In a few weeks, I move on from my current role at EMBL. It’s been a fascinating journey into how science happens and how that meets with how digital product design happens. Digital transformation is still a thing in many organisations, EMBL being one of them. It was worthwhile, hard work, but it’s time for other things.

But what things?

The inflection point in the industry continues. Organisations are still figuring out how to scale design. Design leadership is maturing as a practice. DesignOps appeared to help. But the point still remains: the impact of design is having a challenging time to find a symbiotic relationship with business. And the pain of scale is fundamentally changing how design is perceived and how it operates. I can help there.

I said a couple of weeks ago that I’m reassessing how I want to spend the latter stages of my career. I’m a great believer in small, diverse, close-knit teams and what they can achieve given the right environment and support. I’ve seen first hand how that can be both amazing, and terrible. I’m interested in helping you with the former. I can help there, too.

I’ve also seen the value for organisations of well supported, fast, skunkworks-like design sprints. If you or your team can’t see the wood for the trees, or are mired in organisational politics and technical dept, and you need a product design or digital brand strategy delivered that is refreshing and takes you new directions, I can help there, as well.

If you are looking for a design leader, an experienced principal designer, or have a project you’d like my help with, then get in touch