I take a listening-first approach and work collaboratively with organisations of all sizes to deliver positive social impact and financial outcomes. My broad human-centred design toolkit means I don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. I know from experience that sustainable, positive change – whether it’s revenue, growth, or social impact, begins with a conversation.
Typical ways I help
With over 20 years experience, I come with a deep and broad human-centred design (HCD) toolkit. The HCD toolkit can be used to solve many problems but I focus on specifically helping:
- Founders who need to minimise waste and grow with end-to-end product and service design
- Academics who need to commercialise their research and expand their reach
- Large organisations who need to innovate
- Socially-aware scaling companies who need to grow faster while building world-class design teams
If you’re looking for buzzwords like UX/UI, Research, Service/Product Design and Capability Building, then read on to get into the specifics.
Research
Or, as I prefer to call it, gathering evidence. Good quality research enables better decision-making throughout the life of a business and product and it underpins everything I base my work on. It needn’t be expensive, or time-consuming. My approach is a ‘just-enough’ one; just enough to help teams or organisations make the best next step. Typical things I can help with:
- Strategic research: Understanding complex eco-systems and relationships between systems
- Market research: Finding, understanding, and categorising demographics
- Product & design research: Testing existing and future product concepts to reduce risk and help prioritise what to focus on next and when
Strategic Design
Using human-centred design and expert facilitation skills, I can help teams and organisations plan and work better. Maybe that’s:
- Organisation strategy: Purpose, Vision and Mission definition
- Product and service definition
- Employee experience
- Customer experience
- Implementation strategies for genuinely living company values
Leadership, Coaching and Training
I believe not only in doing the work, but building capability – teaching founders, organisations, and design teams to fish. I’m a well-respected design practice coach, design team manager and mentor to early-stage founders. Here’s where I typically help:
- Evaluation and maturity mapping
- Human-centered design capability building
- Design resources, toolkits, libraries
- Design career mentoring
- Lean advisory design support for founders and early-stage startups
Product Design & Service Design
My bread and butter is partnering with organisations to improve their positive social impact through the product and services they provide for their customers. How? Well, it’s just about including them in the process. Here’s the list of buzzwords the SEO engines like but, to me, it’s not the task that matters, it’s the outcome.
- User research
- Customer journey mapping
- Ecosytem mapping
- Product strategy
- Product innovation
- MVP scoping and lean, hypothesis-led testing
- UX/UI design
- Design operations
Have a conversation
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch to see if I can help or if you just want some free advice to unstick you. Contact Matt