The Path to Better Experiences is Paved with a Deep Understanding of Human Needs, Capabilities and Limitations

Cognitive Ink provides Human Centred Design for Complex Experiences, Services, Products, Apps, Operations, Software and Transactional Systems

Building a complex system is like exploring a vast landscape. There’s many rewarding vistas, but also difficult terrain. The best way to navigate this opportunity space is to work with the people (customers, users, employees, citizens) at the centre of what’s being made.

It’s crucial to learn who’s involved, what they need and why. Then to translate understanding into concepts, prototypes and tests which show how to design the right solution, and when it should show up in people’s work or lives. A well designed thing is safer, more useful, higher performing, better accepted and has greater value for the organisation that offers it.

And it starts with the journey to learn about the people at the heart of the experience, including those that use the thing being made and those who support it.

That’s what it means to do Human Centred Design well.

Meet your guides, Christopher & Anna, twenty year veterans in HCD

Small-but-mighty, Christopher and Anna are the heart of Cognitive Ink. We assess, manage, and provide the core work on any project. When required, we scale via a hand-selected team.

Christopher is an Ethnographer, User researcher, Service and Experience Designer. He focuses on people, their behaviour and context. He has a Masters in Psychology and a postgraduate Certificate in Human Factors. He initially learned his craft consulting with some of Australia’s first usability and experience design (UX) companies in the early 2000s.

Anna, is a Strategic Business Analyst and Service Designer. She specialises untangling business and technology. She has a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Laws (business law), Master of Laws (Honours) (technology law) and Certifications in Business Analysis and Financial Analysis. Anna formed her skills working as a business analyst and service designer for one of Australia’s most prestigious banks, also in the early 2000s.

“You two are the king and queen of design research. It’s not just about your insights, it’s how you lift them up and bring them into the business. You never fail to astound me.”

~Maureen Thurston

Acting Director of Design Factory at Swinburne University of Technology Melbourne, Former Chief Experience Officer of Aurecon, and Chair Emeritus of Good Design Australia

We support a range of

Research and Design journeys

Understand & Map

Dive deep into a domain to map processes, services and experiences to show how they work and to learn the opportunities for they they might contain.
Evaluate & Test

Explore how how people use a complex process, product, service, experience or system, via both formal and informal investigations (e.g. usability testing and shadowing). To learn what works, or doesn’t work, with an eye for future change.
Invent

Explore the range of problems worth solving and generate a bunch of new ideas about how an existing or new technology might solve the right problems for people. To create a useful, meaningful and valuable portfolio of future solutions.
Prototype

Using rough-and-ready methods, develop prototypes that show how a new idea could work. To learn as early as possible, what the benefits, pitfalls and value of a new idea could be. Before significant resources are committed to build a fully-working version.
Communicate

With compelling techniques suitable for groups, forums, leadership and the community, show how a new idea might change the future of an organisation, group or society. In order to build momentum for a new idea, discover challenges in implementation and create loops of continuous feedback.

Explore our approach and services in more detail to see all the things we can do, and how we do it.

See why we insist on taking with real people, even in an age of AI and Synthetic Users.

Learn about the benefits of visual product, service and experience mapping.

Since 2013, we’ve designed useful, usable, valuable and award-winning products, services and experiences for clients across the world

Short Facts

2013: Cognitive Ink was founded to bring the best of social science, system analysis, business optimisation and experience design and visual thinking to bear on solving problems. It’s in our name, we Think in Ink.

165+ Projects: across domains spanning built environment, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare and logistics.

70+ Clients: We’ve helped businesses and government-funded organisations, startups and established well-known names. Our clients have spanned the global, including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and the US.

Award-winning: Key contributions to the transformational AMP Goals 360 program, which won several Good Design awards.