About

Designer. Agency founder. Enterprise leader. Builder.

I'm Ben Tollady, a design leader and adviser based in Melbourne. I've spent over 25 years in design, in almost every context it exists in - junior designer, freelancer, agency founder and enterprise design leader. These days I help organisations work out what their design capability should look like as AI takes on more of the production, and I coach the design leaders who are steering their teams through it.

How I work

In my experience, most design problems are really strategy, organisational or capability problems wearing a design costume. So the work usually starts with clear thinking and strong teams rather than with screens. I try to be collaborative and direct, with a healthy impatience for process that exists for its own sake. I'd rather have clarity than chaos, autonomy than approval gates, and practical action than perfection theatre.

I've also learned that design leadership is as much about influence and storytelling as it is about craft. Whether it was founding an agency, building a practice at Origin or reshaping design capability at Telstra, the job has always come back to the same things: aligning people around a shared vision, telling a story that shifts how they think, and building the conditions for designers to do their best work.

My journey

From industrial design to digital

I grew up just outside Oxford in a creative household - my dad was an architect and my mum a teacher - and spent most of my teenage years drawing, making things and playing drums in bands. A visit with Dad to the Central Saint Martins graduate show sealed it. I was fascinated by how renderings and models could help you imagine products that didn't exist yet.

I studied Industrial Design & Technology at Loughborough University and graduated in 1997. I started out designing automotive interior trim, including on the new Mini for suppliers to BMW, before leaving to travel through India, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Back in London, I moved into digital at Nettec Plc, a digital agency just off Oxford Street. It was the pioneering early days of the web, and I learned from some very good designers on work for Coca-Cola, Reuters and Dyson. I later freelanced for clients including Marks & Spencer and The British Museum.

In London I met my wife, Amanda, and at the end of 2003 we moved to her hometown of Melbourne. I designed for cinematic releases at Madman Entertainment, at a time when the web standards movement was in full swing - I still owe a lot to Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing with Web Standards and Andy Budd's CSS Mastery. I then joined Ingena, a small digital consultancy, where I led a team doing experience design for Telstra, NAB and Australia Post. My title was "Usability Specialist", which says a lot about how young the field still was.

Building an agency

By 2008, very few Australian agencies specialised purely in user experience. Inspired by Clearleft and Adaptive Path, I co-founded Thirst Studios from my kitchen table, with research, usability and accessibility at its heart.

Our first Thirst Studios office in 2010.
Our first Thirst Studios office in 2010.

We positioned Thirst as a strategic partner rather than a design supplier, and over ten years it grew to a team of 15 and became a certified B Corp, working across government, health and education. Alongside the client work, we launched UXMAS, an advent calendar of essays from people across the UX community. I also spoke at UX Australia and UX New Zealand, and ran the Melbourne Geek Night meetup.

The Thirst Studios team in the studio in 2017.

Leading design in-house

In 2018 I joined Origin Energy as Experience Design Director, with a mandate to build an Experience Design practice from scratch. Working alongside the Head of Design, we built a team across UX, UI, content, research and optimisation, and I led the service side - eight designers embedded across eight squads. Digital engagement rose from 14.2% to 31.6%, and the app became Australia's highest-rated energy app. It taught me most of what I know about building design capability at scale. (Read the case study)

In 2020 I joined Telstra to lead UX for Telstra Energy, the company's move into climate-positive energy retail. We shaped the product strategy and a phased roadmap before global energy market disruption led to the venture being paused. (Read the case study) I then became Head of Digital UX Design, leading the design chapter for digital sales, where I'm still building design capability across one of Australia's most complex digital ecosystems.

Building with AI

More recently, I've started building my own products with AI. I designed and built Billvox, a WhatsApp tool that turns voice notes into invoices and quotes, on my own with Claude. It's given me a view of the shift that's hard to get from leadership alone - how much of the making AI can now do, and how much of the real work is still judgement. (Read the case study)

Where now?

I think design is heading into one of its most interesting periods, and one of its most uncomfortable. I work with organisations deciding what their design capability should become, and with the design leaders taking their teams through it. If that sounds like you, I'd love to hear from you.

Work history

  1. Telstra - Head of Digital UX Design (Chapter Lead), June 2022 - present
  2. Telstra - Experience Design Lead (contract), August 2020 - June 2022
  3. Origin Energy - Experience Design Director, February 2018 - July 2020
  4. Thirst Studios - Co-founder & Director, February 2008 - May 2018
  5. Ingena - Lead Usability Consultant, September 2005 - August 2007
  6. Madman Entertainment - Senior Web Designer, February 2004 - May 2005
  7. Benjamin Tollady Design - Freelance Designer, 2001 - 2003
  8. Nettec Plc - Web Designer, 1999 - 2001
  9. British Industrial Graphics - Industrial Designer, 1997 - 1999

Notes on design in the AI era

Occasional, considered notes on design leadership, capability and what AI is changing. Short, and only when there's something worth saying.