Independent 2020-24 Case Studies
Summaries of some the projects and programmes I've delivered as a contractor or through my company since 2020. Full case study links are below these summaries.
Visualising Global Supply Chain Health - e2e customer centric digital transformation
Spring 2023 - Spring 2024
Brambles hold approximately 30% of the global pallet market, which the world’s supply chains rely on to move goods. Brambles reasoned that digital could enable them to track the dynamics, health or otherwise of global supply chains - critical as these become increasingly disrupted due to climate change, disease and conflict. Expert in their core business area, Brambles lacked digital and associated product design expertise. Starting with their FMCG business in Spring 23, I and a small team of UX specialists spent 6 months demonstrating the value of customer-engagement as the most effective, risk-free means of ensuring the right products are being built for customers. We were confident, landed the message well, demonstrated the business value and critically built senior internal support. Currently customer-centric discovery programmes are rolling out across regions and sectors.
Building on this success, I spent the next 6 months leading the team to establish a series of co-design workshops involving UX, Product, Sales as well as customers - the aim being to focus the company on customers various real needs for digital illumination of their own supply chains and the business value to them of achieving this. These activities effectively kicked off a customer-led demand pipeline, feeding sales and product funnels with pre-qualified sales leads and product needs.
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Digital product micro-odyssey - A N4P navigates commercial product reality in Greece
Spring 2023
N4P Common Seas mission is to contribute to clearing up the planets ocean plastic pollution. I worked with Common Seas to define a route forward for their digital product ambition. Build work had started, but the problem to be solved, product opportunity, commercial landscape and next steps were uncertain. I assessed the gaps and mapped out pathways to commercial viability.
Systems engineering is a kind of ‘engineering of engineering’ specialism. Grounded in Systems Thinking (the mother and father of Design Thinking), It uses iteration, evaluation and validation rather than post-its and inspiration to solve complex engineering design problems.
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I was asked by a systems engineering company to help them with a new product. An offshore development team was building the tool that the leadership was sure would be a game changer, but everyone was stuck. I diagnosed the problem and prescribed strong medicine. But sunk costs...
March/April 2022
Systems Engineering product innovation.
dog-food uneaten...
Urban landscape vision research
Jan/Feb 2022
Bristol Harbourside is an important resource for many Bristol residents and an iconic visitor attraction for many others. I helped local research and design agency Mace & Menter deliver a short, hyper-local (for me) project that examined the usage patterns of several areas of the Harbour that were considered potentially under-utilised. Our findings provided a rich snapshot of people's relationships with the city.
Putting people's needs at the heart of an International School Group's CRM decision.
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2021
I formed a team to work with a global independent educator. They have schools in over 80- countries as well as a handful of purely online schools. The task was to help them understand how their global admissions experience could be improved for staff and parents and to translate this into a CRM specification that would deliver efficiency and standardisation.
​​My team delivered answers enabling our client to change course and procure a CRM that mapped far more closely to stakeholders current and future needs.
Designing resilience tools to support UK credit customers online
I formed a Discovery team for a major UK retailer to answer the question ‘how can we better serve our credit customers’. The company has a fantastic track record of serving the financially underserved in a market of thin credit files and poor credit records.
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They wanted to understand how to attract new customers and help existing customers weather any forthcoming financial storm. With the help of their UX team we undertook a full remote Discovery to find out how. On the way we gathered many compelling insights and developed a persuasive model of credit behaviour.
2020
Designing mobile micro-financing for Ugandan dairy farmers
2020-21
With emata loans product launch on 5th Feb 2021, I’ve completed an end-to-end project which started in the Spring of 2020 when I arrived in Kampala, Uganda.
I was there to help fintech spin-off emata integrate human centred design into their mission, which is to bring digital and affordable financial products to farmers in East Africa.
Accelerating the design of financial products for low-income groups in Northern India
2020-21
An project with global impact organisation Micro-Save Consulting (MSC) helping to build support for government initiatives aiming to drive financial inclusion amongst the poor.
Time on the ground in Northern India and a lot of remote working delivered a lean, bespoke human centred-design process for MSC that significantly shortens their client's product concept development cycle.
