birdie

Birdie is a B2B SaaS Socialcare scale-up.

Birdie facilitates caregiving to older adults to enable them to age in their homes for as long as possible.

My role is responsible for care management, which spans from assessing care needs, to designing how carers interact with care plans to deliver the care. 

The most important part of my job is thinking critically. Always. 
Why? Because it’s essential to mitigate risks being introduced into the product. Medication schedules cannot be misinterpreted or misunderstood. It needs to be easy to use, but enough friction to reduce mistakes. 

Full end-to-end delivery.
Strategy | Research | Service Design | UX and UI

Other key responsibilities: 
- Conduct field research with multiple user types to understand their needs, and how we can optimise our systems to give as much valuable time back to carers

- Analyse insights from inbound and outbound data to identify both tactical and strategic opportunities across the ecosystem. Taking into account our strategy and product bets

- Produce vision pieces that visualise the strategic direction of the product

Senior Product Designer

rehab_agency

My key responsibility:
Leading a 6 month innovation project for Google focussed on Generative AI.

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rehab_agency is an innovation agency specialising in web3, voice and AR with their clients including Google, Nike, Spotify, Disney and Meta.

My responsibilities:
- Identifying opportunities through research and presenting to internal Google stakeholders
- Heavy design strategy
- Creative concepting. Working with creative strategist and technologists to understand how we could utilise emerging technology
- Creating alignment for internally and externally on project direction

Senior UX Designer

SPARCK

My greatest achievements:
- NHS Covid-19 project that won a gold standard award 
- Defining and delivering a 4 month vision project for NatWest

SPARCK is a design services consultancy. 
I was the Lead Product Designer for engagements in the financial services and healthcare industries, ranging from discovery to beta.

Wider responsibilities:
- Collaborated closely with our delivery teams including Product Owners, Business Analysts, Developers in agile environments.

- Mentored junior product designers to help with their personal development, and their goals.In addition to helping to train 5 junior designers in the Sparck academy. 

- Created and led culture initiatives that have helped to shape both, the Product Design Practice and wider SPARCK

Product Designer

Flutter Entertainment Plc

PokerStars, part of Flutter Entertainment, provides online gaming entertainment to millions of players. I was a key advocate for users, ensuring responsible gaming whilst meeting business needs.

Key responsibilities:
- Challenge the brief and produce artefacts including journey maps, wireframes and advanced prototypes that address 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.

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.
- Lead workshops with key stakeholders across the business to understand, define and ideate on the business and user problem areas.

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 to understand surgeon’s workflow and created empathy maps, user flows and journey maps to showcase this.
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 and carried out user testing protocols with “voice of consumers” including specialist surgeons in usability labs to identify pain points.
2. Designed a surgical tool that would help to improve surgeon's workflow and was consequently taken to a usability lab

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

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 

I was an Activity Leader for a summer camp based in Edinburgh during the summer months of 2017. As an Activity Leader, I was responsible for large groups of students and children, for whom English was not their first language. The role entailed taking these groups on excursions unfamiliar to myself including Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling, in addition to planning and leading activities such as sports, drama and social events to ensure everyone was involved.

I have been promoted to the senior management team for summer 2018 to undertake the role of Welfare Manager

Activity Leader

I'm pretty obsessed with thinking about what can go wrong.

Why?
Because less user risks + less business risks = growth
Add emotional design, and inclusive design into the mix and you’ve got a banging formula.

My purpose is to help as many designers and businesses as I can. Here’s how:

- Balancing user needs, and business needs
- Identifying risks and mitigating them - at a macro journey level, and at a UI micro level
- Uncovering tactical vs strategic bets 
- How to have more impact with design
- How to break down complex problems 

Most importantly, how to design for how it works, how it looks, and how it feels


It's not design vs business, it's design & the business. Design impacts everything; growth, retention, acquisition, brand reputation. I want to bring them closer together 

Beyond all else,  my purpose is to design for people, always 💛


My DMs are always open for how I can help you - I'd love to say hello!




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I'm super grateful to have worked with incredible partners in industries from Healthcare to Financial Services, from B2B, B2C, SaaS. 

You name it, I love the challenge!
Google | NHS | Birdie | Natwest | Johnson & Johnson | PokerStars

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If you're still here, thanks so much for stopping by! Get to know me a little better:

🍝  My new obsession is learning to make pasta from scratch
🔫  I'm pretty competitive. I'm super proud to have placed 2nd in World Championships for shooting 
🩺. I have patent pending for a medical device that I designed and engineered (Epi-pen). 


How I reduce risks when I’m designing (and how you can too)

I write about risks a lot
But what does that actually mean?
Well, I thought I'd show you

I've put together a bunch of themes with examples that I ask to help uncover risks

It's just a flavour. It's not an exhaustive list by any means!
But, hopefully it'll give some inspiration

The questions I've listed are around these themes 👇
→ People's Context and behaviours
→ Usability and understanding
→ End-to-end experience
→ Environment and Safety
→ User types
→ Inclusion
→ Trust

It's a pretty jam packed PDF
Honestly, it's probably too jam packed with words

But the good news is... I'm working on something else 👀

Something that's more usable, useful and digestible rather than just a static PDF of questions. Stayed tuned!

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When we're looking at risks, of course we can’t design for everyone single person

But, we need to have awareness.
Awareness is the first step.

→ Considering user's context and behaviours
→ Looking across the system and journey
→ Considering who we're excluding
→ Optimising design and content
→ Challenging our assumptions
→ Considering unhappy paths
→ Designing for real needs

We can't de-risk everything
We will have to make trade offs

But the question is.. do we have awareness in the first place?

Remember to always ask: what if?

Design for people, always 💛

—

P.s I’ve been on holiday for the last couple of weeks which is why you’ve not seen me around here much recently!

Emily Anderson

Senior Product Designer | Reducing risks to users and businesses

How can we challenge our assumptions in design?

What are some best practices for optimizing design and content?

Questions I ask to uncover risks

10,000 people. 10,000 people following what I write?
It feels pretty surreal - genuinely

I don't really talk about myself much on here, so I thought I'd introduce myself a little more 

1️⃣ 💛 First thing's first; why I started posting:
A little while ago, my Grandad passed away and it was a really hard time. Unfortunately, it also meant we had to unsubscribe from his products/services or, downgrade things

Something that was both incredibly upsetting, and anger inducing, was that my Grandma was seen as an edge-case or unhappy path far too many times to count

What she experienced sparked something bigger in me:

The need to bring people back into products / services
The need to change how we think about “users”

So, I started writing about it

I want to help as many designers and business as I can think about unhappy paths, context, inclusion, behaviours, emotions - it's all part of designing products and services for humans

I'm here to help people think about risks across our process: i.e, uncover what can go wrong, in order to design what can go right

And, I want to help show the design <> business impact
I want to show that designing for people, is good business too

That's my WHY 

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A few bits and pieces about me:

2️⃣ 🔧 My background is physical product design
My degree was a mix of design and engineering. I absolutely love thinking about how things actually work

3️⃣ 🩺 I have a patent pending for an Epi-pen I redesigned and it's honestly the proudest thing I've done (still a long way to go!) My Husband has a severe peanut allergy which is what inspired it

4️⃣ 🎨 I'm not great at work-life balance, so, I consciously try to try new things. I recently tried life drawing and was surprised at how much I loved it! 

5️⃣ 🫣 I’m a serial overthinker - my posts genuinely take me hours to write. I'm still not used to that squirmy feeling when I hit post

6️⃣ 👥 I care deeply about the people around me 

7️⃣ 💡 I'm obsessed with anything surrounding Healthtech, Femtech, behavioural science and psychology 

8️⃣ 🦵 I've been lucky enough to design surgical tools and experienced working with cadavers which was fascinating! 

9️⃣ 🤲 I’ve spent most of my career conscious of my “years of experience”. This industry has a funny way of making you feel not good enough. But, a number doesn’t define your own value

🔟 🔫 I love sports! I was once 2nd in a World Championships for air rifle shooting. I failed a lot, but, training outside in the rain and snow taught me a whole new level of grit 😅 I'm also currently training for my first marathon

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Whether you’re a regular reader, or you randomly hit follow one day, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being here. I’ve learnt a hell of a lot and I'm so grateful to have met incredible people 

I’ll keep trying to write things that hopefully you’ll want to stick around for

Thank you so much for following along 💛

That's enough about me, I'd love to know more about YOU!

What are some best practices for designing products and services for humans?

What can designers learn from working with cadavers?

What are some key features of the Epi-pen redesigned by the author?

Hint text could be harming your product / service, and the people using it

You might think: "adding hint text will help users understand how to answer, or what values to input"

Pretty harmless, right?
Actually, it can be pretty harmful in some scenarios

Suggesting input values can:
→ Skew answers if they feel like there's a "right" answer
→ Make people feel like they're not good enough
→ Trigger an emotionally difficult moment
→ Drive people out of the journey 

Imagine...
You've decided to sell your house and you find a service that might sell it

The first step: enter the value of your home
Above the input, the hint text says "E.g £800,000"

In a split second your questions start flying:

"£800,000 is so much more expensive than my home"
"They probably only sell houses around that value"
"Is it even worth enquiring? Probably not."

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How we present information can influence, or "anchor" people's decision making - especially if the information they're giving is potentially sensitive

For example:
→ Personal information (family, health, fitness, fertility)
→ Finances (salary, car/house value, budgets, spending)

Information is personal
How people think about it differs from person to person

For example, a salary of £100,000 might feel like "pinch-me" moment to one person, but the same salary to someone else might feel very low

---
A few considerations when we're designing:
→ Can the question be improved to be more clear? Do we need hint text at all? 

→ The input type. Think about how, and why information is collected. Picking from a list/dropdown can help remove the feeling of inputting the "right" value 

---
Words matter. We need to use content purposefully
Design for people, always 💛

How does purposeful content design benefit user experience?

How can hint text influence user decisions?

Why is the input type important in data collection?

I never thought I’d love a pedestrian crossing; but here we are! 

I recently spotted this gem in London 

The lights are outside five major train stations, and there's two designs:
→ A person using a manual wheelchair
→ A woman using an electric wheelchair

They were installed in December for "International Day of Persons with Disabilities”, and it was a collab between Transport for London (TfL) and Pete Reed OBE

Why they're located outside train stations:

Pete is a former Olympian who unfortunately became paralysed from the chest down in 2019 

He approached TfL with his idea because he wanted to raise awareness of people with a disability - particularly around public transport

He said:
“My life now as a full-time wheelchair user has a whole range of new demands, which can be dramatically helped by better access and transport for wheelchair users, just as there should also be for the wider disabled community."

"I hope this visibility in mainstream life makes more people feel comfortable about getting out in the city and raising their voices where they see opportunity for positive change and collaboration"

Beautiful. 
More things like this please!
Awareness matters. Representation matters 💛

How can visibility of wheelchair users impact society?

Businesses move fast and break things
But we cannot, and must not, break our humans.

I often write about designing products / services "for people" - that includes the people who make them

The truth is; 
Everyone wants a good culture, but unfortunately, many people have seen the inside of a bad one (in some form) 

Culture can be quite hard to define
It can mean different things to different people

But, when you get it right, beautiful things happen

Although culture can mean different things, the same themes keep coming up

A culture is about:

→ Feeling safe to say “I don’t know”
→ Being able to show up as yourself
→ How you feel about opening your laptop
→ Checking in if someone isn’t themselves
→ Hearing ideas regardless of seniority / role
→ Having a laugh with the people around you
→ Not being blindsided in performance reviews
→ Feeling heard, valued, trusted, and supported
→ Having your needs, and boundaries respected
→ Whether your "failures" are encouraged or punished
→ Growing with colleagues, not competing against them
→ Not feeling guilty if need to call in sick - please don’t apologise for illness.

Culture can be the difference between a business sinking or thriving

Why? Because people are your greatest asset

The safer people feel, the better things we make
Look after your humans and they'll look after you too

---

There's no denying it's a hard time across the industry right now. If you're going through something, hang in there, you'll breakthrough soon. You've got this 💛

--

I'd love to know what culture means to you?
To me, psychological safety is my number 1

How crucial is psychological safety in a workplace culture?

What does a positive workplace culture entail?

Why is providing support important in a work environment?

It’s no secret that it's harder to recall things over time

Our memories start to blur. Dates become more fuzzy

We start to ask questions like:

“What did I do when I was there?"
“Did I go to [XXX] in 2017 or 2016?”
“Did that happen in March or April?"
“What did we do for your birthday three years ago?”

That's why I take photos of everything - to remember
There's something special about capturing a moment in time

But, there's nothing more awkward than wanting to show someone a photo, awkwardly scrolling in front of them, and then giving up because you couldn't find it

Or, when you do find it, the conversation has moved on and it’s no longer relevant

That’s where Google Photos comes in...
I love how I can search / browse my photos

There's multiple ways to find my photos:
→ The location it was taken (my favourite) 
→ Who's in the photo
→ Keyword
→ Date

It would have been easy to implement one way to search

But, people's brains work differently
Some people remember dates, others remember location
Some people don't have location switched on at all

Or, how people navigate can depend on their context:
For example, if they're browsing vs searching

I love that I can search how I want, for my context:
→ Search by date = if it was a birthday / occasion
→ Browse by person = if I want to reminisce
→ Search by location =  everything else

For me, searching by location has absolutely changed the game for my hazy memory

I'm no longer reliant on fumbling through dates...
All I need to do is open the map
Game. Changer.

—

The truth is; great products/services design for people
They understand we're not machines

They understand what makes humans, human:
→ We make mistakes, and change our mind
→ We don't read every detail (we scan)
→ We don't have the same abilities
→ We gain and lose motivation
→ We have different contexts
→ Our situations can change
→ We have emotions
→ We get tired

Design isn't a one-size fits all. 
Design is about understanding people

Design for people, always 💛

--

P.S Apple photos can search by location too if that's what you use

How can Google Photos help me organize my photos?

How can understanding human behavior improve product design?

Why is it important to design for people?

If you lost your phone, which apps would you remember to reinstall?

I can't remember all my apps without looking...
The ones I do remember fall into 3 buckets:

1️⃣ Things that are important, or helpful:
E.g banking, health, childcare, dating, transport

2️⃣ Things that are enjoyable, or I have a habit with:
E.g social media, music, educational, productivity, games

3️⃣ Things that feel functional or serve a purpose:
E.g memberships / loyalty cards, VPNs, utilities


What about the ones that don't spring to mind?

They're either:

 → Forgotten completely ( I probably only used them a few times but kept them installed "just incase")

→ Remembered when there's a trigger 
For example: if I lost my phone I wouldn't rush to reinstall AirBnB. But, as soon as I'm looking for place to stay, I'd remember download it. 

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Understanding how people think about our products / services is crucial

When we're designing, we can't take our eyes off the bigger picture

We need to understand...
→ Why do people use the product / service?
→ How do people feel when they're using it?
→ Why do / would people keep coming back?
→ When, and how they use it? What's the trigger?
→ What makes it memorable / different to competitors?
→ Is there a mismatch in value? I.e what value do people actually see in the product / service vs the value we think we're delivering? How and when do they realise value? 

As consumers, we all use things for a reason
Some reasons are bigger than others

We might use something because:
→ It makes us feel empowered / proud / our best selves
→ It helps us feel connected to others
→ It feels like we're escaping reality
→ It saves us money / time
→ We just need it for work
→ It works really well
→ It's helpful / useful 
→ We depend on it

As designers and businesses, we need to understand why people use things, the value they see, and the emotions they feel

If we don't, we'll create things that will be uninstalled or forgotten

Design for people, always 💛

--

An app I will always remember is Shazam 🎶
It's a long standing favourite of mine! An absolute gem. 
Which apps would you always reinstall?

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