UX Design

Creating evidence-based customer journeys and visualisations for digital services.

Way of working

My goal is to create evidence-based services that are accessible, inclusive and most importantly, usable. I always keep the user at the heart of any new service journey or product feature to maintain the best customer experience. To achieve this, I take the following steps:

Idea generation and prioritisation.

Organising and facilitating internal and external roadmap workshops is a key part of this process. To gain understanding of the business needs (both internally and externally) myself and the team engage proactively with key stakeholders, as well as listening to and observing the customer experience when conducting user interviews.

I always like asking the key stakeholders to dot-vote the ideas they feel will have the biggest impact for the service. That way we understand the value placed on certain ideas and, in turn, key stakeholders know they’re being involved in the product roadmap.

Mapping the service blueprint and customer journey.

The best way to unpick any tangled areas is to create a service blueprint and/or a customer journey map, depending on which perspective requires improvement.

I work closely with Product Owners, other Designers, Engineers, and the Cyber Security team to create such a map. Once created, I’d communicate this back to the stakeholders for feedback and ultimately sign off.

Key questions might include:

What are all the touchpoints for the resident?
Where does all the information come from?
Which parts of the journey should be simplified and/or automated?

Accessibility.

I am a vocal accessibility champion. Accessibility of a service affects everybody. It enhances the overall user experience, making services more efficient, intuitive, and enjoyable for all users.

As well as accessibility being baked in from the start of the design process, I also run accessibility tests on each product stream to highlight areas that need addressing. The things I focus on are; contrast ratios, keyboard accessibility and validating if the HTML is accessible.

Case study: Active Portal by Plentific

Designing with components.

I introduced and managed the Active Housing Design System in Figma, where I worked closely with management, product owners and developers to ensure buy-in and adoptability.

We had multiple products that needed to look and interact the same for the residents - even though they were built in different dev languages. By using the Design System it made the user seamlessly flow from one product to the next.

Image: Reporting a repair in the Active Diagnostics SaaS product, embedded within the Active Portal platform.

Image: An AI enhancement feature to more accurately report a repair within the Active Diagnostics SaaS product.

Image: Ability to make a payment against your tenancy and view your statement history.

Results.

On average (across numerous Social Housing Associations):

Reduced time surrounding reporting repairs and managing appointments

Residents could choose an appointment date and time to suit their schedule, reducing the number of ‘no access’ episodes for contractors.
A >60% reduction on inbound repair-related calls to Call Centres enabled staff to provide a better service for other issues (e.g. Domestic Violence or Anti-Social Behaviour).
Contractors gained comprehensive information regarding reported repairs, ensuring more efficient use of their time.

More than 90% of residents found the self-service platform ‘easy to use’
Housing Associations gained greater clarity on the condition of their properties, e.g. boilers, gas safety certificates, to avoid disrepair cases in their homes.