Services

Services

From complex questions to evidence, direction, and tangible solutions.

I help organizations understand difficult human, product, and operational challenges before committing to solutions.

Engagements combine business framing, ethnographic discovery, usability assessment, expert UX analysis, insight synthesis, collaborative ideation, prototyping, and senior design leadership. The exact scope depends on what is already known, what still needs to be discovered, and what decision the work must enable.

Stanford document excerpt exploring premature closure in innovation
How to begin

Start with discovery, assess something that already exists, or build internal capability.

Not every engagement needs the same starting point. A complex or insufficiently understood challenge normally begins with discovery. An existing product can be assessed independently. Training and leadership support can begin wherever the organization currently stands.

01 · Primary engagement

Discovery, Usability and Strategic Direction

A focused investigation into the people, behaviours, workflows, systems, tensions, and unmet needs surrounding an important business or product challenge.

Discovery may include ethnographic research, interviews, contextual observation, stakeholder research, workflow mapping, journey analysis, and examination of the existing product or service.

Where an existing experience is part of the challenge, the engagement can also include usability assessment and user feedback. This reveals not only what people say, but where they struggle, compensate, abandon tasks, or create workarounds.

The outcome is a clear synthesis of evidence: the real problem, the most important opportunity areas, strategic priorities, experience principles, and a recommended direction for what should happen next.

02 · Independent assessment

Expert UX and Experience Review

A senior expert assessment of an existing digital product, service, workflow, prototype, or platform.

The review can examine critical journeys, information architecture, interaction design, usability, consistency, accessibility considerations, user value, and alignment with business intent.

Unlike usability testing, an expert review does not require recruiting users. It identifies probable problems, structural weaknesses, missed opportunities, and areas that require deeper validation.

The outcome is a prioritized set of findings and recommendations, presented in a written review and senior readout.

Where discovery leads

Turn validated opportunities into concepts people can understand, evaluate, and improve.

Ideation and prototyping are most valuable after the challenge has been properly understood. These engagements therefore follow discovery, or begin when the organization already has credible research and a clearly evidenced problem.

03 · Follows discovery

Opportunity and Ideation Workshop

A structured co-creation engagement that translates research findings and strategic opportunities into possible future directions.

The workshop brings together the relevant perspectives from business, technology, operations, design, research, subject-matter expertise, and users where appropriate.

Activities may include reframing insights into opportunity questions, scenario development, multidisciplinary ideation, concept creation, prioritization, and evaluation against human value, business value, and feasibility.

This is not a generic brainstorming session. It is grounded in evidence generated through discovery or supplied through sufficiently mature existing research.

04 · Follows a validated opportunity

Concept and Prototype Sprint

A focused engagement that turns a validated opportunity into something tangible enough to discuss, test, challenge, and develop.

Depending on the problem, this may include future scenarios, service concepts, journey models, interaction flows, wireframes, high-fidelity interfaces, clickable prototypes, or AI-assisted exploration of alternative directions.

The prototype is not treated as the answer. It is a tool for learning, alignment, evaluation, and better decision-making.

The outcome can support user testing, an MVP definition, a business case, a product roadmap, or a more informed handover into delivery.

Capability and leadership

Build stronger design capability or bring senior direction into an existing organization.

05 · Independent engagement

Design Thinking Training and Lectures

Lectures, executive sessions, and applied training for organizations that want to strengthen how their people investigate problems, frame opportunities, generate ideas, and evaluate possible solutions.

Topics can include design thinking in practice, ethnographic observation, empathy beyond assumptions, avoiding premature closure, problem framing, collaborative ideation, prototyping, and the changing role of UX in the age of generative AI.

Formats range from an executive lecture or conference presentation to a half-day, full-day, or multi-session team programme.

Applied training can use a real organizational challenge, while remaining distinct from a full discovery or consulting engagement.

06 · Ongoing engagement

Fractional UX and Design Leadership

Ongoing senior design leadership for organizations that need strategic direction, research guidance, and stronger design decision-making without immediately hiring a full-time executive.

The engagement can include UX and design strategy, research direction, initiative reviews, stakeholder alignment, team coaching, portfolio and roadmap review, hiring support, capability development, and the establishment of effective design practices.

The scope is tailored to the maturity of the organization and can range from periodic senior advisory sessions to one or more embedded days per week.

A typical engagement

The work progresses from intent to evidence, insight, creation, and decision.

01
Business framing

Clarify what the organization needs to achieve.

The work begins by understanding the business intent, desired outcomes, strategic ambition, constraints, risks, success measures, and decisions that the engagement must ultimately support.

This establishes direction without prematurely defining the solution.

02
Discovery and assessment

Observe what actually happens in the real ecosystem.

Research may include interviews, ethnographic observation, contextual inquiry, shadowing, workflow analysis, stakeholder conversations, usability assessment, and examination of existing tools and services.

The purpose is to understand behaviour, incentives, emotions, dependencies, workarounds, contradictions, and the moments where value is created or lost.

03
Insight and strategy

Reveal the deeper problem and define the strategic opportunity.

Individual findings become useful when they are connected into meaningful patterns. Research is synthesized into unmet needs, tensions, system gaps, opportunity areas, experience principles, and strategic priorities.

Strategy emerges from the evidence rather than being imposed before the challenge has been understood.

04
Ideation and prototyping

Translate insight into possible future experiences.

Relevant disciplines work together to generate, challenge, combine, and prioritize possible directions.

Selected concepts are made tangible through journeys, scenarios, service models, interaction flows, interfaces, and prototypes that can be evaluated rather than merely discussed.

05
Evaluation and direction

Determine what is meaningful, viable, and worth pursuing.

Concepts are evaluated against human value, business intent, technical feasibility, organizational reality, risk, and their potential to create measurable impact.

The engagement concludes with clear recommendations, priorities, and the next meaningful step toward validation, an MVP, or implementation.

Choosing the right engagement

The scope should fit what is known, what is uncertain, and what decision must be made.

Begin with discovery when the problem is complex, contested, or insufficiently understood.

Choose an expert review when a product or service already exists and you need an independent senior assessment.

Move into ideation and prototyping when the opportunity is supported by evidence and the organization is ready to explore possible solutions.

Use training or fractional leadership when the primary need is stronger internal capability, ongoing guidance, or senior design direction.

Selected experience

Research, transformation, and design leadership across complex enterprise environments.

Selected work includes clinical trial operations and laboratory innovation at Novartis, risk-monitoring transformation at Deutsche Börse, industrial ethnography for CEMEX, design thinking work presented at Stanford, university teaching, and more than two decades of product, service, and organizational design.

Start a conversation

Bring me the challenge that is difficult to see clearly.

The first conversation is about understanding the situation, not selling a predetermined package.

Describe what is happening, what is at stake, what has already been tried, and what needs to become possible. I will recommend the most useful starting point.