BIO
Kate is a passionate Experience Design Lead, blending a future-minded, humanity-centred approach across experience, innovation and change for over 20 years. She created WE–FORM as a dedication to innovating meaningful change, a way to collaborate and share design thinking.
MEET KATE
Working both within client and consultancy teams has informed an empathy for navigating sensitive, complex, and strategic change. Kate’s diverse practice brings together strategy, design and future methodologies to identify problems and unlock possibilities, from the late 90s, focusing on applied design methods since 2005.
LOCAL-GLOBAL LEARNINGS
Kate has learnt her craft through intertwined work, study and lived experience across Australia, Scotland, London and her home country New Zealand. This has included collaborating with clients and markets in France, Switzerland, Canada, Asia and the Pacific, with some work translating across global markets and networks – lending her view to both small and large scale.
A rare Xennial, Kate’s pathway reflects her wholistic* digital and analogue design perspective, having been brought up before the World Wide Web (www) and learning digital capabilities during her school and tertiary studies, such as InfoTech network design, CRM and data protocols in her early Uni years.
MOTIVATION
But what excites Kate most is the role of the design toolkit to listen, learn, and empathise in order to reimagine and create solutions that inspire and motivate. The friction of this interface is always shifting; get that right, and rewards can be exponential. The complexity of cracking this formula is what drives her, and it is unique with every solution.
MINDSET
Curious, observant, open-minded and collaborative, Kate is an inclusive, caring, yet tenacious lead and collaborator. Always seeking to learn, behind her practice lie several interests such as digital anthropology, the role of technology in human culture, the importance of imagination, wonder and creativity, and how we might design better futures. Kate is a huge advocate for the value of imagination, creativity and design, and cultures that support these.
KATE’S JOURNEY
BEGINNINGS
Kate’s wholistic* approach started at the outset of her working life, at the interface between customer and experience in international hotel studies – the ultimate service design foundations. Learning the operations from the ground up, on completion Kate joined the Senior Leadership Team at a leading Melbourne 5* boutique hotel in a regional capacity, incorporating the measurement and insights of the CX life-cycle as part of her role.
DESIGN DIRECTION
In 2005, Design Manager, she transitioned to the human interface between client and creative team, working alongside business owners, learning methods and rebuilding studio value. Kate’s design practice has always sat at the intersection of strategic application, insight and design value, influenced by leading innovation frameworks.
MARKETING MOVE
Moving client-side, Kate took immense pride in helping to deliver the destination brand refresh for her hometown, Christchurch, and surrounding Canterbury districts across B2B partners and consumer needs.
LONDON SCALE
Wanting to explore her understanding of brand and design, London called – and in a challenging post-GFC environment, she was fortunate to learn from and collaborate with some of the best design talent. Kate grew her design appreciation through London culture, experiences at the likes of The Partners and in-person events such as Pentagram founders, Information is Beautiful launch, and Design Breakfast’s spotlight on the London 2012 Olympic case studies, and discussions with AKQA founders, to name a few. Kate believes that strategic brand consultancies remain at the forefront of strategic rationale, cutting-edge transformations, value growth, operational, culture and customer change activation practice.
CONSOLIDATION MASTERY
Choosing to study again brought her home to New Zealand, a choice to consolidate her learnings. Kate continued to work at a Director capacity across numerous brand and evolving digital programmes. Finishing her studies (MUXD, PG-Dip Mkgt), she sought to evolve her skills in research, design, strategy and consultation lead roles.
Kate’s connected journey joins the dots across the spectrum with an experience design, operational, strategy and futures focus, continuing to grow and evolve as the practice does.
MORE ABOUT KATE
Kate’s work experience is aligned and strengthened by her studies. Be it learning new skills or consolidating years of experience, Kate’s wholistic* perspective provides a qualified view informed by the papers and subjects she chose to study. From IT network architecture to psychology and motivation, service design, to innovation and ethnographic studies, these interests have shaped her practice, work, life path, and she hopes – our futures.
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From working with some of the leading Design (& Brand) Consultancies both in London and Aotearoa, such as WPP’s The Partners, Interbrand and Designworks, Kate seasoned her practice with further integrated transformation, innovation and design programmes. Choosing to study post-grad alongside continued Director-level work needs, consolidating 15y of lived-experience, becoming both an advocate and leader for innovation and good practice.
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An emerging practice, in 2005 Kate transferred her CX and Service Design skills from 5* Hotels to Design Management in a small Melbourne boutique design and brand consultancy.
Curious to explore the interface of creative, customer and business operational needs to design and develop brands, as valued assets that embodied human characteristics and fostered growth.
Over this time she grew both consultancy and client side brand strategy building blocks – from early research, vision and values definition, brand / digital strategy, double-diamond best practice and iD system design, through to activation.
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Earning a scholarship enabled Kate to study at an International Hotel Business School in Adelaide, Australia. An opportunity she will never regret.
In 1998 progressive international, cultural and management studies began to set the foundations for human-led CX, service and product design, alongside operational know-how. Wholistic* learnings from the outset considered, and closely interrelated all aspects of managing and leading human-led service, from multidisciplinary team operations, IT (CRM), psychology, culture, TQM (ISO framework), marketing, economics, business analysis (BA) report writing, to sustainability.
Invaluable lived experience from front-line, through to joining a Senior Management Leadership Team (SLT) straight out of studies in 2022 – much of which has informed the Experience Design practice we know it as today.
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A curious, creative kid, Kate grew up in Auckland, moving to Christchurch with her family at an early age. Influenced by a creative family, and an architectural father, she enjoyed painting, photography and graphic design right through school. Kate started toying with some of the earliest Macs and designing some of her first identities and products at around 15 years old.
Despite this, in all her wisdom at just 17 years old, out of high school Kate chose a business pathway to open her mind to a world that she didn’t know and satisfy an interest in culture, diversity and learning.
Moving to Australia in 1998, it’s there that she spent her formative young adult years. Little did she know, these studies would set the foundations for her experience design pathway.
WORK STORIES
For more stories about Kate’s work, including examples and links to live work, please either check out the case studies within the Experience page, or visit her LinkedIn for specific examples by role.
GOOD CO.
WE–FORM is built on the shoulders of giants. We are proud to belong to, or be influenced by some of the world’s leading design organisations, blended by local indigenous regenerative ecosystem thinking, to ensure we’re aware of the latest developments in design practice. These include, but are not limited to –
MENTORSHIP + COACHING
Kate’s growth and experiences wouldn’t have been possible without the support of her managers, employers, peers, and mentors. She is grateful for the many incredible connections and generosity shared by talented teams she’s been able to work with.
This has inspired her to be available for mentorship through the following collaborators. And whilst Kate has a coaching style in how she guides clients and stakeholders, she also has her own aspirations to train as a coach and give back in her future.
