People

Oliver King

As a co-founder and director of Engine, Oliver is a passionate champion of the broader benefits of design-led innovation and enterprise. He works with organisations to identify and develop the propositions and customer experiences that support the products and services they provide.

In addition to his work as a consultant Oliver regularly lectures on design and innovation. He leads master classes on design-led innovation for Cambridge University and MIT and judges the Royal Society of Art’s design awards. Oliver has recently written a service design article Serve them right for newdesign magazine. He presented Made for the Masses, a series on ITV exploring the history and design of everyday objects that have become icons of British design. 

Joe Heapy

Joe Heapy is a co-founder and director of Engine. With roots in product design, Joe is an engaging advocate of the social value of design in improving people’s lives. As a strategist, Joe looks at how to best marry business objectives with evolving consumer expectations and needs, to produce powerful and memorable service experiences for both commercial brands and the public sector.

Since 2003, Joe has acted as a mentor on the NESTA Creative Pioneer programme. He also sits on the Design Council’s Learning Campaign Expert Panel and has spoken at several conferences on the role of design. Joe recently collaborated with Demos to research and publish, The Journey to the Interface, a pamphlet setting out the role of user-centred approaches to service design in the public sector.

Gavin Maguire

As a Senior Service Designer at Engine, Gavin has run projects with clients including Virgin Atlantic, BSkyB and Norwich Union. A degree in industrial design at RISD gave Gavin a passion for improving things - making them more functional, efficient, and appealing. Gavin’s background in interaction design honed his skills in creating engaging experiences which unfold over time. A grounding in information architecture enrich his understanding of systems and usability. These skills come together in Gavin’s service design work - where he creates elegant solutions which simultaneously reward service users and providers.
Gavin also speaks French.

Aviv Katz

Aviv is a senior service designer at Engine with a focus on projects in the public sector. Having completed a product design degree at Kingston University, and an anthropology degree at UCL, Aviv gained experience designing consumer products, exhibitions and websites for clients such as NCR, the Science Museum, Pentland Group and Parker Pen. He later joined the Design Council, developing and running projects spanning business, innovation and design and was instrumental in the development of a national skills strategy for the design sector. Aviv has extensive experience working with public sector organisations as well as education and training bodies. He has written several articles and spoken at conferences on new and emerging design practices and design education.
Aviv also speaks Hebrew. 

Erick Mohr

Erick is a designer at Engine. He holds an MA degree in Design Strategy & Innovation from Brunel University and an MBA from IBMEC Business School, which allows him to bring a unique set of creative and analytical skills to the projects he is involved with. Erick’s work has an emphasis on aligning business strategies with consumer needs to create delightful service experiences. While at Engine Erick has worked with Virgin Atlantic, The AA, Orange, BT and The Design Council.
Erick also speaks Portuguese, German and Spanish. 

Julia Schaeper

Julia is service designer at Engine and holds a Master of European Design degree from The Glasgow School of Art. She is interested in using design to re-think and transform aspects of the public sector, creating real and long lasting benefits for people’s lives. Prior to joining Engine, Julia used design to tackle problems associated with population ageing, diminishing natural resources and community alienation. During that time, Julia has won national awards both for design and social business ideas.

At Engine, Julia has worked on service design projects across sectors with clients including Norwich Union, Orange, NESTA, the AA , the East Lincolnshire Primary Care Trust and Bucks County Council. As part of Dott07, she led work on a co-design project with Walker Technology College in Newcastle - OurNewSchool. Julia is fluent in three languages - German, English and French.

Nick Marsh

Nick is a designer at Engine and holds a first class degree in design from Goldsmiths University. His work at Engine focuses on the design of processes. Recently, Nick has been working extensively with Nokia, helping them to embed user centred practices into their design and planning processes. He’s also worked with UCE Birmingham to design services and train academics to deliver business support processes, and he’s been working with BAA’s service innovation team to deliver services across their London airports and beyond. Nick has a background in graphic design and has won national awards for his communication design and journalism. When not at Engine you’ll find him racing his bike around London and inventing new words by mistake!

Steve Lee

Steve is a designer at Engine. He joins us from the Design Council, where he worked with the Technology campaign and the RED unit. Steve studied Design at Goldsmiths University.

Steve believes that a quality co-creative process should be the heart of a design project. He is a design generalist and has worked in digital multimedia for clients such as Jaguar and Mazda at Imagination, designed a communications campaign for the British Council and UN and has exhibited furniture and films and also worked as a designer for Endemol. Steve is passionate about the power of design to improve people’s lives in the public realm, and has recently been working for BAA’s Connections project and Dott07’s Our new school project. 

Tamsin Smith

Tamsin is a service designer and knowledge manager at Engine. She has a background in design research and a degree in product design from the The Glasgow School of Art.

At Engine she had lead service design projects for BAA and managed work for Vodafone and TfL. Tamsin is the editor of the Engine website.

Prior to joining Engine she worked in the Design Council’s design knowledge team developing tools for designers and applying service design principles to the Design Council’s internal systems. Tamsin has also worked in user research at PDD, Instrata and the D&AD where clients included Proctor & Gamble and Epson and Masterfoods. 

Cale Thompson

Cale received a degree in Industrial Design from RISD and has several years experience working in various design disciplines before pausing to gain practical insights and exposure to sustainability topics through an MSc in Industrial Ecology from TUDelft in the Netherlands. During that period Cale became involved in designing for emerging markets and received a Microsoft Research grant to investigate appropriate technology interactions for scaling microfinance services in East Africa.
Cale also speaks Spanish

Alex Nisbett

As Principal at Engine, Alex combines design thinking with a practical collaborative approach to solving problems across diverse industries.

His expertise lies in designing highly participatory services and award-winning experiences; where brands and their audiences create and build meaningful relationships.

Trained originally as a graphic designer, Alex has over 20 years experience in traditional communications, branding, digital relationship marketing and service design; developing customer-centred innovations most recently for BAA, Mercedes-Benz, Vodafone, T-Mobile, The Economist, SK Telecom in South Korea, and IKEA.

Martine Curtin

Martine is the office manager at Engine. With an extensive background in business administration, management and development, her professional incentive focuses on the value of providing an outstanding customer service experience in business.

Prior to joining Engine Martine worked for Cadbury Schweppes Plc, managing the IT department at their London-based GHQ. She also has business management experience in the fashion, retail and catering sectors, a BA in History, and likes to be inspired!

Martine is dedicated to implementing and promoting service design and providing steadfast support to the business.

Katie Harris

Katie recently graduated from the Glasgow School of Art with a BDes (Hons) in Product Design. After a five month study abroad programme at Parsons School of Design, New York, Katie became increasingly interested with the impact design can make when tackling social issues.

She has completed projects on teenage mothers and the ageing population and a placement at the design consultancy Plan. Katie is currently working on a joint project between Engine and Kent County Council developing and supporting the Social Innovation Lab for Kent.

Joseph Harrington

Joseph has a background in design research at the Interaction Research department at Goldsmiths University London. He is also a visiting tutor at Goldsmiths and has been involved in designing and running workshops internationally.

Joseph’s design practice utilises sociological methods and he has carried out projects exploring actor network theory and non-human social representation within design. Joseph has worked within social services and the charity sector and on projects with Orange/France Telecom, the Manufacturers Advisory Service (MAS) and the London Design Festival.

James Samperi

A product designer by training James has honed his skills in research, planning and strategy working on both agency and client side. Since completing an MA in Design Strategy and Innovation from Brunel University, James has specialised in developing user driven, product and service strategies at SeymourPowell and Samsung Design Europe. Before joining Engine James was instrumental in establishing the design planning function within Samsungs European studio developing a range of tools, processes and techniques.

James has helped develop design programs at BA and MA level, has had work published on innovation process and also won a DBA Inclusive Design award. James sees services as the next significant challenge for businesses and believes in the empathic nature of design to deliver innovative and competitive solutions.

Paul West

Paul is an Associate of Engine, specialising in developing concepts for service environments including commercial work for airline, retail and telecommunications brands.

Paul studied Interior Architecture and Design at Nottingham Trent University and has since worked on a diverse range of projects covering architecture, interiors, strategy and master-planning of large environmental schemes. Paul also has his own business, Work Starts Here, a social enterprise that focuses on creating innovative, meaningful and engaging environments.

Paul is currently developing a new type of ‘working holiday retreat’ that aims to regenerate coastal towns in the UK by attracting a diverse range of businesses and special interest communities to its communal environment. Paul won funding from the NESTA Creative Pioneer Programme to kick start the business.

www.workstartshere.com

Andrea Williams

Andrea is an Associate of Engine, specialising in qualitative market research.

Following a stint in advertising, she developed her skills within creative research agencies in London and briefly in Sydney. Now a consultant, she offers an extensive ‘tool kit’ with which to unlock and explore consumer motivations. 

With 17 years’ experience, Andrea continues to be thrilled by the dynamics of focus groups and workshops and enjoys her role as an occasional tutor for the MRS and AQR.

Ed Lennox

Ed has over 10 years experience in assisting organisations to ‘live their brand’ at every level of the business by designing evaluation systems that engage people in behaviours that are demanded by, and are consistent with, the published values of a business.

Engine have worked with Ed over the past year to deliver exceptional changes in employee engagement (taking people from ‘final warning status’ to ‘change advocate’ within 6 weeks) and customer satisfaction (improvements over 50%).

Eds understanding of call centre operations, quality evaluation systems and his ability to join up all aspects of the customer journey enable us to catalyse and embed fundamental changes within a client business in a timely and cost effective manner.

He has worked with clients as diverse as Norwich Union, Royal & Sun Alliance, Toyota, Barclays Bank, BSkyB, Suzuki GB, and Burger King.

Paul Bello

Paul is an experienced strategy and design specialist for interactive products.

With considerable experience of conceiving and creating exceptional interactive products and services for global clients, a key focus of Paul’s design work is to embrace the philosophy and ethos of the brand and translate this into the applied interactive behaviour of technology. This makes for good design, but also increases value, familiarity and customer satisfaction, and creates resonance with physical and people-based service touchpoints.

With a degree in Information Studies and an MSc in Human-Centred Computing from Sussex, Paul’s user-centred design credentials include Nokia Design, Orange Brand Experience (a founder member), Orange Customer Experience, Razorfish, BT User-Centred Design Group and NatWest.

Marianne Norden Guldbrandsen

Marianne has a wide background in user-driven design, research and product/service innovation. She is often involved in the early stages of service innovation, using ethnographic methods to gain a profound insight into the user and ensuring that concepts and final outcome fulfils expressed as well as latent needs.

Mariannes work covers both design of end products and services and advising organisations on improving the way they manage design and innovation, always focused on better understanding of the end user. She has worked with organisations such as Ford, Volvo, Walt Disney, Danish Rail, LEGO, Orange, Nokia, Nissan, Toyota and Samsung.

Marianne has a PhD in design from Cranfield University, prior to which she was educated at Brunel University and Technical University of Denmark.