About

We help people make better decisions about their digital services and products. Read about our story, our principles, our user research standards, our people, careers, our partners.

Our story

“Lagom” is Swedish word that indirectly translates in English to: “balanced, enough, just right”. It nicely describes the work that we strive to do, the people in our team, and the way we like to work.

Lagom Strategy was founded in 2013 in Loughborough (UK)*, with the aim to help people make better decisions about their digital services and products, based on rigorous research evidence and user-centred design. 

Over the last decade, we have built up a substantial body of work, specialising in delivering public-sector Service Standard discovery, user research and service design work. We are particularly passionate about using digital to solve difficult problems in the health and social care space.

We’ve carefully built up a multidisciplinary team of experts from government, academia and industry, and given them the time and support to provide a premium service to all our clients.

And in the true spirit of Lagom, we continue to only take on the projects we have the experience, skills, and time to successfully deliver.

Developing the next generation of digital user researchers and service designers is important to us and we’ve built relationships with Loughborough University and Birmingham City University to support their students with learning and work experience opportunities.

*The Lagom team were all happily working remotely across the UK before Covid. And we continue to do so.

Our principles

The principles we work by guide our processes, influence the outcomes of our projects. They make sure we do meaningful work in collaboration with like-minded teams and organisations.

  • Work with people and organisations trying to do good things
  • Champion the users at every stage by starting with their needs
  • Validate research to make evidence-driven recommendations
  • Don’t recommend building new services unless there is overwhelming evidence to do so
  • Treat our clients and partners with respect and fairness
  • Don’t take on too much work (so we can give our clients our full attention)
  • Step away if we aren’t adding value
  • Share our ideas and experiences for others to benefit from 
  • Adopt a state of lagom in all things we do

Our user research standards

We have eight user research standards to guide, inform and influence all of the research we conduct.

  1. Find the needs of actual users, then validate them
  2. Understand the whole user journey
  3. Advocate for the user throughout
  4. Make sure our work supports digital inclusion
  5. Choose the right methods, and adapt them to the task
  6. Embed user research into the wider team
  7. Do user research to be acted on
  8. Be Lagom: do just the right amount of user research

Our people

We’re drawn from public sector, academic and agency backgrounds, with a shared passion for putting users at the centre of services.

Liam King

Founder and strategist

Liam started Lagom Strategy in 2013.

Liam has 17 years of experience in digital and has led UX, discovery and strategy work for the RAF, Department for Health and Social Care, and NHS England, amongst many others.

He previously held digital roles at the UK Parliament and was Head of User Experience at the UK Foreign Office.

Liam’s blog posts

Helen Taylor

Operations and delivery lead

Helen is our operations director. She has an integral role across all of our work, leading our approach to research operations and delivery, and is part of our leadership team.

She has a background in academia, with a PhD in scientific research. Before joining Lagom she held roles at the University of Sheffield and the University of Sydney.

Helen’s blog posts
Helen Taylor

Stephen Hale

Strategist

Stephen is one of our strategists and is part of our leadership team. He has led discovery and strategy work with Department for Transport and NHS England among others.

He is a respected public service digital leader, with many years experience doing digital work inside government. He was previously Head of Digital for the Department of Health.

Stephen’s blog posts
Stephen Hale

John Gribbin

Service designer

John is one of our service designers. He joined Lagom in 2019, and has led pieces of work for Health Education England, Department for Transport and Kirklees Council among others.

John has a background in academia, with a PhD in design-led innovation. Before joining Lagom, John was a Senior Research Associate at Northumbria University.

John’s blog posts

Charlotte Jais

Senior user researcher

Charlotte is one of our team of user researchers.

Charlotte has a background in health research, with a PhD in human factors and ergonomics, focused on the design of dementia care environments. Before joining Lagom, Charlotte was a research associate for Loughborough University.

Charlotte’s blog posts
Charlotte Jais - profile picture

Emma Davis

Senior user researcher

Emma is one of our team of user researchers.

Emma has a background in local government, and has delivered quantitative and qualitative research with a wide range of users, from families with additional needs, to on-call firefighters.

Before joining Lagom, Emma was delivering digital service discovery and development work for Suffolk County Council.

Emma’s blog posts
Emma Davis

Careers

We occasionally advertise jobs in the team. And we have a standing offer of conversations, work experience and internships that may suit what you need if you’re thinking about a career in digital or user research.

Careers, internships and work experience

Our partner network

Over the years we’ve built up a proven network of digital partners that we regularly work with: content designers and strategists, data and technical architects, UX designers, accessibility experts, social media specialists, and research recruiters.

We can easily call on these partners to click back into our multidisciplinary team whenever we need their skills.

Accreditations

Crown Commercial Service Supplier

We’re on the Digital Marketplace Outcomes and Specialists framework offering user research, discovery and UX services. And we’re on G-Cloud 13 offering discovery and user research.

We are also a Cyber Essentials Plus certified business.

We treat the cyber security risk to our data and work as the highest priority.

Environmental impact

Carbon footprint logo

Find out how we reducing our environmental impact and fighting climate change.