Unboxed's Women in Tech interview series, Claudia Hopkins
techUK member Unboxed is a dynamic digital agency that prizes diversity and celebrates individuality, made up of a group of developers, designers, thinkers and creatives. They recently launched a Women in Tech interview series, which continues with the story of Claudia Hopkins [pictured on the right], interaction designer at Unboxed, who is passionate about inclusive service design in healthcare. “How to design a more equitable world applying both design and systems thinking?” Here, they venture into the possibility of what this would look like and set out practical steps that might help make it a reality.
Read below part of Unboxed's interview and find out more about them here.
Q: Could you give our readers a little background information on yourself and your role at Unboxed?
A: I’m a designer, which has been a role that I’ve naturally progressed into over a long period of time through working on social impact and public sector projects. I’m from Canada originally and have worked in various environments such as at a university on a medical education team, in a hospital as a service designer and at the Ontario Digital Service on their health and web accessibility team. Healthcare has been the common theme running throughout my career. I had wanted to see what working at an agency would be like that still does a lot of public sector work, so that I could apply what I’ve learned in healthcare to other systems, so that’s why I joined Unboxed. But I’m sure that I’ll end up back in healthcare one day and I’m excited to see how the interesting work I’ve been able to do at Unboxed will apply back within healthcare.
Q: Was the healthcare element a conscious choice or also a natural evolution?
A: It was also something I kind of fell into at first. After high school, I started off with a chemical biology degree which sparked an interest in science communication - this seemed to fit more of my skills and interest in science, but I also had these other skills that weren’t necessarily prioritised in the scientific field, such as illustration. I started reaching out to different labs to try and figure out how I could bring all of my interests together. I ended up working in laboratories and health environments, with a focus on stem cell and cancer research, and then enrolled at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, intending to only attend for a year to advance my illustration skills, but I just fell in love with design so ended up staying for four years and graduating with a degree in Interaction Design. So my focus is on design, but my chem-bio background and interest in science communication is what’s kept the thread of healthcare running.
Q: How does your varied background translate into everyday work life?
A: It depends on the project and the project scope. Sometimes my role is more user research driven and sometimes my work is more interaction design focused – data mapping and thinking about how to make data more usable and how it will impact other parts of the system. But I think having an evidence-based design approach comes from my science and research background, as well as being able to think more technically about some problems. At Unboxed, we also apply Agile methodologies throughout all projects and so work in sprints. A sprint will launch with a planning session. Some of my work will then involve being on call for developers in order to make sure they feel supported with the designs that they have been given. Another component to my work involves proactively thinking ahead to what designs or user group tests might be required as we progress through the project. The sprint ends with a synthesis which will include me and a user researcher or another designer to find user insights. We then do a debrief with the rest of the core team in order to discuss feedback, impact, feasibility and answer any questions that may have cropped up.
Read the full interview here. You can also listen to more of Claudia’s thoughts on service design and community by viewing her Tedx Talk.
