A long way round to experience design

I started in music, not design: roughly seven years as a professional musician in the 1990s, playing guitar in 3½ Minutes and then Inaura. That instinct for how something should feel, its pace, its texture, the way the moment lands, is still the instinct I bring to experience work.

From music I moved into new media as the web was finding its feet, including early research into learning technology and communities of practice. I spent six years at Digitas LBi leading UX on some of the UK's most visited digital properties, from Multimap and the first Selfridges ecommerce site to global brands such as Etihad, Red Bull Racing, and Universal Music.

After a brief stint working for Sir Terence Conran, helping set up a digital offer inside his companies, in 2013 I joined FutureBrand in London to co-found a product and service innovation Lab. Over the years since, I moved from digital into brand-led experience strategy, and most recently served as Chief Experience Officer at FutureBrand.

Music is still there for me, having played in an all-agency band, Lela Marien, and more recently developing a solo electronic live set under the Off-Peak banner.

Today I'm recently arrived back in Melbourne and working across senior customer experience and experience strategy contract roles, and through Sideways, a behavioural design consultancy I co-founded to help regulated businesses solve their trust failures through design. I've been digging deep into how AI tools can support the design process, and I'm building a tool that will evaluate how trust and trustworthiness ebb and flow between customers and the businesses they engage with.