Mary Cook is the Design Director at FutureGov, designing, leading and delivering digital and design led transformation work within local public services. Mary co-founded Uscreates (now part of the FutureGov family) – an agency that focused on designing better ways of working, better services, better experiences in health and wellbeing. Notable clients included NHS England, HMIC and the Department of Health.
She completed her PhD in 2010 which reviewed the emergence and practice of co-design as a method for social sustainability and how this became a key method to tackle some of the UK’s most difficult social issues. Mary has held various guest lecturing positions, is a fellow at a number of Universities and was awarded BDC’s New Designer of Year award following her degree in Design from Goldsmiths College.
As the Design Director of FutureGov, and part of the Senior Leadership Team, at FutureGov, Mary is applying DesignOps principles to design services, transform organisations and develop new systems for the 21st century, this making an even bigger impact on the communities that FutureGov’s clients serve. With a remit to lead a multi-disciplinary team of 30+ designers, Mary will talk about how Futuregov is on a mission to ensure the best conditions for designers to do their own work and to collaborate with clients. Mary will discuss how ‘DesignOps’ and the thinking and practice around this practice is significantly helping to shape her role, the team’s approaches and inform their design practice at FutureGov. In her talk Mary will share her journey from discovering DesignOps, to how it is inspiring her as a Design Director, and most importantly, the ways it is already helping FutureGov’s mission to help its clients.