About me

I bring research, innovation and experience design together, helping teams build products that are useful, thoughtful and fun. Right now I'm part of the AI Labs team at On, where we're working to bring people more joy through movement. I've worked across sectors, with a particular passion for media and storytelling, my time at the Financial Times and building the Guardian's Feast being the highlights.

After hours I write a newsletter about metropolitan life and culture.

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CARTOGRAPHIES OF AMBITIONCOMMUNITY RESEARCH, ARTEFACTS, PARTICIPATION

I WORKED ASLEAD RESEARCHER

This research project explored the occupational segregation of the working age population in Moray, a region in the North of Scotland and was commissioned by the Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

The ambition of the project was to explore the factors that constrain or limit an inclusive and equal participation in the workforce for predominantly, but not exclusively, women.

While drafting the project brief, the idea of constructing the alternative workforce emerged from the HIE report. The sections of the population that we were about to engage with were highly capable and passionate but also experiencing factors that prevented them from expressing those valuable skills in the current job market.  We decided on a highly participatory, collaborative work conducted in strategic places in Forres to engage with the members of the community in their preferred environments.

First research phase consisted of pop-ups in community accessible spaces, where we distributed post-cards on which we asked members to record their special skills and talents that could help mitigate the current factors preventing workforce inclusion (including babysitting, household management, physical education, nutrition and task management).

Second research phase focused on workshops with young mothers, high school pupils and college students. We used the post-card artefacts gathered before and local maps on which participants would specify where in the area they feel physically or systemically constrained or to use their skills, adding behavioural context that may otherwise be untangible. To find the friction points, we also asked them to reimagine services currently preventing them from participation.

This research programme allowed us to map the factors preventing the inclusion, and to ceate a bank of skills and cultural assets the involved communities were able and ready to contribute. By visualising and bringing the form to the experiential and causal factors we managed to clearly accurate the nature of possible interventions aimed at ensuring greater and more equitable participation, which was then communicated to the client.


Visual map of issues and their causes, looking at new parents and young people of the region. This artefact was an important communication device, showing interdependencies, systemic and personal causes of exclusion.
Display of special skills and talents gathered in one of the local community consultations in Forres.
One of the local maps that we made to help participants geographically contextualise their needs. 
Workshop with local youth,  mapping areas where their skills could be useful if given an opportunity.
Partitipant displaying her special skills in the community consultation in the local library.


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