Mace & Menter, the specialist Bristol design firm, has made two senior hires as it enjoys strong growth in the health and care sector.
The firm said Amy McGuinness and Claire Reynolds, pictured, who have joined as lead consultant and transformation lead respectively, brought deep experience of health and care transformation, inclusive research and behaviour change to the team.
Working across the NHS, public health, social care and third sector clients, their focus will be on helping organisations deeply understand patient, clinician and staff needs, co-designing change, identifying opportunities for digital innovation and building watertight cases for service investment.
The appointments form part of Mace & Menter’s ambitious growth plans for 2024, when it will be launching new services focusing on specific challenges facing UK health and care delivery organisations.
Claire has a remit to work with health and care providers to extend the reach and impact of their services through user-centred change.
She brings 15 years of organisational change and service transformation experience. She joins from Changing Faces, the UK’s leading charity for people with a visible difference or disfigurement, where she was director of transformation on the executive team and led the research that shaped the development of a new user-centred strategy to extend the reach and impact of its support.
She has also previously worked in leadership and user experience roles in Alzheimer’s Society, Parkinson’s UK and Nuffield Trust.
Claire said: “I was attracted by how Mace & Menter both deliver high-quality and impactful project work – their track record and client roster, especially in health and care, is so strong.
“I’m looking forward to supporting more organisations to better understand and embrace user-centred design, and working with them to build internal capacity and capability to support long-term transformation.”
Amy will lead on public and private health and care client growth in her new role. She has over a decade of experience in service design, user experience and health innovation for start-ups, scale-ups and public services.
She was previously director of practice at Bristol-based customer experience consultancy CX Partners and has also worked in lead roles at Uncommon, which provides support for neurodiverse families, Bristol health-tech start-up Elvie, and Kaluza, an intelligent energy platform.
Amy said had joined Mace & Menter because of the impactful way it partners with organisations working in health and care delivery.
“They have an honest, authentic and creative approach to bringing many people around a problem to create change,” she added.
“I’m looking forward to working with ambitious teams to put the people they serve at the heart of their decision making.
Mace & Menter founder and managing director Sam Menter said over the past year the firm had worked as a service design partner for NHS England’s Transformation Directorate, Public Health Wales, NHS Gloucestershire, NHS Mid and South Essex and Scope.
“We know our health system faces multiple challenges including a backlog of patients, staff shortages, an ageing population and evolving health and care needs,” he added.
“Technology is no silver bullet but it can improve access, quality and efficiency of services.”
“The skills and experience we now have in the team put us in a strong position to help organisations put user needs at the heart of decision making, invest in the right changes and deliver better experiences for clinicians, staff, patients and people who need support.
“We’ve recently signed up two of the UK’s biggest health and care charities and we’re excited to welcome Amy and Claire to help us continue with our ambitious plans.”
Mace & Menter, which is based in Temple Studios at Temple Meads, specialises in service design and UX (user experience). As well as the NHS, it has worked with the Cabinet Office, DCMS, Policy Lab and Scope to help improve the way people experience their services.
Mace & Menter’s team of user researchers, service design and UX specialists have extensive experience running public sector and health service design projects, upskilling internal teams and embedding a people-centred mindset.
