Work history and education

I’m Principal Service Designer at Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand in the Data and Digital directorate. I previously worked at Te Pūkenga as a co-design lead.

Before returning to New Zealand from the UK I worked as a Principal Service Designer at Snook, working on designing services that are equitable, inclusive, accessible and sustainable for the NHS, the Department for Education and the third sector.

I previously worked at the Government Digital Service in the UK as a Lead Service Designer, on GOV.UK Verify, a secure way for users to prove who they say they are online. On Verify, I worked on making the service easier to use for people claiming the Universal Credit benefit.

Before GDS I worked on Govt.nz, New Zealand’s all-of-government website working on making government information easy to access and understand for everyone.

My work has spanned the design process from user research through to interface design and usability testing. As a service designer, I look at end to end user journeys and how different touchpoints, systems  and people can join up so that users can do what they need to do.

I completed a Master of Design (Distinction) at Massey University in 2015, researching how design can facilitate youth political engagement. I created Ask Away, a question and answer platform where people asked candidates questions and compared answers in the lead up to the 2014 General Election. Ask Away is part of the Design + Democracy Project — a research unit aiming to encourage participation in social issues through user-centred design.

Ask Away received an honourable mention in the 2015 Red Dot international design awards.