your product priorities.
Experience where interaction matters.
A television is used differently from a phone. Touch introduces different demands from a mouse and keyboard. A coherent product needs to respect those differences.
At Microsoft, Darren worked across Windows teams, designing Windows 11 experiences for touch devices and providing advanced interaction design support. He also trained teams in interaction design and prototyping.
His experience includes senior roles at Channel 4 and Sainsbury’s, alongside work with NatWest. That background informs Sparq’s approach to complex digital products, from the behaviour of an individual control to the experience across platforms.
When the work grows, we grow with it.
A new priority or a bigger brief shouldn’t leave you having to find, brief and manage another team.
Sparq can bring in experienced designers, researchers and prototypers from a network Darren has worked with for years. He assembles the team around what you need, directs the work and stays responsible for its quality.
You get the capacity to take on more, with one lead and one contract. We handle the coordination, so extra support takes work off your hands.
Start with the priority in front of you.
You may need help with a specific product problem, an early proposition or ongoing design direction.
We can begin with a defined piece of work, agreeing the scope and a fixed price before starting. That gives you a practical way to work with Sparq and decide what support you need next.
Let’s talk