Our approach

At Propel, we take pride in how we work with our clients. We are professional, evidence-based, diligent, and experienced. But we also like to get to know you - our clients - and to be creative, supportive, and have a little fun along the way.

We are human first

Our job is to ensure services are designed, developed, and overhauled in a human-centred and intuitive way, no matter who your users are. From doing qualitative research to understanding policy, legal and accessibility requirements, Propellers are advocates for developing the best version of your services as possible. However, we believe a human-first approach to the work environment is just as important. Taking into account that those working on the service are human too, leads to better relationships, stakeholder engagement, team morale, and productivity.

We engage with you

We may be consultants, but our modus operandi is to work in your team rather than being an adjacent part of your team. Our shared goals are to improve services and help teams and organisations function more smoothly, and we believe the best way to achieve this is to work as one cohesive unit. Together, we can achieve collective outcomes by tapping into everyone’s strengths as a team.

We demystify new ways of working

There are many ways to tackle service design problems, but which should you choose? Our aim at Propel is to help you introduce or streamline existing iterative, evaluative and traceable workflows, tapping into industry best practices. Importantly, we ensure you are a part of creating and introducing new ways of working so they are appropriate, responsive, valuable and sustainable for your team.

We focus on capability uplift

At Propel, we believe it’s our responsibility to build your team and organisation’s toolbox so you can confidently tackle your service and strategy work in the future without our help. While we help you achieve your goals, we will also ensure the team and organisation learn and grow as Human Centred Design (HCD) practitioners too.

Whether you are a practitioner, in management or in a leadership role, we have deep experience training and upskilling people. We do this through workshops, masterclasses, residencies, mentoring and coaching; tailored to your needs.

We bring lived experience from the private and public sectors

All our Propellers have experience doing HCD in both the public and private sectors and bring knowledge of different industries to their work. We’ll match the best Propeller for the job based on their experience with different challenges and wins in different environments.

Many Propellers have worked for the Australian Public Service (APS). We embody the APS values and code of conduct and understand the unique complexities, inbuilt structures, and interdependencies of Government.

We support our fellow Propellers

While each of our Propellers is experienced, professional, and motivated to help you achieve your goals, everybody is better when they have a brains trust behind them! We collaborate and engage with each other regularly to tap into the advice, resources, and collective knowledge of the whole Propel team, including our most senior practitioners.