Cognitive Ink provides Human Centred Design for Complex Products, Services, Experiences and Entire Organisations

The path to better experiences is paved with an understanding of human needs

Creating better human-centred experiences can be like exploring a vast landscape—there are many rewarding vistas, but also difficult terrains. You want to find the right guides to take you on the journey.

A Cognitive Ink, we help you learn who is involved, what they need and how they work. This includes reaching all the people that matter: customers, users, employees and citizens. We use our insight to create maps of existing or new experiences in order to design what to change or to build new.

We have the tools and skills to understand complex business, technology and culture inside and outside an organisation. And we can translate this into better experiences. Well-designed products, services, experiences and organisations are safer, more useful, higher performing, better accepted and have greater value.

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 a 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, and to solve them well. 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

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.