Luminary is increasing its offering in Strategy, UX and Human Centred Design

We’re growing our team to be able to delve deeper, push further and create solutions that help our clients achieve and surpass their digital goals.

Why are we growing our team? The digital landscape is constantly evolving and our clients are responding to their customers’ needs for greater customisation, functionality, and digital experiences that not only meet their needs but enhance their lives and align with their values. Our clients are increasingly looking for ways to deliver on those expectations in equally authentic and enduring ways.

Attracting and retaining top industry talent has been a key strategy for Luminary over its 22-year history. We now have in-house specialists across many disciplines, including UX, design, marketing strategy, SEO, digital analytics and go-to-market strategy. 

These experts in their field work together to create ground-breaking digital experiences under an agile methodology, where solutions are developed alongside real-time learnings and evolving client, user and market priorities. In this way, the final product is not only fit for purpose but encapsulates the highest possible alignment between the solution and the true needs of the customers. 

A key aspect of this methodology is the discovery offering which is critical for answering all the relevant questions and uncovering hidden opportunities. Discovery sheds light on the best ways to proceed and incorporates new insight in real time to ensure that the project is always heading towards the ideal destination.

Meet your discovery team leaders

Emma Andrews, Strategy Director

As Strategy Director, Emma takes the lead in asking the most challenging questions early. By understanding the broad business objectives of the client and all the interacting considerations, Emma’s strategy team is able to join the dots between all the relevant factors that will drive a company’s digital strategy in the right direction.

Josh Smith, UX Director

Josh is a lover of all things Human Centred Design. He specialises in all the technical aspects of UX, including design, research, facilitation, information architecture, interaction design and prototyping. His superpower, however, is his empathetic understanding of people and his methods for and ability to unearth what they’re really thinking and what they actually need, then translating this insight into executable solutions. This makes Josh a gifted solver of human problems.

Thom Bransom, Design Director

As Design Director, Thom has a brand integration focus, making sure our solutions are visually beautiful expressions of our client’s brand. However, Thom brings more than a masterful eye to the Luminary offering. Thom’s human-centric design focus helps elevate a digital interaction into a meaningful human experience.

Why discovery is key

Discovery is the process of investigation and inquiry which happens both prior to and during the earlier phases of a project. As Josh notes, "We don't pretend to have all the answers up front, but we do have a process for uncovering them. The power of this philosophy is that it allows us to uncover opportunities we would otherwise miss, and it empowers our clients with known truths from which they can make informed decisions".

Our strategy team is at the front line in terms of formulating the vision and understanding the problems that need to be solved alongside the organisational needs and objectives of the client. Josh brings the human element into the equation with his team's deep expert knowledge of human-centred design and behavioural mental models. Thom's team then transforms these insights and prototypes into meaningful digital experiences through scalable and robust design systems.

“The critical thing throughout discovery is that we’re always focused on challenging assumptions and truly understanding the customer experience," says Emma. "This is the mindset that our clients from all industries are coming to us with. They want to understand the customer more deeply and re-engineer their digital strategies to reflect that insight – even if these realisations take them out of their comfort zone at times.” 

Case study: LUCRF Super 

Setting the industry benchmark for user experience

LUCRF Super’s vision was more than just a new site. True to its philosophy of always putting members first, it wanted to completely redefine the industry benchmark for online user experience. As Marketing and Retention Manager Aaron MacRae explains, “The project was driven by a genuine desire to understand the unique needs of our particular members and support them in a way that differentiates us from other super funds.” 

The foundation of this approach was a 3-month discovery engagement led by Luminary (in partnership with innovation consultancy Our Very Own) – encompassing competitor analysis, comparator reviews, heuristics analysis, immersion workshops, stakeholder interviews, user testing, and external research with members and employers.

During the discovery phase, we engaged with LUCRF Super members directly, as well as similar audiences, to really learn about their attitudes to finance and superannuation, and to highlight specific areas where LUCRF Super could provide meaningful experiences at key life decision points.

The discovery phase deepened our understanding of the site’s user base and uncovered a number of surprising insights about the fund’s members. All of these findings were documented in the form of a detailed customer journey map, which would provide a source of truth to guide us throughout the build phase

From a user experience perspective, one of the hallmarks of the LUCRF Super website is its elegant simplicity. But it is the level of complexity and attention to detail under the hood that have made such frictionless UX possible.

“The level of refinement and customisation we were able to achieve was impressive," says LUCRF Super’s Aaron MacRae. "We stayed true to the findings of our research and everything we built relates back to a customer need or solves one of their pain points. Luminary took every possible opportunity to say ‘How can we refine this now, so you don't have to come back to it down the track?’  We ended up with a very advanced website for an initial launch.”

Read the full case study.

Case Study: Clipspec 

Innovation beyond expectation

“Many of the big new feature items that we used to dream about are no longer a dream. We’re finally able to implement them. We’re done dreaming – now it’s time to do!” –  Sam Youssif, Director Digital Customer Experience, Schneider Electric

Clipsal by Schneider Electric has been a leader in electrics and lighting in Australia for over 100 years. The company’s Clipspec product is a critical business application that enables Clipsal consultants and builders to help customers define their electrical, lighting and smart home needs for new build homes and renovations.

The existing app had become dated and was difficult to operate efficiently. The time had come to give the app a major overhaul and bring it into line with Clipsal and Schneider Electric’s position as innovators in the electrical and lighting industry.

Luminary undertook a deep immersion process to fully understand how Clipspec was being used. We ran workshops with the Clipsal team to uncover the pain points of the existing app and their vision for the future. We also sat in on live consultations to get a feel for how the app worked in practice and what sort of tools the consultants were using in collaboration with the app. We even put ourselves in the shoes of the customer, attending a Clipsal Electrical Design consultation to experience the product from the customer’s point of view. 

The new Clipspec app has been extremely well received by consultants, builders and customers alike. It delivers a best-in-class web-based experience, with key benefits being a vastly improved user experience for consultants and customers, improved self-sufficiency and control for builders, and far greater ease of development and maintenance for Clipsal.

Read the full case study.

A roadmap to success

Luminary has always placed the highest importance on how digital can enhance and transform the human experience. Part of this means finding the right people and growing the right capability to offer our clients better ways to work together and arrive at a better destination. 

Our discovery offering is an important part of our commitment to our clients and their customers because it opens the way for deeper understanding, timely decisions and much more effective outcomes. Emma, Josh and Thom are the faces at the forefront of delivering on this commitment because they have the experience, the tools, the talent and the teams to see the possibilities, find the opportunities and lead the way towards outstanding results. 

As the world faces accelerating changes and digital teams are confronted with more complexity and ambiguity, we offer a way to navigate through large scale digital projects with greater certainty and confidence. Our discovery process helps our clients find their way towards solutions that transcend consumer expectations and push the boundaries of what’s possible.