Selected Case Studies

Contents

Telegraph Travel

An owned travel surface that competes on judgement, not aggregation

The Opportunity

Earn shelf space beside Lonely Planet and Google-class trip tools

Travellers do not lack lists; they lack judgement they believe. The competitive bar was never another generic travel app: people already compare you with Lonely Planet on authority and with Google on convenience. Google Trips became shorthand for Google-style trip planning before those patterns folded into wider Google travel and maps experiences. A guide from the travel desk only wins if it ships the depth readers associate with Telegraph Travel: shortlisted hotels, honest walk routes, food writing with a point of view. Then it has to present that depth on mobile without turning into a scraped…

The Solution

Editor judgement in structured guides, not open-web listings

The strategy was to put Telegraph Travel judgement into the product: structured picks, itineraries, and maps so the app reads as the travel desk in software, not a thin rebadge of generic listings. That is how you justify home-screen space next to Lonely Planet's brand and Google's infrastructure: different proof, same moment of decision. Execution sits between content design and trip-planning UX: reduce cognitive load when someone has thirty minutes in a new city, surface the next obvious step, and keep tone aligned with the Telegraph Travel voice travellers already trust.

• Destinations and days out built from Telegraph Travel journalism, not scraped filler.
• Positioning as a credible alternative to legacy guides and large-scale trip surfaces.
• Offline-friendly reading and map-led discovery for real travel moments.

The Impact

An owned travel surface that competes on judgement, not aggregation

The Guides line sits where editorial craft meets trip planning: Telegraph Travel's destination coverage shows how expert picks, itineraries, and offline-friendly reading translate into something travellers can pack for real journeys. The pattern is reputation converted into a repeatable planning ritual: the Telegraph Travel Guides experience competes for attention against brands travellers already know, with clarity at decision time instead of vague open-web aggregation.

Waitrose

A bigger active member base, stronger value story, and loyalty that still feels Waitrose

The Opportunity

Report-backed scale first: membership growth, then the experience bet

John Lewis Partnership's 2024/25 annual report says My Waitrose grew 7% to 4.6 million active members while more customers shopped with the Partnership's brands. Waitrose also grew sales to £8.0 billion, invested in lower prices, relaunched Waitrose No.1, refurbished stores, and expanded convenience and on-demand routes. Customers wanted value, but Waitrose could not win by becoming another points scheme. The stronger route was to turn loyalty into a clear membership experience: free coffee and treats, exclusive savings, more personalised offers, member-only events and promotions, and the feeling that Partners still knew food better than an algorithm.

The Solution

Design loyalty around repeat rituals, food discovery, and transparent personalisation

The story for My Waitrose is strongest when membership connects three loops. Everyday reward: keep the reasons to scan simple and visible: free tea or coffee, delicious treats, selected savings, and offers people can understand before they reach the till. Food lover identity: use the membership to make Waitrose feel like a club: recipe inspiration, counters, seasonal ranges, competitions, food magazine moments, and member-only events that make the shop about taste, not just price. Personalised value: make offers relevant without making the system feel opaque. The annual report points to personalised offers and improved My Waitrose…

• Membership benefits grouped around shopping missions: coffee run, top-up, weekly shop, entertaining, and discovery.
• Offer states written in plain language so Partners and customers can resolve questions at the till.
• Food inspiration tied back to commercial moments: Waitrose No.1, counters, own brand, value campaigns, and seasonal events.

The Impact

A bigger active member base, stronger value story, and loyalty that still feels Waitrose

The public results show the direction of travel. In 2024/25, My Waitrose reached 4.6 million active members, up 7%. Waitrose sales grew 4.4% to £8.0 billion, revenue grew 4.7% to £7.5 billion, volumes rose 2.6%, and adjusted operating profit increased by £122 million to £227 million. Waitrose also reported a fourth consecutive The Grocer customer service award, £150 million invested in New Lower Prices since 2023, and on-demand grocery sales up 110%. Loyalty does not carry all of that alone, and it should not pretend to. Its job is to make the broader proposition easier to…

Apple

One live view replaced eight tabs and cut weekly debates over the numbers

The Opportunity

Eight tools, no shared truth for performance questions

Apple's global sales organisation ran on a patchwork of tools. Teams across major regions jumped eight apps for basic performance questions. Figures did not always match, field work slowed, and nobody had one live view that tied hardware, services, and channel together.

The Solution

One mobile-first analytics app: same numbers for field, leadership, and partners

We designed a mobile-first sales analytics app so fragmented data lived in one place for field teams. Dashboards drew the same numbers for every product line, region, and channel; analytics layers supported quarterly planning; channel views let account executives see distributors, carriers, and retail side by side; reporting replaced hand-built spreadsheets with up-to-date figures for spotting gaps. It worked with Apple's existing CRM, with offline modes for people working across regions.

The Impact

One live view replaced eight tabs and cut weekly debates over the numbers

One app replaced the habit of checking eight systems and disagreeing on the figure. Account executives saw the same real-time picture as leadership, so demand conversations and channel plans started from shared data. Partner briefings matched what executives saw without reconciliation drag. Less time matching spreadsheets meant more time on planning and execution; field plans could stay aligned with quarterly goals because everyone started from the same screen.

Google

Higher completion, fewer tickets, more inventory surfaced by ML

The Opportunity

Two million publishers leaving revenue on the table without Auto Ads

Auto Ads used ML to place ads and find inventory site owners missed, but most publishers never turned it on. The integration was one snippet, yet it read opaque if you did not ship code daily. Manual placements stayed familiar; the ML path sounded like a black box. Automated monetisation only paid off after setup finished; competitors were ready to capture anyone who quit halfway.

The Solution

Segmented email: explain the product, paste the tag, verify reporting

We used email to close the gap: segmented sends so each publisher saw copy that matched where they were stuck: first what Auto Ads actually did, then how to paste the tag, then what to check in reporting. Side-by-side examples showed ML placements next to manual ones; follow-up messages walked through the code with screenshots. Publisher stories with real revenue lifts went out as proof, and deeper mails covered mobile anchor ads, AMP, and cross-device setups for people ready for more.

The Impact

Higher completion, fewer tickets, more inventory surfaced by ML

Completion rates went up once the emails explained Auto Ads in plain steps, and support tickets dropped. More publishers switched Auto Ads on, so Google's models could surface inventory that manual setups skipped. Publishers spent less time babysitting placements and more time on their sites; AdSense kept category leadership because adoption finally matched product depth.

Vodafone

Less rear-view billing, more steering while the period is open

The Opportunity

Spend moved for operational reasons; visibility landed after close

On Vodafone's IoT platform, spikes came from rollouts, misconfigured devices, roaming, firmware shifts, and fleet usage, not one-off bugs. After billing closed you could explain what happened; you still could not reliably forecast the bill, set guardrails early, or catch drift in time to act. That gap hurt in three ways:

• Bill shock eroded trust, and finance slowed expansion sign-offs.
• Ops burned time on spikes without clean attribution or a fast path to root cause.
• When setup and docs were hard to use, automations never shipped and good controls stayed slideware.

The Solution

Plain-language forecasts, caps with a next step, operator-first alerts, docs that matched the API

Forecasting answered "What will we likely spend this period?" in language finance teams use. Breakdowns followed how teams already group fleets and sites; weak signals were labelled clearly instead of presented as exact. Caps mirrored real ownership: warn before a hard stop, show "what next" when a threshold is crossed, and keep a simple log of who changed what. Anomalies stayed short and clear, with links to the slices teams already use to investigate. Developer docs used the same words as the UI (quota, threshold, alert), with quickstarts and copy-paste examples so integrations shipped with fewer…

The Impact

Less rear-view billing, more steering while the period is open

Teams shifted from "what happened last month" to what's coming, where caps apply, and what changed. Finance could plan earlier, ops could act before close, and programme owners could grow fleets with fewer invoice surprises. Clearer signals and shared vocabulary trimmed escalation noise and sped fixes, often before the billing period ended.

EE

Higher task success and faster discovery after the regroup

The Opportunity

A £2.8B digital shopfront with navigation that leaked conversion

EE UK's site carried enormous commercial weight, but the structure fought the customer. In testing, Shop read as overloaded and poorly grouped; fewer than half of wayfinding tasks ended in the right place. With most telecom sales starting on mobile and rivals offering cleaner paths, weak IA was direct revenue leakage.

The Solution

Research-led mega-nav: My EE, Shop, Help instead of sprawl

We ran tree tests and hybrid card sorts with ten people and rebuilt the nav around what they actually looked for: a three-bucket mega-nav (My EE, Shop, Help) instead of the old sprawl. Brands sat together in Shop; "Added benefits" moved to My EE because every participant looked there first; help content landed next to the tasks it supported.

The Impact

Higher task success and faster discovery after the regroup

After the change, tasks finished more often and people found products faster. Nobody had looked for "Added benefits" under Why EE; everyone expected handset brands under Shop. Odd buckets like "Good As New" and "EE TV" had confused two in five people; those labels got untangled. The durable lesson was simple: align structure with how people shop telecom on mobile, then measure completion instead of debating opinions.

John Lewis

About 35% faster discovery and roughly £8.2M incremental revenue in-year

The Opportunity

A loved brand, easy to get lost in a £15B online catalogue

John Lewis runs enormous online range across 400,000+ SKUs. Loyal shoppers still stalled in category depth: filters failed to surface the right stock quickly, and Quick View stopped short of a confident buy. More than half of visits were on phones; next to Amazon and sharp DTC brands, small friction meant measurable revenue left on the table.

The Solution

Filters with memory, Quick View that completes the job, clearer PDPs

We focused on three pressure points in the shopping flow. Filtering: live counts, saved combinations, and suggestions from browse history so people narrowed the catalog without starting over each time. Quick View: size, colour, delivery, and checkout from the overlay instead of a dead-end preview. Listing and product pages: faster images, clearer hierarchy, and cross-sell blocks (including "Style with it") that nudged basket size without clutter.

The Impact

About 35% faster discovery and roughly £8.2M incremental revenue in-year

Filtering and Quick View cut time-to-product by about 35%; listing and product page work lifted engagement and basket size. The programme landed around £8.2M incremental revenue in the year we measured, with better checkout completion on mobile. Same brand promise with fewer dead ends: the durable gain was repeat visits that felt faster on small screens, not only a one-off campaign tweak.

Aviva

Downloads above plan, measurable savings, brand lift on invention

The Opportunity

Demographic buckets masked real driving risk on the road

UK car insurance still leaned on broad demographic buckets: safer drivers often paid like risky ones because price was not tied to trips on the road. Most people think they drive better than average, so flat stereotypes felt unfair and missed real risk. Aviva needed a signal from the vehicle, not only the postcode on the form.

The Solution

UK-first smartphone telematics: score the trip, quote from behaviour

Aviva shipped the UK's first smartphone-based telematics app to price cover from how people actually drive. The app used GPS to log acceleration, braking, cornering, speed, and phone use over 200 miles. Drivers got a 1 to 10 score, quick feedback, optional sharing, and a direct path into a quote, so risk moved off postcode shortcuts and onto behaviour.

The Impact

Downloads above plan, measurable savings, brand lift on invention

Aviva Drive passed 1M downloads in about six weeks, well above the annual plan, picked up Apple's "App of the Week," and held around 4.5/5 in the store. Roughly four in ten users scored 7.1 or above and saved about £101 on average; most people in the programme qualified for some discount. The business case turned positive inside two years, and perception of Aviva as inventive moved up by 33 points, so telematics read as a practical product bet rather than a short campaign.

Lloyds Banking Group

Average resolution fell about 75%; digital self-serve crossed 60% in six months

The Opportunity

National scale strain: three call types ate most handle time

The UK's largest retail bank saw acute pressure in home insurance contact centres: high volume, rising cost, and frustrated customers. Three call types (amendments, cancellations, policy or cover queries) consumed nearly 75% of total handling time and over 250 FTEs. Average resolution ran from about six minutes to well over fifteen, leaving little slack for good service.

The Solution

One design system, rule-based flows, volume shifted to digital routes

As design director, I led a ten-person team across Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, and MBNA. We aligned on one design system, prototyped quickly, and tested with 200+ people to ship clear, rule-based flows for amendments and cancellations. Self-serve for policy queries reduced phone volume without pushing complexity onto customers, and agents stayed free for complex cases.

The Impact

Average resolution fell about 75%; digital self-serve crossed 60% in six months

Lloyds cut cost and frustration by moving the heaviest insurance jobs into digital self-serve: the same routes that had consumed three-quarters of handle time. Average resolution time fell by about 75%; digital self-serve crossed 60% within six months. Satisfaction climbed as waits and transfers shrank. Savings funded better service and simpler upsell paths on infrastructure the group could extend to the next wave of products.

Eutelsat OneWeb

Less energy on reconciliation, more on engineering judgement

The Opportunity

Strong engineering slowed by version drift and unclear ownership

Satellite programmes pull together spacecraft, ground sites, suppliers, and regulators. When iteration speeds up, parallel changes multiply. The painful pattern was familiar: two disciplines referencing different revisions, signatures waiting on the wrong pack, and programme leads pulling status from mail instead of reading one clear picture. The answer was not another generic file share. People needed a simple story they could trust: where to start, who owns the next step, and what state the pack was in before the next gate.

The Solution

Templates, routing, and live status beside the repositories teams already used

We shaped automation around real programme rhythms: structured starting points so new specs and change packs did not begin from blank folders, routing that respected roles and boundaries, and review checkpoints only where policy asked for them. Notifications stayed short and pointed to the live artefact. Where product lifecycle management systems or document stores stayed the system of record, the workflow kept metadata and hand-offs aligned so search and audit stayed coherent. We proved each flow with a pilot programme first, then widened stream by stream so specialists were not forced through a big-bang tool swap…

• Template-led intake so every pack started from the right shape.
• Routing with named owners at each gate, matched to programme roles.
• Hooks into existing repositories so status reflected what people actually filed.

The Impact

Less energy on reconciliation, more on engineering judgement

Teams spent less time debating which file counted and more time on the technical decision itself. Review boards saw complete packs more often, which meant fewer round trips when integration windows were tight. Programme leads could scan document state at a glance instead of chasing answers across threads. The lasting shift was cultural: paperwork treated as part of the mission rhythm, not an admin sideshow after the real work was done.

Welsh Water

Clearer tickets, fewer callbacks, emergencies exit the billing queue

The Opportunity

Civic scale first, then one queue for bills and bursts

Welsh Water already operated at full civic scale: storms, bursts on large mains, and heavy capital work were normal operating noise for a supplier serving around three million people across most of Wales and adjoining areas. Contact centres carried that load alongside everyday customer work. Most contact into a water company is still billing and accounts. That deserves a straight answer. Leaks and supply hits show up less often in the totals, but they do not feel rare when water is across the pavement or the shower drops to a trickle. Those two reasons were still…

The Solution

One integrated design sprint: structured intake, then automation dispatch already trusted

I ran a design sprint with product, operations, and content to agree what to build first: guided flows that walk someone through reporting a leak or another service request, capturing location, severity, anything unsafe on site, and photos when useful, with plain-language next steps on screen. Behind the scenes the target was rules-based routing and RPA into the systems dispatch already trusted, so the first payload matched how trunk repair, sewer inspection, and reinstatement were sequenced, not a generic CRM shape agents had to rewrite. We stopped at MVPs on purpose: enough to prototype and user-test,…

• Guided journeys scoped so residents could finish a high-stakes request without starting on the phone.
• Hand-off aimed at work-management and automation: the payload crews and dispatch could trust on first read.
• Residents see what happens next; the ticket carries field reality so both sides align on the same job.

The Impact

Clearer tickets, fewer callbacks, emergencies exit the billing queue

The aim was practical: less ambiguity when a request arrives, fewer callbacks to fill gaps, and dispatch seeing what crews need on the first screen. Agents kept doing what only people should do; automation took predictable steps that had been burning minutes and mis-keys. Satisfaction scores and capital programmes shift with regulation and weather. The durable bet was narrower: when intake is structured, people spend less time on hold for emergencies that should never have waited behind billing volume, and the organisation keeps clear signal through normal civic disruption: storms, bursts, and peak call periods alike.