I work as a senior interaction designer and user centred design consultant at Opencast, a digital and technology consultancy. I work across all phases of delivery, from discovery through to live, on complex government services.
How I think
I look at problems from two directions. Zoomed out across the whole service to understand context, dependencies and impact. Zoomed in to define what needs to be designed and why. Understanding the problem comes before designing the solution.
All of the services I work on are complex. They involve layers of policy, business rules, technical constraints and competing user and business needs that have to be understood and held together at the same time. I am comfortable working in that kind of environment and know how to make progress without having all the answers.
I lead in all aspects of designing products or services, upholding user centred design and accessibility standards. I treat accessibility as a design principle, not a final check. Every design decision I make considers whether the service will work for everyone who needs to use it.
What I do
I work across the full design lifecycle, from understanding the problem space through to building and iterating on solutions. In my core design work, I:
- map as-is journeys through complex legacy services to understand what exists before designing what should
- create end-to-end user flows that map intended interactions, assumptions, concept ideas and open questions at each step
- produce to-be journey maps that show the future service screen by screen, forming the detailed design blueprint for what gets built
- design and test wireframes, screen concepts and prototypes at all fidelity levels, including high-fidelity UI screens where needed, using Figma, Miro and the GDS HTML prototyping toolkit
- design for accessibility at every stage of a service, applying WCAG 2.1 standards and working with accessibility leads and DAC audits to make sure nothing gets missed
- create user scenarios to understand how different user types and their interactions affect a service end-to-en
- design and facilitate workshops and co-design sessions with stakeholders and users, including ideation sessions to generate and prioritise design concepts based on user needs and pain points
- plan and conduct user research, including usability testing and guerrilla testing, to validate concepts and identify user needs
- analyse research findings to identify user needs, patterns and opportunities, and present insights to teams and stakeholders through data visualisation and storytelling
- use storyboarding and sketchnoting to build empathy and bring research insights to life
Beyond my core design work, I also:
- run stakeholder engagement sessions to draw out business process knowledge, pain points and emerging requirements, and document findings to keep teams aligned
- navigate challenging stakeholder relationships, including pushback on design decisions, conflicting priorities and resistance to user centred approaches
- present work and communicate design decisions to senior stakeholders, including directors and deputy directors, making complex design thinking accessible to non-design audiences
- perform desk research such as analytics reviews, heuristic reviews and competitive analysis
- analyse and select design systems and component libraries, including GDS, DWP, HMRC, MOJ, Carbon and Material Design
- write and maintain design histories, Confluence documentation and findings write-ups to keep teams and future teams aligned
- run content audits to examine how useful content is and identify how to improve it
- develop information architecture to organise and structure content within services and products
- mentor junior designers on projects
How I work
I work in multidisciplinary agile teams alongside user researchers, developers, product managers and content designers, and I iterate on design decisions throughout delivery based on what research and testing tells us.
My experience spans interaction design, user research and content design. That breadth means I understand the work of the people around me and helps the whole team move faster.
Whilst working in central government for a number of years, I’ve delivered services to the Government Service Standard across all phases, from discovery through to live.
AI is changing how services get designed and built. I’m approaching these changes with the same user centred rigour I bring to everything else, understanding where AI genuinely helps users and where it doesn’t.
Throughout my career, I’ve worked for a wide range of public sector organisations and private sector brands in retail, technology and financial.