I help organisations understand people. What drives them, what holds them back, and what truly matters, so they can design change that works in the real world.

My work spans public and private sectors, from government and health to hospitality and sustainability, helping teams see problems differently, test with purpose, and move forward with confidence.

Three principles underpin my approach:
	•	Insight: understanding before deciding.
	•	Collaboration: building ideas together, around evidence.
	•	Impact: making sure research leads to action and measurable outcomes.

For me, innovation isn’t about chasing what’s new. It’s about creating what’s needed, for people and the planet. That’s what drives our work at Thunk.
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Specialties: User Research | Digital Innovation | User Experience | Strategy | Growth | Mentor | Consultant

Paul Hill

Apparently, research slows innovation projects down. It’s a fairly common take that I’ve heard a lot recently.

It usually comes up when teams are under pressure to move.
“We need to go quickly.”
“We’ve already got this good idea.”

It’s the practical reality. Things feel urgent. Decisions have to be made. So,
“We don’t have time to do research.”

What I’ve seen is that when teams don’t take a moment to understand the problem space, to get that insight, the work rarely moves faster. It just becomes harder to steer and more uncertain. 

It’s something we’ve been talking about a lot, so I jotted down some thoughts on how insight affects pace, decisions, and the space for innovation.

Human Insight & Innovation (Co-Founder) @ Thunk • 25+ yrs in Design Research • Understanding humans to guide ethical, discovery-led innovation • People ​> Tech

This happened a few months ago. A small group of people sat in a room talking about where to take a product next. What could move things forward in a 

Open article: Making room for innovation - How insight helps teams move faster and make better decisions by Paul Hill • 4 min read

Making room for innovation - How insight helps teams move faster and make better decisions

You can get actionable insight in less than a week, if you really want to.

I stopped myself from writing a detailed how-to guide on this. But we’ve done it before. And what it led to was a shift from heading down a very specific path, to opening up new possibilities for innovation.

Like many teams we work with, this one had a long list of feature requests and bugs pulled together from customer support and other sources. They felt they had a good handle on what needed to happen. In their mind they had the user insights. Add in the hot-take that “Gen AI is needed”, and everything felt fairly clear to them. They had enough to just plough ahead.

But more often than not, these things don’t really get challenged. So we did, in a fairly nice way. What problems are customers actually facing? What’s underneath these feature requests? Where are the opportunities to really innovate in this space?

In less than five days, we ran a very focused piece of discovery to understand the real problems. Just enough to find out what was actually driving these requests. The workarounds users had adopted. Basically, things that weren’t going to be resolved by just following that original list at face value.

Quick signals gave a much clearer direction. The insight stopped time and money being spent in the wrong place, ruled out an AI feature that wouldn't have solved the real problem, and opened up a few opportunities that hadn’t really been considered before.

That’s really the point I’m trying to make. Insight doesn’t need to be long to be useful or actionable. But without it, innovation turns into guesswork. And 99% of the time that’ll show up later as extra time, cost, and rework.

You can have good insight and still make bad decisions.

I’ve seen teams get a decent understanding of the problem, then keep moving in the same direction they were going anyway. The insight gets nodded at. Then everything carries on as it was.

Sometimes that’s cultural. Once momentum builds, people don’t feel comfortable challenging what’s forming.

Other times it’s down to the capability. The research hasn’t gone deep enough, or it’s too loose to hold up when opinions start flying.

Most of the time, it’s both.

The only things I’ve seen help aren’t particularly groundbreaking. Being clear that insight is allowed to change the direction is a start. Getting it in early, before views solidify, matters too. And being honest about whether the work is actually strong enough to make a call, or whether it needs to go further. It also helps how insight is brought into the room. When it’s shared in a way that is hard to ignore, it’s more likely to get used. 

This doesn’t fix everything, only a full on culture shift will likely do that, but it does stop insight becoming something people agree with and then quietly ignore.

Thunk

Alongside you, and your teams, we create, improve, and reimagine digital products, and services. Sharing our design-led processes, and acting as digital innovation strategy consultants, we work in close collaboration with your company to get tangible results. We don’t just swoop in, disappear for six weeks, and return with the goods. This is a collaboration, and we’re here for you in the long-term (in a non-scary way).

Commercial Director

Ryman Limited

Implemented Ryman’s strategic product shift towards a comprehensive integrated in-store services offering. Directed large-scale operations across Ryman, Robert Dyas and London Graphics Centre.

Group Head of Business Services

Epson UK Ltd

Channel Development Manager

Samsung Electronics

We help organisations with the thinking they need to make progress especially when they’re stuck somewhere between BAU and the next big bet.

Thunk isn't full of consultants who drop a deck and disappear. We’re sleeves-rolled-up partners working side by side with organisations to get clarity, build momentum, and make meaningful change happen.

Often that means digital product design - creating, improving or rethinking the tools and services people actually use. Sometimes it’s upstream: aligning leadership, mapping opportunities, and getting people on board with a shared direction. Either way, we help make progress real.

Our best work happens with companies who’ve got plenty of ambition, but not enough capacity, capability, or headspace to move forward. Maybe the ideas are stuck in slides. Maybe they’ve tried innovation sprints that led nowhere. Maybe they’re being told to “do AI” but don’t know where to start.

That’s where we come in.

We’ve helped scaleups build new digital services, supported healthcare teams in crisis, and worked with enterprise organisations connect research with action.

If you’re under pressure to deliver change and not sure what’s getting in the way, let’s talk.

https://calendar.notion.so/meet/andywardleworth/45-mins

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