Meet the Farewill design team: part one
A blog series about what it means to be a designer at Farewill, and what problems we’re solving at the moment.
Whether you’ve lost someone you love or are facing up to your own mortality, it’s a stressful process. The big, gloomy industry behind it doesn’t help. That’s why so many people die without talking about what happens once they’re gone, and others get lost in the complex, expensive admin after somebody dies.
We created Farewill with a clear mission in mind: to change the way the world deals with death. By putting ourselves in our customers’ shoes and always prioritising their needs, we want to make it easier to plan ahead, deal with death, and get people breaking the taboo.
That leaves us with a challenging, but rewarding, problem space. How we design solutions to these problems is at the heart of how Farewill functions.
We’re a bunch of product and marketing designers, user researchers and writers
We’re structured as a guild, which means we’re each part of a different cross-functional product team, alongside people like product managers, engineers and data analysts.
But we love spending time together as a design team too. We get together in weekly design crits, fortnightly show and tells, and the odd social (we got creative on Zoom…). We think it’s super important that everyone in the company feels like they’re part of the design process, which means we keep our rituals open to anyone who wants to contribute.
This weekly series will shine a light on who we are and what working at Farewill means to us. Up first, you’ll meet Han, Louis and Victor.
Want to join us? We’re looking for senior product designers and user researchers.
Han Li
Product designer
Social: LinkedIn
How did you become a product designer?
Growing up I enjoyed making art, particularly using mediums such as printmaking and painting. I ended up going to an art school where they also offered graphic design. I spent a few years working in Museums, not as a designer at first, but a generalist embedded in digital teams. I got to learn about user experience design and digital product development.
What do you like about working at Farewill?
To see people celebrating each other’s achievements, giving each other a hand and all working towards helping people deal with death. We regularly hear about the impact of our work in our weekly company meeting, where we highlight a customer story of the week.
What motivates and inspires you?
Everyday I get to work with fun, inspiring and talented colleagues. We make time to get to know each other through coffee chats and team socials, and we regularly share work in progress in our design crits.
I love taking the time to listen to podcasts whilst doing everyday things, like running or cooking. It sparks new ideas and is a fun way to learn.
What challenge are you working on right now?
When someone dies, it’s an emotional and difficult period for their family and loved ones. There’s also a lot to sort out — from planning the funeral to the more administrative work of contacting organisations and closing down accounts.
We want to design our services so they help customers to focus on the stuff that matters, instead of doing the admin work such as contacting banks or completing forms. The first step is to help people understand what they need to do, and then help them find the right service for their needs. That could be taking everything off their hands, or a more cost-effective service where we just help with the legal forms.
Louis Buck
Lead marketing designer
Social: LinkedIn, Instagram
How did you become a designer?
As a teenager, I never saw it as something I could be when I grew up. Even though I was constantly drawing skateboarding and band logos, and coding my Myspace to be super cool (cough). Then at university I was designing everything for club nights I used to run, whilst studying for a business degree. My first job was actually in IT — and when the need for a website came along, I volunteered and had a bit of an epiphany. I started to find reward in designing solutions to problems.
What do you like about working at Farewill?
I’ve always enjoyed learning how to change people’s perceptions through design. I like working somewhere that’s trying to change the norm for the better. I never want to stop learning about design. I’m constantly soaking up new wisdom and ideas, working with people with lots of different skill sets.
What motivates and inspires you?
A chance to be creative and try new things. Other designers inspire me the most.
What challenge are you working on right now?
I’ve been working on how we can bring empathy and warmth when delivering ashes to our customers. Finding a way we could — as a company — reduce that anxiety (even just a little bit) has been hugely challenging, inspiring and rewarding.
Victor Hwang
Lead product designer
Social: Linkedin, Twitter
How did you become a product designer?
I spent far too long in Photoshop as a child, making forum signatures and neopets guild layouts. After school I studied graphic design and then ended up on a UX grad scheme at the BBC.
What do you like about working at Farewill?
There’s lots to like! I think most of all it’s the opportunity to tackle a really tough, human problem with a bunch of incredibly talented and motivated people. I also like that we value different strengths across the design team. We’ve done lots of pairing, even through lockdown.
What motivates and inspires you?
I find Gunpei Yokoi’s philosophy of ‘Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology’ incredibly inspirational. And I like looking at buildings. Recently I’ve been enjoying Stefi Orazi’s perambulations.
What challenge are you working on right now?
We’re in discovery at the moment, trying to figure out how we could make organising a funeral a better experience. Most people are doing it for the first time, and there’s obviously lots of other things to deal with at the same time when someone dies. We’re testing loads of different service models, looking at how we can create a human connection at every stage of the process. It’s a really exciting challenge!
Like what you just read? Stay tuned for more intros from the team next week.
Want to join us? We’re looking for senior product designers and user researchers.
