When my business partner Kevin Drinkwater and I started J5 in 2013, large organizations were spending millions of dollars on enterprise technology implementations with little attention to user experience.

Our original focus was helping IT departments within large organizations explore the emotional and functional needs of users then integrate these learnings into technical strategies, roadmaps and projects. Along the way, we discovered a strength in cross-functional facilitation, collaboration and relationship building between internal functions like IT, operations, supply chain, sales, HR, and finance.

*Managing Director, Kevin Drinkwater (left) and Founder & CEO, John Vardalos (right)*

10 years later, we are working with private and public sector clients, helping them design better services for their users. Users may be passengers at an airport, patients receiving health services or the staff of any of these service providers. Our clients are typically institutions such as healthcare providers, government and large enterprises that are experts in efficiency and risk mitigation but struggle with growth and innovation.

Most recently, we have further diversified to include healthcare and a diverse portfolio of non-profit clients focused on social innovation and systemic problems such as housing, poverty and mental health. This work has proven to be more meaningful for our employees than traditional business and technology projects.

Today, our clients hire us to support them in the following ways:

As Design Consultants

Have a specific problem or opportunity in mind? We determine scope, time, and budget up front before we come together as a team to work through the problem itself using our design-led approach. If “fixing healthcare” is a long-term initiative then “redesigning the patient experience in cancer care” is an example of a project.

As Long Term Strategic Partners

If you’re looking for sustainable change or transformation, then a successful approach is to leverage the effects of collaboration over time through a series of projects or initiatives. Our most impactful work comes from long-term partnerships where we act as an internal design team. That means quicker turnarounds, stronger relationships, and the most effective results.

As Capacity and Capability Builders

The future will demand a design-empowered workforce to apply human-centred approaches to solve complex issues across sectors and disciplines. We provide capacity building services to get teams up to speed on understanding people and applying design principles to their work so we can all be making the world more human.

Check out the 5 steps of working with J5 below: