Cory Hughes

Strategic Design Director

Cory is a strategic designer with 13 years of proven experience in strategic consultancy and leadership, helping organisations deliver digital innovation at scale. She thrives on structuring, building, and leading multi-disciplinary teams to create better digital services while inspiring and motivating public sector bodies through organisation-wide transformation. 

Cory is a Design Council expert – part of a network of design pioneers who work with the Design Council to advocate for design, share knowledge about good practice and deliver advice and programmes. 

Cory is an advocate of user centred service design and the benefits this thinking brings to service delivery. She is a lead instructor in UX and UI for the Experience Haus, using her knowledge and skills to support the development of others. 

Key achievements

→ Led service design thinking for a local authority to support delivery of its £65m transformation programme. The programme delivered £20m of auditable savings in the first year of delivery with a roadmap for a further £45m savings over 4 years. 

→ Fostered digital-first capability and culture in agency and client-side roles: leading 20+ team of strategists, user researchers, experience designers and project directors. 

→ Financial ownership and delivery of £1.5+ million digital project pipeline per annum: ensured organic growth, excellence and relevance of services delivered to end-users. 

→ Launched and directed first Far-East studio for leading digital experience agency: developed omni-channel CX services and solutions to unlock digital opportunities for clients. 

→ Pioneered digital-first approach for Hong Kong Government: executed CX transformation program to improve quality and availability of services for over 7 million residents. 

→ Boosted digital channel engagement and service development for over 70 education clients: ideated, developed and executed Strategic Digital Frameworks (digital vision, roadmap, governance models, measurement frameworks and content strategies. 

Areas of Expertise

  • Digital leadership
  • Digital and design
  • UI/UX research