My role wasn't to design the products. It was to help multiple teams build their design capability and confidence to make better product decisions themselves.
The Design Age Institute brought together five organisations to develop new products and services for an ageing population. Each organisation had a different product, business model, team structure and level of design maturity, but all were facing a similar challenge: they needed stronger design leadership to turn ambitious ideas into meaningful products.
My role was to provide that leadership across the programme.
I worked with CEOs, founders, product leaders, engineers and multidisciplinary teams to clarify direction, strengthen design capability and help teams make better product decisions.
Rather than applying the same design process to every organisation, I diagnosed what each team needed and adapted my involvement accordingly. From strategic coaching and product direction to research, design reviews, specialist recruitment and hands-on leadership.
The aim wasn't to become the designer for five companies.
It was to leave each organisation more capable of making good design decisions than when I arrived.
*Much of this work is covered by confidentiality agreements, so the examples below focus on my role, approach and impact rather than sharing confidential product details.
Impact
• 75%
improvement in design quality
across the five projects within six months
• 65%
improvement in usability
measured through RCA evaluations
• 4/5
organisations continued investing in design
after the programme
• 35+
research insights
generated through engagement with older adults
• 10
organisations and partners
trained in human-centred inclusive design
The programme also produced design processes, templates and frameworks that were incorporated into RCA's reusable toolkit for future programmes.
What I did
Led design delivery across five organisations, simultaneously, adapting my role to each team's product, business and capability needs.
• Set goals, milestones and design direction with senior stakeholders
• Diagnosed gaps in product strategy, research and design capability
• Coached CEOs, founders and multidisciplinary teams
• Challenged assumptions and reframed problems through user evidence
• Planned and facilitated research, co-design and prototype testing
• Scoped and recruited external design specialists where capability was missing
• Monitored progress, surfaced risks and adapted plans as projects changed
• Connected design decisions to commercial, technical and operational realities
• Delivered human-centred design training to 10+ organisations and partners
• Stepped into an interim Head of Design role when one project required more intensive leadership
Each project was evaluated and validated through the same underlying methodology:
→Understanding people's needs
→ prototyping
→ testing
→ learning
→ iterating
→ and deciding / repeating.
....Until the final deadline.
Designing around the realities of older users
Centaur Robotics had been developing a self-balancing electric vehicle for older adults. The technical proposition was strong, but the Electric Vehicle human-machine interface needed to account for the physical and cognitive realities of its users, including people with arthritis and limited dexterity.
I led two full-day research workshops with 20+ older adults, bringing engineers and the product team into the process.
We tested physical interface prototypes, exploring button types, iconography and placement.
The work translated user evidence into concrete product decisions about how people could safely and confidently control the vehicle.
My role: Research leadership · Cross-functional facilitation · Product decision-making.
Changing what the team thought it needed to solve
Briteyellow was developing an XR-based train journey planning and navigation experience for older adults.
The company had strong technical expertise, but limited UX and research capability. There were also challenges around technology compatibility, product complexity and stakeholder alignment.
My most important contribution wasn't designing the experience. It was changing how the senior team thought about design.
I challenged the initial focus on solution delivery and helped shift the team towards exploration, research and iteration. I reshaped the design brief, helped identify the UX and research capability needed, and supported the team in translating user insight into product direction.
The resulting work contributed to 10 commercial bids with Transport for Wales and the proposition subsequently moved towards UK-wide deployment.
My role: Product direction · Leadership coaching · External design leadership · Stakeholder alignment
Making inclusive products desirable, not just functional
Invisible Creations wanted to develop mobility products that helped older people maintain independence without the stigma often associated with assistive living products.
I identified a capability gap and sourced external design support, then led user research with 12+ older adults using physical prototypes, VR, surveys and interviews.
The research explored the wider context of how people move through their homes and gardens, rather than treating the grab rail as an isolated product.
This helped uncover opportunities for assistive features to become part of attractive everyday objects, including garden products, window boxes and outdoor lighting.
The resulting range is now available through B&Q.
My role: Capability building · External design direction · Research leadership · Product strategy
Turning user insight into a product people wanted to live with
Supersmith was developing a new three-wheeled mobility scooter designed to address problems around stability, manoeuvrability and the social stigma associated with conventional mobility products. Their solution was distinctive: seating riders at 90% of standing height to overcome the negative social dynamics of low sitting positions
My role was primarily to coach the team rather than take over the design.
I helped them connect user insight to concrete product decisions and challenged how the product's aesthetics communicated its values of modernity, durability and safety.
The focus was not simply making the product look better. It was helping the team understand how product design, user perception and brand positioning needed to work together.
My role: Design coaching · Product positioning · User insight · Design direction
Turning inclusive research into a system that could scale
Applied Information Group as working towards a national walking and cycling wayfinding system that would better serve an ageing and increasingly diverse population.
I guided the team in developing an Inclusive Wayfinding Toolkit, bringing together research and design principles around mobility, socialisation, access to services, safety and confidence.
The work moved beyond a single project or intervention towards a framework that could influence how wayfinding was considered across different contexts and organisations.
It also contributed to wider discussions around ageing and inclusive design.
My role: Design strategy · Inclusive design · Research synthesis · Framework development
A significant part of my role was creating the conditions for teams to do better work themselves.
I help form goals and milestones at the beginning of each project for foundation kick-offs, then maintained a regular rhythm of weekly check-ins across all five organisations.
I used those conversations to surface obstacles early, challenge scope creep and keep user needs visible when technical or commercial pressures began to dominate. Where capability gaps existed, I connected teams with the right specialists and helped scope and recruit external design support.
Where teams needed more direct leadership, I increased my involvement. One project required a much deeper intervention, so I stepped into an interim Head of Design role, conducting detailed design reviews and coaching the engineering team and stakeholders directly.
This flexibility was important.
My job wasn't to follow a prescribed process. It was to recognise what was preventing each organisation from moving forward and intervene at the right level.
Snapshot. Weekly catch-ups cross all 5 companies
Many of the teams had never conducted structured user research before. My role was not simply to run the sessions, but to help teams learn how to use testing as a decision-making tool.
I worked with engineers, developers, psychologists, sales and manufacturing teams to define what we needed to learn, identify the riskiest assumptions, and design sessions around specific user behaviours and decisions.
During sessions, I coached teams to avoid leading questions and confirmation bias, while keeping conversations focused on the user's experience rather than whether they “liked” the concept.
After testing, I facilitated synthesis with the teams, separating observations from assumptions and translating findings into clear product and design decisions.
This helped teams move from “users said they liked it” to “this evidence tells us we should change X.”
For the EV project, I facilitated two full-day workshops with 20+ older adults, testing physical controls, button types, iconography and placement with participants with different levels of dexterity.
Whreas for the grab-rail project, we combined physical prototypes, VR, surveys and interviews to explore how mobility needs changed across different situations in and around the home. The important part wasn't the testing format itself. It was choosing the right method to answer the product question.
Contextual understanding
VR & physical prototypes' testing
Product feedback & comparison surveys
Across five very different organisations, risk rarely came from one source. Product decisions were shaped by user needs, technical constraints, funding, commercial viability, internal capability and stakeholder alignment.
I helped teams identify these risks early and make them visible before they became expensive problems. This meant challenging assumptions about the user, testing uncertain product concepts, surfacing capability gaps, connecting teams with specialist expertise, and helping founders think through route-to-market, funding and agency decisions.
Where a risk couldn't be resolved internally, I brought in the right expertise or changed the programme approach. For one company, this meant stepping into an interim Head of Design role to provide deeper design direction and help the engineering team regain momentum.
The goal wasn't to eliminate risk. It was to make uncertainty visible early enough that teams could make better decisions.
A few months into the programme, I also delivered human centered design training to more than ten organisations and programme partners.
The session provided practical tools, templates and frameworks for incorporating user-centred thinking into product development.
But the larger goal was cultural.
Many teams were accustomed to thinking about design as the final stage of product delivery.
I wanted them to see it as a way of defining better opportunities and making better decisions earlier.
That shift became a recurring theme across the programme:
"Design isn't just how you make something. It's how you decide what is worth making".
You can read a summary of this talk here.
Snapshot of me providing User Centered Design training
Design Maturity Level Framework explained across all teams
The measurable improvements were significant, but the most important outcome was the change in how teams approached decisions.
Across the programme:
• Design quality improved by 75%
• Usability improved by 65%
• 4 of 5 organisations continued investing in design after the programme
• More than 35 research insights were generated directly with older adults
• Design frameworks and templates were incorporated into RCA's reusable toolkit
But the deeper shift was in the questions teams began asking. Instead of:
"What should we build?"
They increasingly asked:
"Who are we building this for?"
"What evidence do we have?"
"What problem are we actually solving?"
That was the real measure of success. The organisations didn't simply leave with better design outputs. They left with stronger design capability.
Across five very different organisations, my role constantly shifted. From setting direction and challenging assumptions, to building capability or stepping in directly when stronger leadership was needed.
The most valuable moments weren't when I produced the best design output.
They were when a founder, engineer or product leader started making better decisions because of the work we'd done together.
That's the kind of design leadership I want to practise: creating the clarity, capability and confidence for organisations to move forward.
