We’re for the brave.

We partner with leaders who put their products and ideas to the test, with real users. This takes guts, because it shows that they are willing to be wrong.

But don’t mistake their bravery for stupidity. They know that what they learn is worth more to their organisations than holding tightly onto their assumptions.

It may sound counter-intuitive but being willing to be wrong is what helps them to be right. It’s this approach that transforms average products (and companies) into great ones.

It also works the other way. Just ask Steve Balmer.

After a decade of designing and building digital experiences, an uncomfortable but important question came up. Were we really living up to our original purpose, to help companies create better relationships with people through technology?

The short answer was not really. When we looked honestly at our practice, more often than not we were more user-scented than user-centred. That’s not to say we weren’t good at what we did, we definitely were, it’s just that the user wasn’t always a tangible part of the process.

After comparing notes with a number others in the industry and our closest clients, we realised that this problem wasn’t ours alone - it was widespread. A lot of organisations waxed-lyrical about the importance of the user, but it was rare to see them meaningfully included. But why?

Curious (as you'd expect!), we interviewed a dozen senior design leaders and practitioners. There were many reasons, but the most significant were that often they didn’t have the capability or the capacity (or both) to involve customers reliably and repeatably in the design process.

So, we’ve completely redesigned our business - moving away from delivering end-to-end solutions - to focus on making it easier for product teams and human-centred design leaders to discover the insights that flow from making their customers real.

To help make this happen we’ve built New Zealand’s first world-class UX lab. A place of possibility and exploration where, through participatory usability testing, we’re able to bring teams and users together. We also facilitate remote UX research experiences.

Brendan is the insatiably curious Principal Researcher and Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, formerly an award-winning digital design studio and now the only specialist UX research practice and world-class UX lab in New Zealand.

With over 15 years of experience in agency leadership, working across discovery, design and delivery, he knows just how difficult it is to create and sustain world-class products, as well as the critical importance of healthy cross-functional collaboration.

His current mission is helping enterprise design leaders to develop brave and inclusive cultures, through effective UX research and experiences that build the capabilities and cohesiveness of their teams.

Brendan is also the host of the acclaimed Brave UX podcast, where he helps other curious and determined people to learn from the stories and insights of the world's brightest UX, design and product leaders.

You can follow Brendan on LinkedIn and on Twitter.