Sarah Bloomer & Co specializes in design research and design facilitation based on user centered design techniques.

Sometimes design projects get stuck. You want to improve your product, your application, your business or your strategy, or create something new, yet the project struggles to progress, your team gets bogged down in detail or you simply don’t know where to start.

We can help you get unstuck. Our highly collaborative approach has been used for experience design, software design, web design, process design and product design. We apply user-centered design and design research to products and processes, using collaborative techniques with clients and their customers.

New: I've been delivering tutorials, so have listed them here at long last.

Design is about problem solving. Yet designers seem to meander toward a solution without a clear process. Design is not unstructured. It is possible to allow a solution to evolve within a cost-efficient period of time. With planning and facilitation, I lead you through a design methodology which supports discovery, directs thinking, and promotes innovation; a methodology with goals and a focus on the people who will use the product, process or strategy.

Design facilitation allows the team to synthesize their collective knowledge, and develop a shared understanding of research findings. I draw upon a collection of tools and techniques created to efficiently and effectively feed into an evolving design.

Through collaborative techniques and design facilitation, I lead design or product teams through a proven process, cross-training them in core techniques tailored to your business. My approach integrates your stakeholders, users and customers into the design process in an effective, meaningful way.

The benefits are many. Each team member and stakeholder brings his or her own knowledge and view to the design problem, and through their involvement, gain ownership of the design decisions while understanding the rationale behind those decisions.  By capturing input from many experiences, the design addresses a range of issues. Through facilitation, the design maintains focus and integrity.

Better yet, it’s an investment. Throughout the process, your team learns the techniques. And that means they can use them on future projects.

The Project Definition Workshop was a huge step forward for our project. We knew our project was critical, there were a lot of stakeholders and the scope wasn't clear. With Sarah planning and running the workshop, after just two hours we had a clear vision for the project. Sarah's report captured concrete ideas and next steps, as well as more nuanced considerations. As the project moves forward, we're confident that the workshop helped us make exactly the right decisions.

Jennifer Lymneos, Senior Usability Specialist/Development Training Lead
The MathWorks

Contact us to find out how we can help make your design project successful.