On synthetic users
Can we talk about synthetic users? We, experience designers (or researchers; HCD is a big umbrella), all know they’re a bad idea… but why? And how do we convince our business colleagues without sounding like the whole field is in…
Artyom Semenov
Knowledge management in the era of AI
I’ve been thinking about this over the weekend. We spent the last two years feverishly trying out approaches to make research analysis easier for ourselves. First we tried simply dropping in all our interview transcripts into the chat and let…
Design? Research? Problem solving.
About 10 years ago I went on IDEO’s human-centred design course. It was free, it was easy to grasp, and it gave us the tools we needed to design great products. It’s still around, you can check it out here.…
On empathy in customer service
We did some research recently. We asked participants to recount a particularly frustrating experience with customer service. Almost every single one said, “I felt like they didn’t listen.” and something in the vein of, “I need to know that they…
How does AI actually impact our daily lives?
If we take away the incessant torrent of AI news, articles, panicked Reddit posts, trashy Tik Tok videos, and other slosh. What’s left? How do you actually use AI in your day to day? Let’s start with a proud sample…
A discovery in healthcare
We worked with the UK Health Security Agency to identify opportunities to improve the Measles Surveillance Pathway. Navigating internal politics and ethical considerations, I led a team to plan and conduct a Discovery. We identified £800k in estimated efficiency savings…
Marine Licensing Discovery
Situation A government department’s ambition was to transform its marine licensing service. The complexity of the process, ministerial oversight, and several failed attempts in previous years made this a challenging environment that required careful stakeholder management and ambiguity around recruitment.…
Central Government Alpha
Situation The client was amidst a complex digital transformation programme. The ambition was to digitise and modernise by automating manual processes, creating robust data processing capabilities, and re-designing their end-to-end service. My responsibilities included supporting the client’s head of research…
Cheap energy club
I led design of an energy switching product. We conducted a comprehensive discovery to understand user needs, facilitated brainstorming workshop, designed the interface, and supervised build. The resulting product had an average SUS of 83 and accommodated 200 switches per…