Jodie LOI
Part-time designer, full-time friend
(Otherwise, a design & research strategist)
Helping teams connect, make sense of complexity, and craft lovable products and experiences, finding meaningful ways forward through serious play.
Hi, I’m Jodie.
I help teams dive into meaningful work, without losing sight of the people doing it.
Over the past six years, I’ve worked across experience design, research and facilitation, building products and services for public good with governments and banks, as well as digital strategies and brands for international start-ups.
Along the way, I’ve come to realise that technical problems are often easier to solve than human ones. We can spend months figuring out the right systems, products and strategies, yet struggle with the relationships, differences and dynamics that shape how we work together. It’s these human challenges that get in the way of good work, and make people leave it behind.
I believe our best work happens when we can bring our whole selves to the table, make space for different perspectives, and genuinely enjoy the process of creating something together.
My approach brings together design thinking, participatory research, systems sensing, embodied practices and pedagogical approaches to facilitation. I enjoy creating spaces where people feel safe enough to be curious, challenge assumptions, experiment and explore possibilities they might not have considered before. Sometimes that means making sense of complex research and data; other times, it means having the conversations we’ve been avoiding.
Through serious play, visual facilitation, dialogue and co-creation, I help people see things differently, find common ground and turn shared understanding into meaningful action.
At the heart of it, I’m interested in a simple question:
How might we do good work, better together?
What I believe
Start with care!
Good work begins with understanding ourselves, the people around us, and the people our work affects.
Bring your whole self.
Our experiences and perspectives make our contributions unique, and our collective work richer.
Our differences are essential, and we make better sense of things together.
No one holds the whole picture and we don’t need to think alike to work well together. There is value in the friction, the unexpected perspectives and the things we might learn from one another. Better questions, deeper understanding and more meaningful solutions emerge when we bring our perspectives into conversation.
Current and past work & learning
Currently, I collaborate with clients through Paper and Pain as a design strategist (friend). We build friendly products and experiences— friendly to all (accessible), to the planet (ecological), and to the teams we work with (effective and enjoyable). Clients include Formbricks, IMDA, and dtcpay.
I also support workshops with the Collab Folks; you may catch me unlocking chaos in Cowtopia sessions, and listening through scribing at our Open Spaces.
I’m currently completing my master’s at the Learning Planet Institute in Paris in interdisciplinary approaches to planetary health, with my projects exploring ways to create more meaningful learning experiences.
My earlier research looked at how technology-enabled learning artefacts might support more engaging and learner-centred classrooms, collaborating with teachers and students through interviews and co-creation workshops.
More recently, I’ve been investigating how social arts can enable systems change. Through participatory research, I invite students and staff to become co-researchers, practising and observing individual and collective shifts through Social Presencing Theater, a practice from Theory U.
Some other things I used to do…
Making complex systems work better | JTC Corporation
At JTC’s Punggol Digital District, I worked on the Open Digital Platform, a digital twin initiative supporting integrated facilities management. My work included design system management, user testing and facilitating service blueprinting workshops to help shape more integrated services and workflows.
Designing for financial inclusion | Publicis Sapient
How can we better support the unbanked and underbanked communities in Southeast Asia? Through field interviews and diary studies in Indonesia and Thailand, we sought to help banks understand and identify opportunities to create shared value while addressing the challenges that keep people in cycles of poverty.
If we work together
You might find me shapeshifting to meet what’s needed. I see myself as a bit of a Ditto (yes, the Pokémon). I adapt, take on different forms, and enjoy figuring things out with whoever is in the room. Don’t be surprised!
My 5-9
You’ll probably find me growing vegetables in the middle of Paris at a small community garden, being an eternal white belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, climbing, longboarding, or spending time with my cat, Bacci.
I speak English, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and French, and enjoy finding ways to connect across languages, cultures and perspectives. Playing and learning is a way of life!
Active experiments and open questions
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