How Human-Centred Design Found Me: Designing Dignity for Construction Families in Argentina
What Happens When Policy Meets Real People: A Story About Insight, Safety & Growth
A supported employment provider wanted to differentiate in a sector under pressure and ended up reimagining how people with disability choose, grow and belong in the workplace.
An NDIS Provider Determined to Strengthen Employment Pathways for People With Disabilities
With more than 200 employees across Australia, this supported employment organisation plays a critical role in offering meaningful work, confidence, and community to people with disabilities. Their commitment to choice and empowerment sits at the heart of everything they do, but their employee experience wasn’t setting them up to thrive in this changing economy and landscape.
Services and Policies were compliant but not engaging
Their services, policies and employee experience looked and felt similar to the rest of the sector.
They were compliant, but not differentiated.
And while they wanted to empower supported employees to grow, the tools and frameworks they had weren’t engaging or emotionally safe.
Why This Matters: A Sector Under Pressure, a Community at Risk of Losing Choice
The stakes were high. The government has been publicly questioning the future of supported employment, highlighting long-standing flaws and suggesting funding cuts to push more people into open employment. But for many people with disabilities, supported employment isn’t a fallback, it’s where they find belonging, structure, confidence, and hope. This project wasn’t just about redesigning onboarding. It was about protecting choice, strengthening inclusion, and building an experience that empowers people rather than overwhelms them.
Clarity, Alignment, and a Human-Centred Way to Bring Their Mission to Life
Uncovering the Real Problem: Accessibility Alone Doesn’t Create Empowerment
At first glance, the issue looked like a formatting problem. But when we dug deeper, the real challenge became clear: You can’t create empowerment with a table, even if it’s written in plain English. The sector often believes that making documents accessible is the same as creating genuine choice. But for supported employees, growth isn’t linear and confidence isn’t built by reading a policy. What they needed was a way to understand themselves, without feeling judged, overwhelmed, or not enough.
Turning Research Into Strategy: The Opportunities Hidden Beneath the Surface
Through 30 interviews, 100 survey responses, 10 workshops, and extensive desktop and market research, we uncovered key opportunities: Supported employment isn’t on people’s radar… until they experience the growth this provider can create. It goes from Plan B to a place of hope. Compliance is necessary. but it’s not a differentiator. To stand out, they needed to create a movement worth belonging to. There was a deep internal tension between purpose and profit. Staff feared that commercial investment meant abandoning the mission. Yet, the opposite is true: commercial strength enables greater impact. People needed a way to talk about their growth without pressure, shame, or fear. The culture needed tools that build confidence, not anxiety. These opportunities set the direction for what would become a completely reimagined experience.
Transforming Policy Into Experience: A Human-Centred, Co-Designed Approach
Bringing Together Research, Co-Design, and Experience Strategy
The Critical Moment: Identifying a Red Flag Hidden in Plain Sight
During the work, another consultancy had developed a new policy framework that included a traffic light system, green for growth, amber for not sure, and red for not ready. On paper, it made sense. In reality, it was dangerous. We all know that that red = wrong, and in this context that's even more important: red = failure, red = I’m not enough. For a community that has often been made to feel behind, this system risked creating shame, resentment, or fear of being honest. It would have shaped the wrong culture.
Applying Insight + Strategy + Creativity to Solve the Real Problem
Instead of making the table more accessible, we challenged the entire structure. We took the policy, overlaid the research insights, aligned it with the organisation’s future direction, and made a bold move: we turned it into a card game. A tool that was tangible, playful, culturally safe, conversation-driven, insight-creating, easy to adopt, and designed with branded colours (no good or bad signals). Participants sort cards based on how they relate to different statements. This helps them, and their mentors, identify where they are, what they want, what they need next, and what actions will genuinely support their growth. No shame. No pressure. No red pathway. Just clarity, confidence, and choice.
The Shift: A More Empowering Experience for Employees, Mentors, and the Organisation
Tangible Outcomes: Tools That Change Conversations
A fully developed card game grounded in research; a psychologically safe growth model; a prototype piloted successfully with employees and mentors; 25+ new sets now in production; a strengthened onboarding experience; foundations for a new carer and employee experience. This card game is only one small piece of a larger transformation.
Intangible Outcomes: Confidence, Belonging, and Cultural Alignment
Staff felt more aligned around purpose and commercial reality. Participants felt more understood and less pressured. Mentors reported richer, more honest conversations. Leaders gained clarity on how to evolve their culture sustainably. The organisation felt a renewed sense of momentum and confidence.
The Ripple Effect: A Sector-Shaping Vision
This work is paving the way for bigger changes: redesigning the carer experience to build connection long before employment, recreating the welcome experience for new employees, embedding wellbeing and fun into everyday moments, creating a model of supported employment that feels exciting, not outdated, and strengthening sustainability through growth and retention. This is how we shift the sector, not by abandoning supported employment, but by reimagining it entirely.
What the Client Said
Turning a policy into a game? that's just brilliant! I haven't been this excited to roll out something in ages.
What This Means for the Sector
Supported employment doesn’t need to be defended, it needs to be redesigned. When organisations pair research-led insight with bold, creative thinking, they create experiences that genuinely empower people with disabilities and strengthen the future of the sector.
Ready to turn your policies and processes into experiences worth coming back to?
Let's talk and find out how. I promise this is not a sales pitch, and its absolutely a non-commitment call.
Bring your biggest daily fire or clunky system frustration, and we'll have a 30 min practical, sleeves-rolled-up talk about it.
No beige solutions, no PowerPoint fantasies.
Just a real conversation to see if we're a good match.
You'll leave with at least one thing to try and a new way of looking at your never ending of things to fix.
