Whether the brief is highly specific or wildly ambiguous, Rachel�s expertise bridges the gap between the technology and the end-user to deliver successful people-centred products, services and systems.
Commercial Business
Rachel works with large corporations to create business propositions that tap into new and innovative technology. This includes both identifying uses for new technology and scoping areas where opportunities for new technologies exist.
Where a new technology is being developed, Rachel will work with the team to research its potential end-users and identify their specific product needs. This vital understanding helps to define the technology, ensuring it reaches its full market potential. Rachel�s skill is bringing together product and market potential to create a holistic solution that manifests in a tangible and designed product or service.
Similarly, when companies look to expand their technology into new sectors, Rachel conducts the vital background research to identify possible technology partnerships and establishes the beneficial relationships. Rachel works together with partners to outline mutually valuable projects. Rachel puts together the business propositions and manages the projects through to completion.
Working with Research & Development teams, both corporate and academic, Rachel helps to explore new technology ideas and then create working demonstrators that bring those ideas to life and show their potential.
Most importantly it involves managing the transfer of the idea into a business itself, ensuring its use by existing teams or helping to establish new units that will exploit it for the company�s benefit.
To revitalize Nokia�s market share in the face of tough competition from the iPhone. Nokia wanted to improve their development process so that more �emotionally appealing� products passed their development criteria and reached market.
Rachel and her team worked closely with end-users in five carefully selected countries. This provided a real understanding of the role Nokia�s handsets played in people�s lives, both from a user and a cultural perspective. Rachel used this unique insight to develop a framework that mapped the handset�s emotional qualities and the role they play in different areas of people�s lives. Rachel was then able to use this framework to develop value statements that could accurately deliver metrics.
Rachel�s work contributed to a major cultural and technological shift within Nokia. Emotional appeal is now a valued and integral aspect of Nokia�s handset development process, helping Nokia to produce the handsets that customers really want.
Helping to shape Microsoft�s platform development
To inform and support Microsoft�s development of innovative community technologies based on the needs and activities of an exemplar community, amateur musicians. We were expected to develop novel concepts for the product groups, usable patents and academic papers in world class publications.
Rachel led an extensive research study of the amateur musician community. This showed how amateur musicians employ a plethora of online services to sustain local fan bases, reach out to new fans, collaborate internationally, and actively promote both digital and material products. Rachel helped to create extremely novel concepts in this space and to translate these into interesting extensions for Microsoft products that help to differentiate them in the global marketplace.
Rachel helped to create many concepts that are successfully being rolled out into Microsoft products. The concepts included event-oriented promotion tools, community-oriented analytics, tangible and embedded products, and limited-edition digital experiences. These have also had great feedback from the community itself.
To develop a health data platform that provides digital health companies with a data service that allows them to gather the evidence they need to support a business case. The lack of such a service blocks the deployment of innovative products and services that could both improve patient care and provide significant efficiencies.
Gathering personal health data has become highly controversial. We needed to find a new way of understanding the evidence for digital health products.
Rachel�s work provided the Digital Catapult with a number of options for projects designed to break down the barriers. The white paper Rachel produced has provided Digital Catapult with all the intelligence they need to make informed decisions on the right projects to initiate. When these projects go ahead, companies will be able to gather the crucial evidence they need to validate their products and deploy them effectively. This will lead to improvements in patients� health and greater efficiencies in the system.
Helping healthcare funding to maximise its impact
Rachel brought together discussion groups made up of representatives from multi-disciplinary clinical teams. These met in the health clinics themselves, where the setting helped to stimulate and ground ideas. Rachel based the discussions around a process familiar to all stakeholders - care pathways. These were presented with highly engaging visuals that guided and structured the conversations by providing a tangible entity around which people could talk. Rather than searching for solutions, participants were asked to identify challenges and opportunities. This allowed a much broader range of solutions to be considered, including ideas from industries outside of the clinical sphere. This all ensured the discussion groups were positively focused and highly generative.
From the findings Rachel was able to scope a tender briefing document that focused on specific, high priority challenges that can realistically be solved. She threw open these challenges to an exceptionally diverse set of suppliers who were able to offer practical solutions based on innovative new technologies. Rachel�s work has also provided business with a real understanding of the challenges faced by clinicians and is enabling more effective procurement for the NHS.
