Selected work

I work at the seam between anthropology and product: long enough in the field to understand a world, close enough to delivery to change it. A few projects I can talk about publicly:

Designing for the 3am decision

Healthcare · Ethnographic research · 6 weeks

Shadowed night-shift clinicians across three hospitals to understand decision-making under fatigue. Found that the tools assumed a rested, focused user who rarely exists at 3am. Reframed the design brief around cognitive load, not features. That killed two planned modules and saved a quarter of build time.

“The shoe photos from the ward rounds did more to align our team than any slide deck.”

Trust, one tap at a time

Fintech · Usability & diary study · 8 weeks

First-time digital-banking users weren’t confused, they were cautious, and the product read caution as drop-off. A two-week diary study surfaced the real moments of doubt. We rebuilt onboarding around small, reversible commitments. Activation up, support tickets down.

How people actually queue

Public sector · Field observation

A study of waiting (in clinics, town halls and on hold) that became an internal playbook for designing humane queues. Sometimes the best UX is telling someone the honest truth about how long this will take.

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A bit more about me

I trained as a social anthropologist and never quite left the field. I just started pointing the same tools at products, services and the occasional thorny org problem. I care about evidence, plain language, and research that ends in a decision rather than a document.

Outside work you’ll find me photographing strangers’ shoes (with permission), walking long distances for no good reason, and collecting other people’s proverbs.

Want to work together? Email me.