Selected projects

With over 20 years of design, technology and product experience I enable kind and thoughtful early-stage startups and fast-growing scale-ups minimise waste, grow, and make a positive difference.

I’ve worked at all levels in private and public sectors and collaborated with teams in the US, UK, and EMEA (that’s Europe, Middle East, and Asia). I help the businesses I believe in use digital technology to improve the way we live and the impact on our planet – right now, this means focussing on health, energy, biodiversity, human rights, and education. And in case you didn't notice, I really like oxford commas.

Helping communities around the world prevent the spread of mosquito-borne disease

Matt and the team at Cogent helped the World Mosquito Program scale by designing and developing an end-to-end solution to safely track and trace the effect of the Wolbachia bacteria on the mosquito population in low-dengue incidence zones in Australia. This set up the team to scale to Vietnam and Brazil.

I'm proud of...

  • The field research to understand and document the end-to-end process of the Wolbachia replacement release and capture method
  • Co-designing, collaborating, & testing with digital experts and field officers
  • The end-to-end product design across mobile and desktop interfaces for a never-before-seen software system
  • An immediate 2x improvement in the speed of releasing, capturing, and processing field data
  • Hearing that, 10 years later, the application is still in use, still fit-for-purpose, and that it played an important role in scaling the program globally

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Better health knowledge, faster, at a global scale

As the foundational designer, Matt helped Covidence scale from 100 users to over 150,000 users across Australia, EMEA, and North America using lean design and research. The platform is now self-sustaining (and growing), and is used by some of the world’s leading academic institutions including Harvard, Yale, Oxford.

I'm proud of...

  • Helping scale Covidence from less than 100 users to over 150,000 users, globally
  • Helping the Australian Stroke Foundation reduce the time between guideline updates (working evidence for practitioners) from 7 years to under 3 months
  • Using research and design to discover and implement product/market fit and become self-sustaining
  • Beginning with a team of three, left the business when Covidence became a globally distributed team of 15
  • Unifying the organisational vision of the customer/s: Globally scaled research operations and team engagement
  • Playing a Creative Director role on the Covidence global re-brand
  • Supporting funding proposals for multi-million dollar grants

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Saving the Australian Red Cross hundreds of thousands of dollars in technology investment in Web 3.0 and blockchain for the social sector

Born from Australian Red Cross’ innovation program, Humanitech, which aims to place humanity at the centre of technology, Traverse was a social enterprise start-up whose aim was to use Web 3.0 technologies to remove the structural barriers between volunteers and volunteering.

I'm proud of...

  • Helping the Australian Red Cross save hundreds of thousands of dollars by providing robust evidence in an efficient and lightweight way
  • The innovation in the design approach with blockchain prototyping and Web 3.0
  • Unlocking real-world testing of user behaviour by prototyping using Webflow
  • Creating a visual design system of a first-of-its-kind blockchain certificate

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Strategy and systems design for monitoring human rights in immigration detention

Research, strategy and design for Bonigi Monitoring – a platform allowing visitors to immigration detention centres to record data on immigration detention living conditions.

I'm proud of...

  • Helping the founder secure a Myer Innovation Fellowship to get more funding for the project
  • Conducting global design research with the UN Human Rights Comissioner and related stakeholders
  • Defining clear and compelling customer segments for a multi-dimensional data collection platform
  • The end-to-end product design for the brand new data collection platform for professionals and lay visitors to immigration detention centres
  • Product strategy and direction for the evolution of the business beyond MVP
  • Being a member of the Australian Advisory Board for Bonigi: Strategic and design guidance on growing the business

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Foundational design and research for Australia's fastest growing electric-vehicle charging network

Reliable and available charging infrastructure was the number one barrier to preventing electric vehicle uptake in Australia. And now it’s not. Matt drove the founding design for the Chargefox mobile application and the Chargefox brand now used across Australia.

I'm proud of...

  • Helping the founders clarify their vision, purpose, and mission using design methods
  • How it looks and scaled across all media and applications (because how it looks does matter)
  • Using design to clarify problem/solution and product/market fit over a couple of years
  • Help contribute to raising funds by providing clear and compelling evidence of the opportunity based on research
  • Helping define customers and create a product strategy for addressing needs

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Modernising fishery compliance systems for commercial fishers and fishing regulators

Matt helped Spatial Vision and The NSW Department of Primary Industries to complete modernise its aging fishing compliance systems to enable better processes, governance, and usability.

I'm proud of...

  • Understanding a deeply complex regulatory system, Australia-wide, in a matter of days
  • Extending the existing 'website' design system with design componentry more appropriate for tooling/application development
  • Using task-flow modelling and user interviews to help refine (and reduce) requirements
  • Undertaking quantitative analysis of existing application and product use to inform design decisions
  • Ensuring an easy-to-build and flexible responsive user-interface

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Bringing biodiversity back to the Australian landscape at scale

The Platform for Land and Nature Repair (PLANR) empowers landholders across Australia with the information they need to understand, plan, and implement nature protection and restoration projects on their land - a fundamental barrier to participation in environmental markets.

I'm proud of...

  • Co-founding and running a profitable 2m/y business
  • Leading product design and research for the platform's evolution from pilot program to flagship product for the Department in the Nature Repair Market
  • Leading the service design initiative for method and science development across the entire department
  • Fundamentally changing the sector's approach to software design by setting a standard of usability not seen in this sector until PLANR
  • Scaling a product that began with tens of users and seeing exponential growth at the time of writing

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Fractional Head of Design services to give Good Human a path to design team stability and growth

Matt helped Good Human – a software company helping connect the dots between NDIS participants, roster teams, bookings and billings – quickly understand their organisational design team requirements for now and in the future with strategy and scenario planning.

I'm proud of...

  • candid interviews with senior leadership team to understand the organisation deeply in a matter of days
  • being able to use my experience as a Head of Design from previous roles to bring clarity to an organisation and founder quickly and calmly
  • Being offered the job full-time (turned down for personal reasons only)
  • Helping the Head of People craft position descriptions for each scenario so the business could adapt quickly in light of regulatory or social change

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Visualising and reporting on Australian deforestation for the WWF

Matt helped the ANU and WWF design and build a first-of-its-kind prototype for visualising forest change across the Australian landscape.

I'm proud of...

  • Pairing directly with a developer to 'prototype in code' & sharing a functional prototype, in code, in a matter of days
  • Reacting quickly to live feedback as the needs of the project changed amongst political and social influences
  • Simplifying a vision for the product which saved thousands of hours and dollars of development time while still meeting project goals
  • Defining a roadmap for the WWF to enable them to seek funding to develop the platform further

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Helping Cogent become Australia's leading start-up design and technology consultancy with successful exit to Block Inc.

Cogent was a 70-person, deeply values-led, digital product design consultancy based in Melbourne, Australia. It helped founders and digital product teams turn early-stage ideas into thriving digital businesses. It’s one of the only companies in the world to practise a transparent salary model (everyone at Cogent knows what everyone else earns) and has remained in the top 10% of technology businesses worldwide for employee engagement. It was acquired in 2022 by Block Inc.

I'm proud of...

  • Building a world-class product design team (recruiting, hiring, placing, growing)
  • Creating exceptional engagement and career growth (top 10% of tech companies in Australia according to CultureAmp, top 15% globally) for my direct reports
  • Using to design to unlock growth from a <1m/year consultancy to 12m+/year consultancy through the HCD development of Cogent's service offering
  • Leading the strategic direction and facilitation for new company Purpose, Vision, Mission
  • Helped local and global early-stage and scaling minimise waste, grow, and make a positive difference.

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