Design and Innovation
This period of my career was driven by a desire to create better products and services for customers and to help businesses create real value to society.
- Innovation facilitation
- Service strategy and design
- Coach and mentor
ANZ, NAB, Department of Defence, Australian Government, NZ Government, AGL, Energy Australia, HBF, Coles, BHP, Barwon Water, Beyond Blue, CoreLogic
Fjord
2016 - 2019
Determined to move into the design and innovation field I refreshed my design knowledge and talked to anyone and everyone about service design. One of those places was Fjord and a month later I was part of their team.
At Fjord I evolved to become a Service Design Lead and headed up projects for AGL, NZ Government and Energy Australia along with several other internal initiatives. With each of these, I oversaw the creative output of the team, acted as the key contact point for clients and mentored the junior talent. I also contributed to global and local thought leadership initiatives, including several Fjord Trends Reports.
PwC
2019 - 2022
In 2019, I moved to PwC along with a group of Fjord designers to help elevate their design practice.
Upon joining PwC I was given three main tasks.
The first was to improve the culture within the existing team. I immediately formed a team of culture champions across the 4 offices. Our mission was to create a place where each team member felt they were empowered to explore and express their creativity. Together we coordinated events, training, knowledge shares and social gatherings.
The second task was to elevate the quality of work coming out of the studio. Rather than lead projects, I acted more as a coach and joined teams to support the project lead to help them achieve a higher level output. We delivered better quality artifacts such as dynamic digital experience maps and new design methods that could be used by other teams in the future. These have also been shared globally as best practice. I would also work closely with the team members ‘on the tools’ to critique and mentor them as they produced the final deliverables.
The final task was to help demonstrate the value design brings to the table. Working closely with senior partners and client leads, I’ve convinced them to shift away from sharing POV documents and to instead invest in building POCs to put in the hands of clients. This approach has unlocked pipelines of work worth over $2m.
These three goals are all in addition to my BAU role of a Strategy Lead. Clients I’ve worked with include Coles, BHP and HBF. Typically my engagements are at the tip of the spear where the emphasis is building the relationship and pipeline of $3m.
Finally, my current pet project is Design Economics - how to better measure and quantify design. I believe designers need to be better storytellers when it comes to the value it brings and how to measure it. This will dovetail into PwC's new Growth through Experience framework.
Cognizant
2023 - 2024
In 2023 I joined the team at Cognizant and reconnected with a crew of designers and innovators from Fjord and PwC.
The remit was to build the Product and Design practice and take on the market leaders Accenture. I took on the role of Strategic Design Director and acted a a bridge between the Business Consulting unit and Design.
The first priority was to establish a quality benchmark for strategic design at Cognizant. I was fortunate to have a brilliant client in AGL to collaborate with and build an experience strategy for a new challenger business. Together we also experimented with GenAI to build accelerate and elevate our workflow and deliver work faster and at a higher level than previously possible.
The success of this project lead us to other significant strategic design engagements for Barwon Water and CoreLogic.
I was also then invited to speak with the heads of retail and innovation for Dyson, DFS (part of the LVM) and Chanel about how digital can generate deeper customer engagement in physical stores.
