Hardship grants, redesigned around one conversation National support agency

Applicants were telling the same story to three teams, and urgent cases were being decided from incomplete files.

• Followed twenty-two live cases through intake, assessment and appeal to find where information was being re-collected.
• Redesigned the application as a single guided conversation with assessor notes written in plain language the applicant also receives.
• Built the decision-letter templates with assessors and a community legal adviser, then tested them with applicants who had been declined before.

Urgent applications now reach an assessor with a complete file on the first pass, and the appeal team reports fewer disputes about what was actually decided.

Clinic intake for a community health network Primary care collective

Six clinics shared one booking system and none of them trusted it. Reception staff kept parallel paper lists for anyone who needed an interpreter or a longer appointment.

• Ran observation shifts at four sites, then mapped the real intake service against the one the system assumed.
• Designed an intake form that captures access needs first, so interpreter and double-slot bookings stop being a reception workaround.
• Facilitated a cross-clinic working group to agree one triage vocabulary and wrote it up as a shared practice note.

The paper lists were retired at every site, and the network now reviews access needs as part of its standard clinic reporting.

Licensing for small food producers Regional council programme

A licence renewal that was meant to take an afternoon was taking producers weeks, mostly spent working out which rules applied to them.

• Built a diagnostic question set with inspectors so producers land on the right pathway before filling in anything.
• Rewrote the guidance as task-shaped pages, each one checked against the underlying regulation by the council's compliance lead.
• Ran usability sessions in producers' own kitchens and market stalls rather than in a lab.

Inspectors now spend their first visit on food safety instead of correcting paperwork, and the guidance is maintained by the team that wrote it.

Independent service designer Public sector & community organisations

Engagements of three to eight months, always embedded in the delivery team that will own the service afterwards.

• Service mapping, journey repair and decision-letter design across welfare, health and regulatory work.
• Coach product managers and policy analysts to run their own research rounds; leave behind a research routine, not a report.

Senior service designer Digital delivery unit, central government

Second designer on a unit that grew to four multidisciplinary teams.

• Led discovery and alpha for two citizen-facing services and wrote the unit's accessibility review practice.
• Set up a shared participant panel with consent and koha handled properly, which the unit still runs.

Interaction designer Civic technology studio

• Designed case-management tooling for caseworkers, including the first version of a plain-language note template later adopted across three teams.
• Ran fortnightly open critique sessions with researchers, developers and frontline staff in the same room.

Content and interaction designer Public library system

• Rebuilt membership sign-up and room booking for staff and visitors; ran the first accessibility audit the service had seen.
• Trained branch staff to maintain their own page content.

MDes, Design for Public Services Harbour City University

Thesis on how discretion is exercised in frontline welfare decisions, written with two agency caseworkers as practice advisers.

BA, Anthropology and Media Studies Southcape University

Accessibility and plain-language practice Continuing professional development

WCAG 2.2 applied review, a national plain-language standard for public correspondence, and an annual refresher in te reo Māori for service letters.