1. Executive Snapshot

• Role: Co-Designer & Lead Research Facilitator
• Duration: Multi-session workshop series
• Target Group: Emerging young Black creatives
• Context: Creative economy skills gap amid rapid AI integration

Core Problem: Young creatives lacked structured support to integrate AI tools into their practice in a way that strengthened rather than diluted creative identity and employability.

Outcome: Developed and delivered a research-informed behavioural curriculum integrating AI tools to enhance creative confidence, identity clarity and portfolio readiness.

2. Strategic Context

The acceleration of generative AI tools has disrupted entry pathways into the creative industries. For historically marginalised creatives, this presented both:

• Opportunity (expanded tool access)
• Risk (skill displacement and identity erosion)

There was limited structured education focused on:

• Ethical AI integration
• Identity formation
• Translating AI fluency into employability

The intervention aimed to close this capability gap.

3. Research & Diagnostic Phase

Research Questions

• How do emerging creatives perceive AI in relation to authorship and identity?
• What capability gaps limit effective AI adoption?
• What behavioural barriers affect experimentation and confidence?

Methods

• Pre-workshop reflective surveys
• Facilitated group discussions
• In-session observation
• Iterative feedback loops
• Artefact analysis (outputs created using AI tools)

Tools Explored

• Figma (design workflows)
• Midjourney (visual generation)
• ChatGPT (ideation & structuring)
• RunwayML (video augmentation)
• Jitter (motion design)

Constraints

• Uneven digital literacy
• Variable access to hardware
• Psychological resistance to AI

4. Key Insights

1. Identity Anxiety: Participants feared AI would replace their originality.
2. Tool Overwhelm: Exposure without structure led to shallow experimentation.
3. Confidence Deficit: Low belief in professional competitiveness limited ambition.
4. Opportunity Gap: Few participants knew how to translate AI use into employability language.

5. Intervention Design

Based on findings, the curriculum was structured around three behavioural pillars:

1. Identity Before Tools: Reflection-first exercises anchored AI use in personal narrative.
2. Structured Experimentation: Tool use embedded within defined creative challenges.
3. Translation to Employability: Outputs reframed as portfolio artefacts with articulated design rationale.

The workshops combined:

• Guided prompts
• Co-creation exercises
• Live tool demonstration
• Structured critique cycles
• Meta-reflection

6. Implementation

• Multi-session modular format
• Progressive tool complexity
• Peer collaboration
• Iterative content refinement
• Adaptive pacing based on cohort feedback

7. Impact & Evidence

Qualitative outcomes included:

• Increased reported confidence in AI tool usage
• Stronger articulation of creative identity
• Production of portfolio-ready artefacts
• Greater clarity on positioning within creative industry roles

Behavioural indicators observed:

• Reduced hesitation in tool experimentation
• Increased peer feedback engagement
• Clearer self-descriptions of creative value proposition

8. Strategic Value & Transferability

This intervention demonstrates:

• Behavioural design applied to capability development
• Ethical AI integration frameworks
• Curriculum architecture for digital transformation
• Scalable model for educational institutions or corporate upskilling

Transferable to:

• Corporate AI onboarding
• Innovation team capability building
• University-level digital design curricula
• Workforce development programmes

1. Executive Snapshot

• Role: UX Designer & Behavioural Strategist
• Context: Wellness application development
• Core Problem: Effectively integrating visual design principles into a platform to promote and sustain positive behaviour change.

Outcome: Designed and implemented a personalised user experience informed by user research and feedback.

2. Strategic Context

The Momentum Recharge project focused on the intersection of visual communication and wellness. The primary goal was to create a digital environment that didn’t just track data, but actively encouraged healthy habits through:

• Integration of key visual design principles.
• Alignment of app functionality with wellness goals.
• Leveraging user-centric design to drive long-term retention.

3. Research & Diagnostic Phase

Methods

• User Research: Conducted deep dives into user motivations and barriers to wellness.
• Feedback Analysis: Systematically reviewed user responses to identify pain points and preferences.
• UX Auditing: Evaluated existing workflows for friction in the behaviour change journey.

Focus

The research phase aimed to understand how users perceive wellness metrics and what visual cues most effectively trigger positive action.

4. Key Insights

1. Personalisation is Paramount: Users are more likely to engage with wellness tools when the experience feels tailored to their specific lifestyle.
2. Visual Clarity Drives Action: Complex data must be translated into intuitive visual design to prevent cognitive overwhelm.
3. Feedback Loops: Real-time feedback, aligned with user preferences, significantly boosts the perceived value of the application.

5. Intervention Design

Based on research findings, the application was customised through several key design pillars:

• Identity-Aligned UX: Creating a personalised interface that reflects the user’s wellness journey.
• Behavioural Visuals: Using design principles to highlight progress and nudge healthy choices.
• Data-Driven Customisation: Adjusting the application’s flow based on feedback analysis to ensure a high level of user-product fit.

6. Impact & Evidence

The implementation focused on the following intended outcomes:

• Increased User Engagement: Support regular use through an interface informed by user research.
• Improved User Satisfaction: Positive qualitative feedback regarding the personalised nature of the application.
• Enhanced Data Interaction: Make wellness metrics easier to interpret and use through clearer data visualisation.

7. Strategic Value & Transferability

This project demonstrates the value of merging UX research with behavioural design to solve engagement challenges in the health-tech sector. It is highly transferable to:

• Health & Wellness Platforms: Improving retention in fitness and mental health apps.
• Employee Wellness Programs: Designing internal tools that employees actually want to use.
• Data-Driven Product Strategy: Translating complex user data into actionable design improvements.

1. Executive Snapshot

• Role: Behavioural Strategist (Collaborator with BCA Team)
• Target Group: Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) at risk of HIV
• Context: Public health crisis involving low medication adherence

Core Problem: High rates of HIV risk paired with low adherence to life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) medication and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among vulnerable youth populations.

Outcome: Developed a multi-channel behavioural journey that aimed to support adherence by linking communication to participants’ motivations.

2. Strategic Context

In the fight against HIV, the availability of medication (ARVs and PrEP) is only half the battle. For adolescent girls and young women, the barriers to consistent usage are often non-clinical, including:

• Social Stigma: Fear of being seen with medication.
• Routine Disruption: Difficulty integrating daily pills into fluid lifestyles.
• Motivation Gaps: A lack of immediate perceived benefit vs. long-term risk.

The project aimed to transform medical compliance into a relatable, motivated daily habit.

3. Intervention Design: The Behavioural Journey

The intervention was built on a comprehensive behavioural journey map that identified every friction point from initial awareness to daily pill-taking.

Key Design Pillars

• Motivation-Linked Touchpoints: Every interaction was designed to trigger a specific internal motivator (e.g., autonomy, safety, or future-self aspirations).
• The “Nudge” Ecosystem: Rather than a single message, we created a surrounding environment of reminders.

4. Implementation & Touchpoints

The strategy was deployed across multiple channels to meet users where they already exist:

• Community Radio Spots: Used for broad social proof and to normalise the conversation around PrEP/ARVs.
• Social Media Messaging: Targeted content designed to build a supportive digital community and reduce stigma.
• Personalised Reminders: Direct-to-user nudges that felt supportive rather than clinical, helping to overcome the “forgetting” barrier.

5. Impact & Evidence

The project supported adherence through the following activities and intended outcomes:

• Supporting Consistent Use: The intervention aimed to support consistent ARV and PrEP use through communication linked to participants’ motivations.
• Enhanced Motivation: Qualitative feedback indicated that users felt more empowered and less “policed” regarding their health choices.
• Optimised Communication: Evidence-based refinement of which messages resonated most with AGYW.

6. Strategic Value & Transferability

This project illustrates the power of Behavioural Design in a public health context. Linking communication touchpoints to participants’ motivations may also inform work in:

• Chronic Disease Management: Improving long-term adherence for diabetes or hypertension.
• Preventative Health: Encouraging vaccination uptake or regular screenings.
• Youth Engagement: Designing social services that resonate with hard-to-reach younger demographics.

1. Executive Snapshot

• Role: Behavioural Researcher & Strategic Design Lead
• Duration: Multi-phase community intervention
• Context: Informal settlement households using unsafe flame-based cooking systems

Core Problem: Low adoption of safer cookstove technologies despite significant health and safety risks.

Outcome: Designed and implemented a community-based behavioural intervention using bread-baking as a participatory catalyst, contributing to measurable shifts in cookstove ownership patterns and safety perceptions.

2. Strategic Context

In many low-resource South African communities, households rely on open-flame cooking systems, paraffin, and biomass fuels, often within structurally unsafe stoves.

Consequences include: - Respiratory illness and indoor air pollution - Burn injuries - Fuel inefficiency and financial strain

Despite the availability of safer alternatives, adoption rates remained low because barriers were not purely economic—they were behavioural, cultural, and identity-linked. The challenge was shifted from a product distribution problem to a behavioural systems challenge: shifting motivations and norms without imposing external solutions.

3. Research & Diagnostic Phase

Research Questions

• What symbolic and cultural meanings are attached to cooking with fire?
• What prevents households from transitioning to safer cookstoves?
• Which social influences shape ownership decisions?
• How do risk perceptions align with daily lived realities?

Methods

• Ethnographic fieldwork and in-home observations
• Semi-structured interviews and behavioural mapping
• Co-creation workshops and informal community discussions
• Artefact analysis of existing stove types and usage patterns

Constraints

• Financial vulnerability and infrastructure instability
• Deep-rooted cooking traditions
• Trust barriers toward external interventions

Key Diagnostic Insight: The cookstove was not merely a utility device; it represented identity, competence, and family provision. Therefore, messaging focused solely on “health risks” failed to motivate change.

4. Key Behavioural Insights

1. Normalisation of Risk: Health dangers were acknowledged but behaviourally discounted.
2. Social Proof Dominance: Adoption decisions were strongly influenced by visible community norms.
3. Capability and Pride: Participants responded better to narratives of capability and pride than to fear.
4. Demonstration Over Instruction: Hands-on experience produced stronger engagement than informational campaigns.

5. Intervention Design

The curriculum was structured around three behavioural pillars:

1. Reframe Cooking with Improved Cookstoves Rather than attacking the use of “inefficient” cooking methods, the intervention elevated controlled, skilled routines with improved cooking technologies through baking bread.
2. Social Visibility: Creating shared baking events to establish new behavioural routines and norms.
3. Emotional Demonstration (Emo-Demo): Using experiential sessions to embed safety practices through participation.

The Sibabalwe Bakery Model

The bakery acted as a stage for collective preparation, sharing, and open discussion of safe, clean and economically viable cooking practices.

6. Implementation

• Facilitated co-creative workshops with community ambassadors.
• Iterative refinement of demonstration formats based on cohort feedback.
• Embedded reflective discussions and monitoring of post-intervention choices.
• Adaptive pacing to manage resource constraints and infrastructure disruptions.

7. Impact & Evidence

Qualitative outcomes included: - Increased discussion and visibility of stove safety within households. - Shift in expressed motivations for stove choice. - Positive changes in ownership patterns following intervention cycles.

Behavioural indicators observed: - Participants voluntarily demonstrating safer cooking techniques to peers. - Organic emergence of peer-to-peer advocacy. - Increased inquiry into alternative, safer stove options.

8. Strategic Value & Transferability

This intervention demonstrates the application of behavioural design to digital and physical transformation. It provides a scalable model for:

• Public Health & Sustainability: Energy transition through social leverage.
• Corporate ESG: Community-driven norm transformation for product adoption.
• Policy Design: Workforce and community development through participatory interventions.

1. Executive Snapshot

• Role: Assistant Designer & Technical Mentor
• Context: Commonwealth Games
• Target Group: High-performance coaching staff and athletes

Core Problem: The need for a seamless, real-time method to capture and relay athletic performance data to coaching staff during high-stakes competition.

Outcome: Assisted in the design and implementation of a remote real-time digital video production system that enabled immediate performance feedback.

2. Strategic Context

During major sporting events like the Commonwealth Games, the margin between winning and losing is often found in immediate technical adjustments. Traditional video analysis often suffered from:

• Latency in footage availability.
• Fragmented communication between capture teams and coaches.
• Limited tools for real-time visual breakdown.

This project aimed to close the gap between performance and analysis through a dedicated digital video infrastructure.

3. Research & Interaction Design

The system was built with a focus on Interaction Design, ensuring that the technical complexity of remote production did not hinder the speed of coaching decisions.

Key Focus Areas:

• Real-Time Latency: Reducing the delay between the athletic action and the video relay.
• Remote Access: Ensuring coaching staff could access high-quality feeds from various vantage points.
• User Interface: Streamlining the capture process to be intuitive for production teams.

4. Implementation & Mentoring

Beyond the technical architecture, a significant portion of the project focused on capability building:

• System Deployment: Executed the seamless capture and relay of athletic performance across multiple event sites.
• Mentoring: Provided hands-on training for the team in non-linear video editing techniques.
• Tool Creation: Developed custom digital coaching tools to facilitate on-the-fly performance analysis.

5. Impact & Evidence

The project supported coaching staff’s use of performance data:

• Coaching Feedback: Enabled “live” tactical adjustments based on instant video playback.
• Operational Efficiency: Streamlined the workflow from capture to analysis, removing technical bottlenecks.
• Team Capability: Successfully upskilled production staff in advanced editing and digital tool usage.

6. Strategic Value & Transferability

This project demonstrates the successful application of interaction design in high-pressure, real-time environments. The model is transferable to:

• Live Broadcast & Media: Enhancing remote production workflows.
• Industrial Tele-operation: Applying real-time video relay to remote monitoring and control.
• High-Performance Training: Scaling digital coaching tools for professional sports academies and Olympic programmes.

1. Executive Snapshot

• Role: Multimedia Content Developer & Interaction Designer
• Collaboration: SA Tourism
• Context: Hannover World Expo 2000

Core Problem: The need to differentiate South Africa as a premier travel destination within the highly competitive and visually saturated environment of a World Expo.

Outcome: Developed high-impact multimedia content that successfully captured international attention, effectively showcasing the country’s diverse beauty and tourism attractions to a global audience.

2. Strategic Context

The Hannover World Expo 2000 served as a critical platform for nation-branding and tourism promotion. In collaboration with SA Tourism, the project aimed to:

• Position South Africa as a modern, diverse, and attractive destination.
• Engage a global audience through interactive digital storytelling.
• Bridge the geographical gap between the expo floor and South African landscapes through immersive media.

3. Interaction Design & Multimedia Development

The focus was on creating a digital experience that was both informative and emotionally resonant.

Design Focus Areas:

• Visual Storytelling: Curating and designing content that highlighted specific “diverse tourism offerings,” from wildlife and landscapes to cultural heritage.
• Engagement Strategy: Using multimedia to capture the “beauty and attractions” of the region in a way that static print media could not.
• UX for Global Audiences: Ensuring the interface was intuitive for an international demographic with varying levels of digital literacy and different primary languages.

4. Impact & Evidence

The multimedia work supported the South African pavilion’s presentation:

• Captured Interest: Created multimedia content for visitors to the South African exhibit.
• Effective Showcasing: High-quality content successfully communicated the breadth of the country’s tourism portfolio.
• Global Recognition: Contributed to a positive and modernised perception of South Africa as a world-class travel destination.

5. Strategic Value & Transferability

This project highlights the intersection of Interaction Design and Nation Branding. The approach to large-scale event engagement is transferable to:

• International Trade Shows: Designing digital booths that convert foot traffic into leads.
• Digital Destination Marketing: Creating immersive web or app-based tourism experiences.
• Cultural Heritage Projects: Using multimedia to preserve and promote regional identities to global audiences.