Find a Path to a Better Product, Service, Experience, System or Entire Organisation

Finding a path to a better experience is like exploring a vast landscape. There are rewarding vistas, many directions to choose from, and occasionally treacherous terrain.

When building or improving products, services, systems, experiences or entire organisations, it’s easy to spend time, money and attention building the wrong thing, or building the right thing, the wrong way. You need exceptional guides to help you on your journey towards better things.

Christopher and Anna each have twenty years of experience helping organisations design systems that are safe, useful, usable, engaging, high-performing and valuable. You’ll love our evidence-based approach, using our deep understanding of human psychology, business and technology; it enables us to understand the most complex systems.

We work with you, and the people who matter: customers, users, employees, citizens and stakeholders. We help you figure out what people really need and how to deliver on those needs. It removes the guesswork, so that you can spend your time, effort and money designing and building what really matters. We put the human back into Human-Centred Design.

The goal is clear: to build experiences that are safe, useful, usable, engaging, higher-performing and valuable.

That’s how you find your path to a better experience.

Meet your guides, Christopher & Anna, twenty year veterans in Human Centred Design, UX, CX, Business Analysis and Service Design

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 a User Researcher, Experience and Service Designer. He focuses on people, their behaviour and context to create systems that work for people. He has a Masters in Psychology and a postgraduate Certificate in Human Factors. Prior to co-founding Cognitive Ink, he learned his craft with some of Australia’s first Usability and Experience Design (UX) companies in the early 2000s.

Anna, is a Business Analyst and Service Designer. She focuses on bringing business and technology together to create businesses that solve genuine problems for people. 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. Prior to co-founding Cognitive Ink, Anna held lead roles as a Business Analyst and Service Designer for Babcock & Brown and Macquarie Bank in the 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

Our Services

(4 core capabilities, endless possibility)

Experience Explorer

Figure out what’s working, what’s not, and what’s interesting about existing or future experiences.
Using: Experience Evaluations, Usability Testing and Human Context Interviews.
Human Centred Designer

Design how a better experience, or new technology could work, in the context of your organisation.
Using: Tactical Experience Fixes, Full Experience Design and Future Technology Prototyping.
Business Analyst

Map the operations and business models that lead to better experiences.
Using: Business / Process Modelling and Operational Service Design.
Innovation Guide

Find a path to the right future, by helping everyone get onto the same page.
Using: Stakeholder Facilitation, Ways of Working, Experience Prioritisation and Storytelling.

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

See why we still talk 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, business analysis and experience design to bear on understanding and solving problems.

165+ Projects: across domains spanning engineering, banking, insurance, financial services, manufacturing, software systems, 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, helped the organisation win several Good Design awards.