Meet the Farewill design team: part two
A blog series about what it means to be a designer at Farewill, and what problems we’re solving at the moment.
Death is hard. So many people do not talk about what happens once they’re gone, or find it difficult to manage the long, complex admin after a loved one dies. At Farewill we’re on a mission to change the way the world deals with death. It’s a challenging problem space but it can be incredibly rewarding.
We try to break the taboo by getting people talking more about death, how they want to be remembered and make it easier for them to plan ahead. One of our latest projects involved exploring how urns can reflect who we really are in collaboration with ceramic artist John Booth.
We’re a bunch of product and marketing designers, user researchers and writers
This is part two in the blog series where we showcase our design teammates and shine a light on the challenges we’re solving at the moment. A few weeks ago we told you a bit about how we work and you met Han, Louis and Victor. This time round we’re introducing our user researcher Clare and product designers Lucija and Tom.
Want to join us? We’re looking for senior product designers and user researchers.
Clare Ridd
Lead user researcher
Social: LinkedIn, Twitter
How did you become a user researcher?
I started out doing research working on government digital transformation. It was the early days of government digital and we were just starting to work on signing transactional services, so a really exciting time to be doing the work. I had never heard of user research before and was working in a strategy role. But I had a really great manager who arranged for me to go and meet with the user researcher. I was hooked from day 1: the work spoke to my interest in people, in design and in technology.
What do you like about working at Farewill?
Understanding how people think about planning for, and dealing with death is fascinating. The more people we talk to the more we learn about how people’s personal beliefs, culture and background influence their choices. Being part of creating products that can meet as many people’s needs as possible while catering for this individuality is a hugely exciting challenge.
What motivates and inspires you?
Talking to people about really difficult topics and when they’ve often had been through a really difficult experience such as bereavement is not only a privilege but it also challenges me to be a better researcher. I couldn’t do any one that without being part of a fantastically talented and supportive team. It’s incredibly motivating to work with people who are curious about people’s experiences and so are invested in doing research and acting on the outcome.
What challenge are you working on right now?
Right now I’m working on expanding what we offer as part of our funeral services. I’m working in a multi-disciplinary team alongside a designer, writer, product manager and engineers to work out what the next thing we can offer people is — and then launch it!
I also get to work on other projects that aren’t part of my main team — things like understanding why people start but don’t finish their wills, and how we can build personas that allow us to understand the full depth and complexity of people’s experiences and use this to build better products.
Lucija Penko
Product designer
Social: LinkedIn
How did you become a product designer?
I wanted to make things, innovate and dedicate my energy on projects with a positive social impact. That’s why I chose to study architecture, to build things and plan cities. I worked for a few years as an architect before deciding to make a change and pursue a new career as a product designer. Long story short, here I am.
What do you like about working at Farewill?
The culture — I’m surrounded by the smartest, the most driven and the kindest bunch of people I’ve ever worked with. It’s an environment full of inspiring challenges and opportunities to learn. The mission — I think it’s a rare opportunity and a privilege to work on trying to answer important questions around dealing with death. It affects us all at some point in our lives and there’s so much opportunity to improve.
What motivates and inspires you?
I live for feedback. Any kind, good and bad. It’s an invaluable way of seeing my work ‘in the wild’, understanding how I can make it better and it also gives the first hand insight into the impact my efforts have. I also really love discussing big concepts and crazy ideas that make me question reality. I’m currently obsessed with the concept of time as a dimension, how it affects our perception of things and how it all links back to design stuff.
What challenge are you working on right now?
Since joining I’ve worked on a range of projects, from customer facing challenges, to improving our internal tools to help our operations team better focus on customer needs. But at the moment my main focus is centered around helping build Farewill’s design system. It’s a deep dive into the intricacies of what a great product looks like and also an amazing opportunity to focus on accessibility and uncovering ways we can make our products work better for everyone.
Tom Hiskey
Lead product designer
Social: Twitter
How did you become a product designer?
In a very roundabout way, starting 11 years ago while running a small and unsuccessful startup. Long story.
What do you like about working at Farewill?
The mix of kindness and learning. We’ve done a lot to normalise conversations about mental health and wellbeing (we even have a free service with external counsellors, which I’ve used). We’re kind and we support each other. But we also love to learn. The design crit is a good example of that — a safe space where we help each other solve problems and improve as designers.
What motivates and inspires you?
To pick one thing — hearing from customers and their incredibly rich, personal experiences. It can be touching and emotional, and it brings home why we’re here.
What challenge are you working on right now?
I’ve been working with Clare on personas. They boil down around 2 years of user research into 5 stories. Personas get a bad rap at times, and we wanted ours to be genuinely relevant and useful — to help us make better product decisions and empathise with our customers. It’s been an incredibly thorough and rewarding process, and at times it’s been emotional reading about people’s experiences of death. We’re going to make our personas public and blog about how we made them — coming soon!
Enjoyed reading this? If you haven’t already, have a look at part one of the series and stay tuned for more intros from the team in the next few weeks.
Want to join us? We’re looking for senior product designers and user researchers.
