Design follows insight. Why?

Design is a problem-solving process. For complex, wicked problems, we first need to fully understand “the problem”, before designing solutions. Insight draws the path for our design process to follow.

We help impact driven organisations to co-design innovative solutions with the customers & communities they serve

Services

Opportunity mapping

Stage: early (discovery phase)

Our strength lies in identifying opportunities to deliver value to customers and stakeholders through innovative solutions and services.

By mapping their unmet needs, motivations, expectations and challenges, we help prioritise opportunities by impact and feasibility and guide the development of new value propositions.

Behavioural barrier & risk reduction

Stage: mid (pre-pilot or scale-up)

We ‘de-risk’ the introduction of novel technological solutions, pilots and interventions by identifying potential behavioural barriers to adoption and change.

We deliver both strategic and tactical design guidelines to reduce behavioural barriers and to drive motivation, for long-term sustainable impact.

Stakeholder engagement & co-design

Stage: any

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.

Expertise

Fieldwork: Interview with shop owner

Design Research

To understand complex challenges and deliver innovative solutions, we deploy a wide range of research methods, such as:

  • In-person & remote 1:1 interviews
  • Participatory design exercises
  • Shadowing & observation
  • Co-design workshops
  • Community Lab facilitation
  • Lean experiments with concept prototypes

With a systems-oriented view, we craft research activities that uncover opportunities for impact and inform strategic decisions.

Community interview in a church in Ghana

Behavioural Design

To achieve positive behaviour change, we look beyond foundational awareness strategies, 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.

Design Sprint: ideation on patient journey map

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

Prototyping workshop

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.

Fieldwork with clients

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.

Project examples

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.

Read “How Seed Testing Competitions Boosted Seed Quality” (external source)

Project Website

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, to engage patients & caregivers in collaborative problem solving and co-creation.

Publication on the MSF Scientific Portal about the final prototype design

Innovation strategy for biodiversity monitoring

We developed a strategic vision for future biodiversity services for the Rainforest Alliance, that combine scientific models and data with community leadership.

This was the result of a series of expert interviews and design workshops on biodiversity, sustainable forest management, biology and agroforestry. We mapped biodiversity assessment practices and tools, explored the potential of new technologies such as eDNA sampling, and identified opportunities to deliver valuable data insights on biodiversity, for donors and investing companies.

Behaviour change research for vision improvement among the 40+ in Ghana

Community interview in a church 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

Solution quick sketching exercise

A 3-day Design Sprint in Geneva with participants from MSF, WHO and the Red Cross — focused on a humanitarian challenge: how to make the transportation of Ebola patients safer and more efficient in very challenging, remote rural conditions.

Participant observation in local market

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. From large multinationals (e.g. Deutsche Telekom, Samsung, HP, Knauf, Zurich Insurance, Sanofi, Roche & other), technology start-ups, universities (Goldsmiths College, Elisava, IED), innovation labs to international NGOs. Her path spans decades of design evolution. Starting with a PhD in Human Computer Interaction, Yanna 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. Since then, she has been shaping customer experiences (CX) at the frontier of technology innovation – when uncertainty and stakes are high.

Most recently, Yanna led a value proposition study for AI in clinical laboratories, and delivered strategic insights for an international manufacturer of medical appliances. She has consulted impact-focused organisations on innovation projects, 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, systemic and behavioural frameworks to strengthen community climate change resilience, improve humanitarian aid and healthcare, and to support the restoration of natural landscapes.

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