I design services that people can finish without help: applications, claims, renewals and the letters that follow them. I work from evidence gathered with the people who use the service and the staff who run it, and I stay through delivery so the design survives contact with the real system.
How I work
Research first, then a service map before any screen is drawn. Weekly show-and-tells for the whole team. Every decision written down with its reason, so the next person can see why.
What I need from a team
Access to frontline staff, a product owner who can say no, and time for at least two rounds of testing with real users before anything is called finished.
What I am looking for
A service with a clear owner, a problem that hurts users today, and a team willing to change policy wording and letters, not only the interface.
Renewals arrived by post on a nine-page form, and about half were sent back because a piece of evidence was missing. Traders lost weeks, and the counter team spent its mornings on returns.
What I did
Mapped the end-to-end journey with counter staff, rewrote the evidence rules in plain language, then designed a guided online renewal that applies the same rules at each step instead of at the end.
What changed
Returns for missing evidence became rare enough that the counter team stopped keeping a reject pile. The paper form was withdrawn the following spring.
Claims correspondence
Larkspur Mutual
Problem
Claimants phoned after almost every letter because the letters explained the decision but never said what would happen next or when.
What I did
Audited the full letter set, tested rewritten versions with recent claimants, and set a standard structure for every letter: decision, reason, next step, date.
What changed
The structure is now part of the claims handbook, and new letters are tested with claimants before release rather than after complaints.
Timetable disruption notices
Halvard Rail Services
Problem
Disruption messages were written for control room staff and forwarded to passengers unchanged, full of internal codes and missing the one fact people needed: which trains still run.
What I did
Shadowed the control room during two live disruptions, designed a message template with a fixed order of facts, and ran it in a pilot on one route with the station and social media teams.
What changed
The template was adopted across the network's passenger channels, and the control room now writes one message that every channel can use without editing.
03Experience
2022–now
Senior service designer
Studio Fenwright
Lead designer on public-sector and insurance engagements. Line-manage two designers and run the studio's research practice, including recruitment of participants and the consent process.
2019–2022
Service designer
Larkspur Mutual
Claims and correspondence redesign, then policy renewals. Worked inside the claims team rather than a central design group, which is where the letter standard came from.
2017–2019
Interaction designer
Tidewell Council Services
Licensing and housing transactions. First role where I was responsible for both the online journey and the paper and counter routes that ran alongside it.
Earlier roles
2015–2017
Content designer
Halvard Rail Services
Passenger information, station signage copy and the disruption template described above.
2014–2015
Junior designer
Brightwater Print
Forms, bills and statements for utility and council clients. Learned how much a form's layout decides whether it is filled in correctly.
04Capabilities
Research
Contextual interviews
Usability testing, moderated and remote
Service safaris with frontline staff
Synthesis workshops
Participant recruitment and consent
Design
Service blueprints
Journey and evidence maps
Prototyping in HTML and CSS
Letter and form design
Plain-language rule writing
Delivery
Design system contribution
Accessibility audits to WCAG 2.2 AA
Working in the open with weeknotes
Show-and-tells and decision records
Handover to in-house teams
05Education
2011–2014
BA (Hons) Graphic and Interaction Design
Ravenholt School of Design
Final-year project on redesigning benefit award letters, which set the direction for everything since.
2020
Certificate in Accessible Content Design
Professional certificate, part-time
Covers plain language, structured content and testing with assistive technology users.