Ampersand

Ampersand is a design studio that partners with businesses to create experiences that work. 

Specialising in Design, Research and Strategy, we rethink what it means to design for users.  

Here's how:

We identify and balance risk. We design for the whole system rather than individual screens. We design for behaviour and context. But most importantly, we consider how products and services make people feel. Why? Because that's how to create experiences that people believe in.

Whether you're starting from 0, looking for strategic direction, or need extra pair of hands, we'd love to talk you!

Please DM, or email: hello@ampersandco.studio

(website launching soon)

Founder

birdie

Birdie is a B2B SaaS shaking up the Social Care space. Birdie's mission is to reinvent care through technology and enable older adults to age in their homes.

My role is responsible for the care management domain which spans from Care Managers assessing care needs, to Carers delivering care. 

The care ecosystem is complex:
→ Different care types, i.e hourly care vs Live in care vs complex care
→ Market segments, i.e VSB and SMBS vs Enterprise
→ Multiple persona types, i.e Care Manager vs Carer vs Regulatory bodies 

Above all else, the most important part of my job is thinking critically. Always. 

Why? Because medication schedules cannot be misinterpreted, or mistakes made.
It needs to be easy to use, but enough friction to reduce mistakes. It needs to be understood by people whose first language might not be English, and people that are time poor during a care visit.


Other key responsibilities:
- Lead full the end-to-end process , from discovery to design in my squad
- Work with the PM to shape the strategic vision for my squad, and wider product
- Conduct in-person field research with multiple user types to understand their needs
- Analyse insights from inbound and outbound data to identify both tactical and strategic opportunities across the ecosystem

Senior Product Designer

rehab_agency

rehab_agency is an innovation agency working with clients including: Google, Nike, Spotify, Disney and Meta across projects specialising in web3, AI, voice and AR.

Key highlight:
Leading a strategic discovery project for Google focussed on Generative AI.

Worked alongside creative strategists and technologists to understand how we could utilise emerging technology with Google's platform and technology

Blue Ocean strategy project. Undertook thorough desk research, qualitative research and facilitated workshops to uncover greenfield opportunity areas.

Senior UX Designer

SPARCK

SPARCK is a design services consultancy. 

Proudest projects:
- NHS Covid-19 Clinical tool that won a gold standard award 
- Led designer for a 4 month strategic vision project for a Tier 1 Bank


Wider responsibilities:
- Stepped into multiple roles as client's needs evolved, i.e Service Design, Research, PM.

- Facilitated workshops to uncover opportunities that aligned to tactical and strategic goals
- Mentored junior product designers, and helped to train 5 junior designers in the Sparck academy. 

- Defined and led culture initiatives that shaped the Product Design Practice and wider SPARCK.

Product Designer

Flutter Entertainment Plc

It's no secret that there's an ethical debate when talking about gambling. However, it was my role, and the other designer's around me to represent the user and understand the line between what's engaging and what's addictive. Honestly, this role emphasised the importance of design to advocate for users within a business. How are user's feeling? How can we provide trust and safety to them?

Key responsibilities:
- Challenge briefs and uncover the problem areas. Articulate findings through journey maps, wireframes and advanced prototypes that highlight user-needs.
- Understand behavioural design and cognitive biases, in addition to conducting research to uncover user behaviours and motivations.
- Collaborate with UI Designers, Product Managers and Developers to ensure solutions are technically feasible, creative, and answer user and business problems.
- Work closely with content design to ensure "betslips" were understood. Create visuals to breakdown complex terms and conditions
- Lead workshops with key stakeholders across the business to understand, define and ideate on the business and user problem areas.

Key achievements:
- Altered the trajectory of a project to focus on user needs by finding areas of opportunity through analysing and presenting research to directors.

User Experience Architect 

Numberfit

Key responsibilities:
1. Analyse existing websites by conducting UX audits, and deliver suggested designs based on UX best practices.
2. Advise on current design mockups, content hierarchy and understanding

UX Designer - Volunteer

DePuy Synthes Companies

Depuy Synthes, a company of J&J,  specialises in orthopaedics for joint replacement and surgical tools. I put people at the heart of engineering to design ergonomic tools and understand surgical needs and workflows.

Key responsibilities:
1. Thoroughly researched knee surgery - including on cadavers to understand surgeon’s workflow - for example, how much space/access they have to knee joints, where extra grip is needed. This greatly informed the physicals designs I created.

2. Produced design visuals, storyboards, graphics and CAD, and physical 3D models to communicate design ideas to the team and answer set briefs. 

Key achievements: 
1. Designed a surgical tool that would help to improve surgeon's workflow and was consequently taken to a usability lab
2. Designed and carried out user testing protocols with “voice of consumers” including specialist surgeons in usability labs to identify pain points.

Industrial Design and Human Factors FTC

At the beginning of the year, I embarked on the adventure of a lifetime and took 5 months to travel Southeast Asia and Australasia.

Travelling - 5 months

Oxford International Education Group

Summer school role.
- Promoted to senior management team following a successful year as an Activity Leader the summer previously
- Managed a team, including a Welfare Assistant to ensure the well-being and involvement of students- Responsible for handling dietary requirements for meal times and liaised with catering staff to ensure these were met

Welfare Manager  at a Summer School

Loughborough University

The Epi-pen redesign (named Totem), reduces both primary and secondary users anxiety before and during an anaphylaxis reaction. I completely redesigned and design engineered the mechanism to have a less aggressive form of actuation, a discrete form (especially to allow men to carry it in their pockets) Additionally the device incorporated electronics to aid with administering the injection as well as temperature tracking and reaction tracking.

**Key responsibilities: **

Concept generation and brief creation.
In depth research including interviewing users, reading journals and medical data to identify pain points and ultimately define the user needs.
Extensive sketching, iterative prototypes (digital and physical), journey maps, users flows, moodboards, user testing, mechanical analysis, and documentation. 
Key achievements:

Successfully created a fully functioning physical prototype that can administer a dose of epinephrine, an aesthetic prototype, in addition to designing a clickable app prototype.

Epi-pen. Patent Pending 

Hey, hello, hi!
I'm Emily, and I put people back into the heart of designing experiences.

Somewhere along the way we got swept up in only designing MVPs, only considering ideal users, and leaving people feeling like edge-cases. I'm here to change that.

I design experiences by thinking of the overall system, and considering people's behaviours, emotions and context. Most importantly, I help you think about risk; aka thinking about what can go wrong, so we can design against it.

Here's how I can help you:
- Design solutions with impact
- Identify tactical vs strategic bets 
- Uncover areas of opportunity and growth
- Design for context, behaviour and emotions
- Connect design outcomes <> business outcomes
- Uncover risks in your service and process
- Consider the overall system experience - not just the screens

Design isn't just about how it works, or how it looks. It's about how it makes people feel.

I'd love to hear about how I can help you. Drop me a message on LinkedIn, or send an email to: hello@ampersandco.studio

And if you don't have a project, I'm always down for a coffee chat!

Emily Anderson

I use this table on almost every project

It depends what I’m working on, but whenever I start something (whether it’s with a new client or a new project), I use this to help keep us honest about what we actually know vs when we’re building on assumptions

Otherwise, context and decisions get scattered, or lost when people leave 

It’s a working doc that evolves as we learn more and prove / disprove things, but it helps to understand:

→ What’s actually true vs what’s an assumption?
→ What’s the risk or impact of it?
→ What questions do we have?
→ How could we find the answer?
→ What do we need to prioritise?
→ What evidence do we have to support it?

I’ve found it really helps to encourage teams to step back and keep aligned so thought I’d share. It can also be used alongside things like assumption mapping workshops

It should be pretty straightforward to recreate, but shout in the comments if you want the Notion link to start making it your own

Designer | Reducing risks to users and businesses | Founder, Ampersand | Speaker

Screenshot of an assumptions tracking table with multiple columns. 

The table has multiple columns to track project assumptions. Each row includes the assumption type (Assumption or Question), current status (True, False, Unknown, or Answered), risk level (High, Medium, or Low with rationale), research methods, priority level (P1, P2, or P3), and supporting evidence. 


Strategic is a funny word. It gets dropped into a conversation, everyone nods and agrees we need to “be more” of it, but it gets thrown around so much that it’s hard to understand what it actually means

I’ve had this same conversation many times:
A: “The designers need to be more strategic”
B: “Ok, what do you mean by that?”
A: “Well, they just need to be less tactical”
B: “Right, so what do you expect to change?”
A: “They just need to think more … strategically”

It’s hard to grasp exactly what people expect sometimes, but it’s often easier to understand through actions. So if you want show you think strategically, or you need a way to explain what you mean, here’s a few things you can start doing:

→ Frame root causes
Don’t take the problem at the surface level - uncover if we’re solving the real problem, and why it matters

→ Understand the broader context
Think in systems, and consider the wider experience - not just the screen you’re designing (e.g map the overall experience including internal teams like support, onboarding, etc)

→ Consider the risks, constraints, and trade-offs
Identify what will happen if we do this, or don’t do this. When you explore designs, show the benefits and drawbacks of options and why. Challenge if we’re making long-term trade-offs for short term gains

→ Use “which means” in your mindset
Whether it’s making decisions, or framing research, talk about the impact. Thinking “which means that” will help you to start considering the knock-on effect (e.g instead of: “users clicked this”, say: “users did XX which means YY which impacts ZZ)

→ Dig into outcomes and metrics
Not everything can be measured, but spend time to understand how the problem and solution ties to product metrics and business outcomes. Use evidence to inform decisions rather than opinions

You essentially want to be seen as helping to shape direction rather than just execution. That means digging into root causes, influencing what's built, and tying to impact

BUT, the big caveat is that the right conditions need to be created for designers to be strategic in the first place. Designers need to be invited into conversations early, given space for strategic thinking, and empowered to actually influence decisions

At what point does “helpful” actually become harmful?

Everything is trying to predict what we want, what we’ll do next, or say next. But what happens when the predictions are wrong? Or they’re actually triggering?

I was sending a message recently and started typing “I’m so sorry for…”
The next word I was going to type was “forgetting” but instead, the words “for your loss” popped up. It might look like a minor thing (it’s just words… right?). But if you’ve experienced a loss, this could be the reminder that sends you into a spiral

We’re moving deeper into an automated world where we’re encouraged to design solutions to make things faster, more efficient, and “optimised” for users. But where can we design guardrails to ensure we’re not actually causing harm? Especially as AI is embedded into more and more features which means a heap of bias and assumptions baked in

For “smart” solutions that look for patterns and make predictions, we need to ensure we’re not just building for the average, and instead we still create experiences that have nuance, understand people’s context, and emotional state. I’m not just talking about loss either - every product has the potential to cause a negative impact in *some* way

So whatever we design, we need to keep asking:

→ What could go wrong? How could we be causing harm, even if unintentionally? And how can we mitigate it.

→ How can automation be brought together with thoughtful, responsible design?

→ How might people’s situations change, and how can it adapt to that?

→ Do we understand people’s emotions and context?

And, just because we can build something, should we?

The worst workshops are the ones where you spend the whole time panicking about if your ideas are “good enough” rather than being able to focus on coming up with ideas 

The ones where people talk through their ideas and say: “Ignore how bad it looks” or “I didn’t have anything different to other people, so stopped”, or worse, when people drop in the chat: “brb, door” *turns camera off* just as a way to get out of it

I’ve been there, and to be honest, I’ve probably facilitated a few workshops like that before too

Workshops can be BRILLIANT, but they can also create unnecessary pressure and anxiety - especially if we don’t recognise that not everyone’s brains work the same way. Some people are super confident to draw their ideas, but others might be a lot less visual and prefer to write things down

After running countless workshops, I’ve found that the best way to make them better is to encourage people to ideate in whatever format is best for them. It might seem obvious, but giving people more flexibility will absolutely lead to better ideas

So here's what I do. Before starting, I briefly walk through examples of different ways to explore their ideas:

→ Draw on paper and upload a photo
→ Write it down 
→ Create scrappy wireframes 
→ Use screenshots of other products as references
→ Prompt using your AI tool of choice

It doesn’t matter how ideas look, what matters is creating a space for people to do their best thinking. That way, the focus changes from “ahhh how do I make it look less bad” to actually letting the ideas flow

So the next time you’re prepping a workshop, try adding a section to encourage different ways of thinking. Anything we can do to create a safe, judge-free environment is always a win

When was the last time you asked: “what’s *stopping* users from using it?” 

When we’re trying to alter user behaviour, it’s really easy to ask: “how can we get users to do [this thing]” 

(Things like: how can we encourage them to sign-up, make playlists, log workouts, delete emails, etc)

But if we reframe our thinking to consider the barriers, it can help us uncover angles we might not have considered before

We might realise that users actually *want* to do it, but they can’t - there’s something in their way

Maybe it’s effort (e.g if switching energy providers feels like a faff, they won’t - even if it’s cheaper). Maybe your product doesn’t integrate with their systems. Maybe they can’t use it because it’s not accessible. Or maybe the barrier in their way is emotion

Facebook Marketplace is a good example of considering barriers ↓

Imagine you’ve had a clear out and want to sell a bunch of things. But, the items were gifts from friends and you’re worried they’ll see it

No matter how easy it is to sell with FB, you don’t want to - you don’t want to upset them, or feel caught out. Those emotions stop you from using it - they’re a barrier

But that’s why FB is a great example:
They’ve created a setting that lets you hide sale items from your contacts

That setting helps to remove the emotional barrier. It might look small, but it could be the difference between selling with FB Marketplace vs elsewhere
— 

I find that a small shift in thinking (particularly in early conversations) can really help to open-up different conversations with the team

So, the next time you’re thinking about user behaviour, try asking:
→ What’s stopping them from [doing the thing]?
→ What barriers could exist?
--

p.s I’ve been selling a bunch of things to desperately try and make space for when baby arrives, and it’s been interesting to compare the selling experience between different platforms (FB Marketplace, eBay, Vinted)

taplio