A born-and-bred Wellingtonian, Carol is a Senior Experience Design Lead at Deloitte Digital UK, specialising in user-centred design, strategy and digital transformation. A trained architect, world traveller, and self-proclaimed crisis addict, Carol brings innate curiosity and energy to her mission of imagining and delivering a meaningful future and has worked with various clients across a number of sectors, in New Zealand and the UK.
Prior to joining Deloitte Digital UK in 2016, Carol was a consultant at Deloitte New Zealand and also has extensive public sector experience, including holding the role of Private Secretary to the Minister for Building and Construction, during the Canterbury Earthquakes.
Outside of work, Carol is always planning her next adventure, is an avid supporter of New Zealand businesses, wine, craft beer and sports teams, and is always on the lookout for good coffee and feijoas.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world. Across the globe, each country responded in different and unprecedented ways, and with over 6 million cases and c. 130,000 deaths in a population of over 66 million, the United Kingdom was forced to deliver a range of new initiatives as part of its response to the global crisis. One of these was a “moonshot plan” for mass COVID-19 testing. Announced in September 2020 by the UK Prime Minister, the objective of this plan was to increase the UK’s testing capacity from thousands of tests each day to millions a day. Carol, Georgia, and Matt played a major role in designing the UK’s mass rapid testing service as part of the NHS Test and Trace programme, which was rolled out at scale to the UK’s four nations in 2-3 months.
In their talk, Carol, Georgia, and Matt will share their experiences and lessons of being part of one of the UK’s most significant public sector programmes since World War II – from how they embedded a human-centred design approach, with a mix of the Kiwi number 8 wire mentality, into the design and pilot of a core service of the UK’s pandemic response in weeks, and to how they subsequently delivered and scaled the service across the UK.
Learn about some of the techniques they employed as they share examples and anecdotes from their experiences of the frontline to highlight some of the successes and challenges, they encountered through their delivery of the UK’s mass rapid testing service, the first of its kind in the world.
