Working together
I'm an interaction designer, which means I start from what something makes people do. That's usually read as screens and flows, but it applies just as much to a brand, a website, an email or a video. Each one asks people to notice something, believe something and do something, and each one carries assumptions about who those people are.
So the work isn't split into product on one side and brand and comms on the other. A product that refuses to manipulate people needs onboarding copy that says so. A campaign that wants people to act needs a website where every section ends in an action. A new organisation that needs to look credible needs a design system that holds a lot of difficult information without falling apart. Whatever the deliverable, I'm designing the behaviour around it.
What I do
- Interface analysisA close read of what your product actually asks people to do, and who that serves.
- ResearchFinding out how people actually use and understand what you've made.
- Product and interface designFlows, interactions and systems that do what you say your product does.
- Brand and identityIdentities built around what you want people to do, not just how you want to look.
- WebsitesSites designed and built, where the structure follows what the visitor came to do.
- Communications and contentCopy, onboarding, email and video that say what you actually do.
- Strategy for foundersTurning convictions into a product, an audience and a way of working.
When people get in touch
A product with a point of view
You want to behave differently from the dominant platforms, and you need the interface to hold that position instead of quietly undoing it.
An interface out of step
What the product means and what the interface makes people do have drifted apart. The behaviour on screen no longer matches the intention behind it.
A hard product problem
You're trying to understand a difficult product problem underneath the UX, in assumptions, incentives and defaults, not just smooth over usability.
Interface analysis
Reading the product
A close read of what the interface actually asks people to do: how they enter, decide, act, return and leave. It surfaces the behavioural logic running underneath the product, how it's designed to influence users, which patterns it has borrowed, and where it has drifted from your intentions.
You receive a written report with prioritised findings and recommendations your team can act on. The same findings can also become public-facing content: short videos that communicate what your product is actually doing and why that matters, built from genuine critical understanding rather than marketing language.
Best for: Product teams, app developers, ethical tech startups, regulated industries.
See it in practice: Omniana product strategy
Research
Investigating the question
When the analysis raises a bigger question, research investigates it: the people using the product, the assumptions built into it, its language, its incentives and the wider context it sits inside.
Research is scoped to the question you're trying to answer, not the methodology you think you should be using. At the lighter end: desk research, heuristic work, structured walk-throughs, competitor analysis through the lens of interface ethics. At the heavier end: user testing, qualitative interviews, and full research projects that produce a grounded account of how users are actually moving through your product, not how you assume they are. Either way, you end up with something defensible to point at when you're making design decisions internally.
Best for: Teams who need to understand something specific about how their users actually experience the product, before a redesign, alongside an analysis, or as a standalone study.
See it in practice: Platform Literacy
Product and interface design
Changing the product
Turning what analysis and research reveal into changes in the product: reworking a flow, changing the logic of an interaction, removing a manipulative mechanism, or realigning what the interface says with what it does.
Most interface design inherits its logic from platforms built on extraction. The patterns are everywhere and the alternatives aren't obvious. I work with you to build interfaces that are honest about what they're doing to users and aligned with what you actually stand for, either as project work with scoped deliverables and a clear end point, or as a monthly retainer where I work alongside your team.
Best for: Ethical tech founders, consumer app teams and mission-driven organisations.
See it in practice: BTN news aggregator design
Brand and identity
Deciding how it should feel to deal with you
A brand is mostly experienced as behaviour: what the website asks of you, what the emails sound like, what the product does when you try to leave. I design identities from that end. Before colour and type, the questions are who this needs to reach, what they already associate with organisations like yours, and what they should feel able to do after meeting you.
Then the identity is built as a system rather than a logo: type, colour, imagery, components and tone that hold together on a phone screen, a social post, a placard and a policy paper. For Take Back Big Tech that meant borrowing from protest graphics and zine culture so a campaign about platform power would look like a movement people could join, not another institution talking to itself.
Best for: Campaigns, new organisations and products whose values have to be visible before anyone reads the about page.
See it in practice: Take Back Big Tech
Websites
Designing and building the front door
I design and build websites, so what launches is what was designed. The structure comes first: what visitors arrive needing to know or do, and the order they need it in. For Impress Dispute Resolutions that meant one component system that could carry general information, guidance for different audiences, legal text and a complaint process without each page feeling like a different site.
Accessibility is part of the build rather than a check at the end: heading structure, form markup, focus states, target sizes, colour contrast and behaviour without JavaScript. You get a site your team can update, and a component system it can grow into.
Best for: New organisations, campaigns and independent businesses that need a site that works on day one.
See it in practice: Impress Dispute Resolutions
Communications and content
Saying what the product does
Communications are part of the interface. Onboarding copy decides what people think a product is for. Re-engagement emails decide whether it feels like a tool or a slot machine. A video decides who thinks the product is for them. I write and design these as interactions, starting from what each one should make someone understand or do.
That can be a brand voice and the evidence behind it, an onboarding rewrite, an email programme, or short-form video built from real analysis rather than marketing language. For Omniana I tested three positions in public before recommending one, and the weekly prompt and monthly summary emails that came out of the work are now live.
Best for: Products and organisations whose communications undersell or contradict what they actually do.
See it in practice: Omniana product strategy
Strategy for founders
Getting from opinions to output
Some projects start further back, with a founder who knows what they believe and not yet what to build. I treat those beliefs as the first dataset: recorded interviews that push on each conviction, analysis that separates what's being stated from what's being assumed, and comparison against the organisations already in the space.
What comes out is the thing the founder can run without me: a defined product, an audience decision, and a working system for producing it every week. For one founder that was a structured workspace with automations written against a fixed format, so a solo operation could publish at the pace of a team.
Best for: Founders and small teams with strong views and no machinery yet.
See it in practice: Turning strong opinions into a system
Ways to work together
Projects
Scoped work with clear deliverables and an end point, from a two-week analysis to a full identity or website.
Retainers
A set number of days a month, working alongside your team on product, brand and communications as things come up, so the thinking stays consistent across all three.
Combined
Most work crosses over. An analysis that turns into an onboarding rewrite, or an identity that needs a website, is priced and run as one project rather than handed between suppliers.
How a project runs
Discovery
We talk about your product, your users, and what's bothering you. I'll tell you honestly whether I can help, and if I can, I'll outline what working together would look like and what it would cost.
Diagnosis
I go deep into your product, platform presence, or communications. I'm mapping the behavioural layer: what assumptions your design is making about your users, what patterns it's borrowing, and where those patterns conflict with your values.
Delivery
You receive what we scoped: a written report and short videos for an analysis, a research output for research, a redesigned interface and implementation templates for a design project, or an ongoing working relationship for a retainer. We finish with a working session so the work lands properly inside your team.
To start, email me at loumachugh@gmail.com and we'll book a free discovery call. Pricing is on request, and I'll tell you honestly if I'm not the right person.
