Ryan advises the research and product teams, developing operational models that integrate product research, design, and delivery. Evidence-based inclusive design is the foundation of our practice; that work begins with discovery and ends with more usable, accessible, and inclusive products.
Ryan’s extensive ethnographic research experience in the field prioritizes evidence, and his analysis frameworks are biased towards the dynamic analysis of design (and technology’s) effect on an ecosystem as a whole. His research methodologies cover traditional and contemporary practices, which include experimental, interactive, action research, red teaming, participatory design, and sensemaking.
Ryan’s expertise lies in understanding and breaking down complexity into actionable interventions, or artifacts, that align stakeholders across an organization. He applies design research methods and systems thinking to explore the dynamic behaviours and maps potential impact, opportunities, and progress models for organizations. He studies fundamental concepts of human factors that include human needs, motivations, experiences, and the way people use and share information and tools in their day to day activities. He specializes in dialogic design approaches where misalignment of roles and purposes conflict with the culture and intent of an organization. This interactive engagement of dialogic exercises has helped encourage the emergence and new insights that instil shared understanding across multi-stakeholder engagements.
Ryan synthesizes data from various sources and implements creative and strategic methods to analyze it. His skill sets include systemic and critical thinking, ethnographic methods, monitoring and evaluation frameworks, action research, creating service blueprints and systems maps, building personas, and mapping customer journeys.
In addition to Say Yeah, Ryan is co-founder of Consensas, a technology startup focused on de-commoditizing goods, promoting market access for marginalized communities, which grew out of his MDes Masters research for Strategic Foresight and Innovation.
His career experience includes a diverse stream of work in the realm of design and strategy. He led the product team at Normative, where he solved complex problems on a system and a user level. As a design strategist in the past, he pioneered an ethical gold supply chain with micro-manufacturing (Fair Trade Jewellery Co) as a mechanism to influence change in conflict mineral policy development and certification scope.
Ryan has collaborated with various cross-sector partners, including USAID, US State Department, OECD, Global Affairs – Government of Canada, IMPACT (formerly Partnership Africa Canada), War Child (Canada), Responsible Jewellery Council, Fairtrade, and Alliance for Responsible Mining.