Strategic & Future-Focused: a glimpse into our Postgraduate Degree Show @lcclondon and the future of design leadership.
Postgraduate projects explored sustainability, non-ableist design, more-than-human systems, health innovation, education, community engagement, and beyond, demonstrating how advanced design research can drive meaningful, real-world change. Developed within London's global creative ecosystem, this work reflects the critical thinking, innovation, and professional readiness demanded by today’s evolving design industry and design jobs. @unioftheartslondon
Live Well is a preventative women’s health service designed to support women aged 35–46 in Tower Hamlets by working with the everyday routines they already manage. This life stage represents a critical yet under-served window, where early preventative action can reduce later multi-morbidity. In Tower Hamlets, the gap between women’s Life Expectancy and Healthy Life Expectancy highlights how preventable health decline often begins during midlife, as habits shaped by work, caregiving, household responsibilities, and cultural routines accumulate over time.
Rather than intervening once health conditions emerge, Live Well focuses on prevention earlier in the life course. The service supports women to recognise where small, achievable health-supporting habits can fit naturally into daily life. Health is framed as familiar, incremental, and doable, rather than aspirational or medicalised. Live Well is faith-sensitive and community-based, recognising that women’s routines are shaped by family life and religious rhythms as much as individual choice. It operates through three layered touchpoints: facilitated community workshops, a practical toolkit of prompt cards and reflective exercises designed for everyday family life, and a digital platform that supports reflection and access to community-generated ideas at women’s own pace.
#servicedesign #ual #ucp #health #london
Little Moments for You is a service developed in collaboration with Tower Hamlets CVS, responding to women’s health inequalities in Tower Hamlets. In a borough shaped by diversity, overcrowding and high caring responsibilities, new mothers often face time poverty, emotional exhaustion, and guilt about rest. Formal health services can feel intimidating or hard to access, while Family Hubs are trusted community spaces that fit busy routines.
Through field observations, participatory tools and co-design conversations with mothers and Family Hub representatives, the project identified a clear gap: most self-care information is overwhelming, long-term and not designed for small windows of time. In response, the team designed a visual, interactive toolkit that helps mothers notice, talk about, and try micro self-care actions (10 minutes or less), embedded into existing Family Hub sessions and early-years NHS touchpoints.
The toolkit includes quick mapping and reflection activities, a pictorial Little Joys Map, a fridge-visible Care Menu, a monthly zine with gentle prompts, and a Facilitator Guide to support consistent delivery and referral pathways.
#womenshealth #towerhamlets #ucp #servicedesign
Hand in Hand strengthens social prescribing for women in Tower Hamlets, particularly Bangladeshi and Somali women navigating mental health challenges—through neighbourhood-level interventions.
Social prescribing currently faces three critical gaps. Practitioners lose visibility once women are referred to community organisations, journeys become fragmented when changing needs aren’t detected early, and there are no structured check-ins between referral and crisis.
A three-part system creates a feedback loop between women and their social prescribers. Bookmarks and posters placed in neighbourhood settings introduce social prescribing and provide clear entry points for women seeking support. Hand Meet Hand events are held occasionally in trusted local venues, giving women space to reflect on recent months, share experiences, and assess whether current activities still meet their needs. The Hand in Hand booklet serves as a paper-based reflection tool in which women respond with short words and drawings, then choose what to share with their social prescriber.
Together, these elements improve awareness, maintain continuity of care, capture lived experience, and enable more responsive social prescribing at the neighbourhood level.
#servicedesign #womenhealth #towerhamlets #ucp
Love as a framework. Love as a practice. Love as design. ❤️
Last Friday, we celebrated the outcomes of It's All About Love — a collaboration between UAL MA Service Design & IslTethical, Lewisham Libraries, Calico Libraries, Treo House, Natural Lab, and Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico
42 students. 13 teams. 4 contexts. 2 universities. 1 shared question: what does it mean to design with love?
From book fortunes to sketchbooks filled with ideas, students explored love as a way to inspire connection — with community, with books, with nature, and with ourselves.
Hear Me Out is a community-led service addressing communication gaps around women’s perinatal mental health within young Somali families in Tower Hamlets.
Research highlighted that although women often experience significant emotional and health needs during pregnancy and early motherhood, men can struggle to respond effectively due to cultural norms, religious perspectives, and the belief that women’s health is a private matter. This creates a gap at the household level, where families lack safe and practical ways to talk about support.
Co-created with Women Inclusive Team (WIT), the service supports women from pregnancy to one year postpartum and their spouses, focusing on early family life when emotional needs are highest.
The service combines community support with facilitated conversation tools that help women express their feelings without stigma and guide men with clear, actionable ways to respond. At its core is a scalable toolkit including persona-based dialogue cards, emotional check-in charts, and workshop guides.
Together, these tools turn unspoken emotions into shared understanding, reducing isolation and strengthening family support during a critical life stage.
#servicedesign #ucp #womenhealth #london #towerhamlets
Hi Cycle is a community-centred service design project that explores how people in Tower Hamlets talk—or often don’t talk—about menstruation.
It reframes menstrual health as part of everyday family and community relationships rather than a purely medical issue. The project asks: How might we enable open, trusted, and systemic conversations about menstrual health among families in Tower Hamlets?
Research revealed silence, stigma, and confusion around periods despite accessible NHS and online resources. In a diverse, densely populated borough facing health inequalities, these social factors shape how families communicate.
Hi Cycle responds with a playful, shame-free educational game that normalises menstruation through empathy and inclusion. Designed for children aged 8–12 and the adults around them, the project includes a board game for intergenerational family dialogue and a card game for schools and community spaces. Co-developed with Tower Hamlets CVS, Barnardo’s, and UAL, Hi Cycle fosters open, inclusive learning.
#servicedesign #ucp #health #womenshealth #london
7️⃣ Money Tree
Continuing our Unit 1 exploration of WOW – Ways of Working in MA Service Design at UAL, this team turned their focus to student financial wellbeing.
Money Tree investigates the student financial landscape identifying four behavioural archetypes: the Guilty Spender, the Exhausted Tracker, the Overwhelmed Beginner, and the Sacrificing Saver.
By mapping these lived experiences, the project creates space for more open, empathetic conversations around money - shifting financial stress into collective understanding and support.
Because the first step towards financial wellbeing is understanding your relationship with money. 🌳💸
#MoneyTree #UALStudents #WaysOfWorking #ServiceDesign #FinancialWellbeing
6️⃣ A Sense of Home
As part of Unit 1 in MA Service Design at UAL, where we explored WOW - Ways of Working, this team focused on belonging within student accommodation.
A Sense of Home explores how UAL’s international students can cultivate comfort and familiarity within standardised living spaces. Through creative workshops centred on mood boarding and hands-on making, the project invites students to personalise, reflect, and shape their environment.
Because feeling at home isn’t about the room - it’s about what you bring into it. 🏠✨
#asenseofhome #ualstudent #waysofworking #ServiceDesign #internationalstudents
