Design is a problem-solving process. When dealing with complex challenges— we need insights —to really understand “the problem”, and create the right solutions. Research insights draw the path for our design process to follow.
We help impact-driven organisations to co-design innovative solutions for healthcare and sustainability, with the customers & communities they serve.
Design Research
To understand complex challenges and deliver solution design guidelines, we deploy a wide range of research methods, including:
In-person & remote 1:1 interviews
Group interviews & participatory workshops
Shadowing & observation
Qualitative Surveys
Mobile Ethnography (e.g. WhatsApp diaries)
Experiments with concept prototypes
We engage stakeholders in problem-solving through hands-on activities like games and creative exercises. This research approach yields actionable insights and uncovers opportunities for impact.
Behavioural Design
Improving people’s healthcare is often hindered by behavioural challenges. We believe that to achieve behaviour change, we need to look beyond foundational awareness approaches, towards design-led innovation.
We gather insights into the target audience’s socio-cultural context, attitudes, behavioural barriers, and motivational drivers. We leverage these insights to craft tools, programs, and services that empower people to adopt positive behaviours for their health and environment, which are sustainable long-term.
By following an iterative design and validation process, we prepare behavioural interventions for scale-up pilots, reducing risk and costs.
Service Design
Our expertise spans across very diverse service delivery contexts: digital health, humanitarian relief, environmental conservation, insurance, transportation, travel, and manufacturing. We facilitate the service design process for international, multi stakeholder and interdisciplinary teams to co-create a coherent and effective end-to-end customer experience, visualised through:
Customer Journey Maps & Service Blueprints
Service Prototypes (e.g. storyboards)
Frameworks (e.g. eco-system maps)
Impact Metrics
Coaching & Capacity Building
We deliver custom and practical training sessions on qualitative research methods and participatory design. We believe in “learning by doing”, so we tailor training sessions for particular real-world challenges.
We often lead fieldwork within clients organisations, coaching multidisciplinary teams along the process. We help local teams to adapt research tools to their cultural context, enabling them to own and execute research activities independently.
Case Studies
Design for climate change resilience for agricultural communities
We helped the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to co-design and prototype an innovative program, that drives collaborative learning among farmers & increases climate change resilience in Northeast Syria.
Service design for healthcare in MSF’s hospital in Nigeria
The Sapling Nursery within Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF UK) empowers field staff to engage in innovation, solve complex challenges and improve the delivery of medical care. We mentored and guided remotely a nursing team in Sokoto on how to identify and improve a key service problem.
We developed a strategic vision for future biodiversity services for the Rainforest Alliance, that combine scientific models and data with community leadership.
Behaviour change research for vision improvement among the 40+ in Ghana
This project for VisionSpring, delivered insights on barriers and misconceptions that the 40+ have in relation to acquiring and wearing glasses in Ghana, based on in-person fieldwork.
Service design to drive behaviour change for chronic disease management
We uncovered opportunities for digital tools to encourage lifestyle changes and chronic disease monitoring (Type 2 diabetes & hypertension) among early-stage patients.
Design Sprint to improve the transportation of Ebola patients in West Africa
A 3-day Design Sprint in Geneva focused on a humanitarian challenge with MSF, WHO and Red Cross participants.
Services
Discovery: opportunity mapping
We help your organisation understand people’s needs, motivations, expectations and challenges in a given socio-cultural context. We map opportunities for innovation and help you prioritise those based on impact and feasibility assessments.
Who is it for: organisations planning to introduce an entirely new product or service
Pilot risk reduction
Our strength lies in identifying potential barriers to adoption for new, innovative solutions. We map out potential structural and behavioural barriers that target customers face, to guide decision making and to reduce risk when introducing a new technological solution or a program.
Who is it for: start-ups working in digital health or climate tech innovation with novel technology
Participatory design with communities
We facilitate a process and deliver tools to co-create solutions together with people, not only for people. By engaging stakeholders through a design-driven solution seeking process from the very beginning, we can deliver innovation that is sustainable in the long-term.
Who is it for: INGOs, social enterprises or government funded social & environmental impact projects
We specialise in participatory research and design for healthcare & climate change resilience projects.
About
Yanna Vogiazou is a design consultant with 18 years of cross-industry innovation experience, drawing from large corporations(e.g. Deutsche Telekom, Samsung, HP, Zurich Insurance, Sanofi, Roche & others), technology start-ups, academic institutions, innovation labs and INGOs. Yanna’s path spans decades of design evolution. Starting with a PhD in Human Computer Interaction, she helped design some of the first touch-enabled smartphones at Deutsche Telekom when phones were transitioning from “dumb” devices to smart ones in the early 00s.
In recent years, Yanna has consulted exceptional, impact-focused organisations, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the Airbel Impact Lab of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the Rainforest Alliance (RA). Across these collaborations, she applied human-centered design (HCD) methods, design thinking and behavioural frameworks to strengthen community climate change resilience, improve humanitarian aid and healthcare, and support the restoration of natural landscapes.
Yanna helps her client teams address complex challenges and to co-create sustainable, systemic solutions through design-driven innovation. She brings a hands-on approach to fieldwork in challenging environments, combined with cultural sensitivity. She believes in moving beyond Human-Centred Design (HCD), towards Planet-Centred Design. Nature needs to be part of our design process – we can no longer afford to innovate without considering the impact of our solutions on ecosystems.
Yanna holds a PhD in Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) from the Open University, in the UK. She taught design research methods at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and service design at Elisava and Instituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Barcelona.
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