Send us Fan Mail

You can feel it when a system is built to extract rather than to serve. The language sounds caring, the journeys feel cold, and every “customer first” promise collapses the moment incentives kick in. That tension drives our conversation with Martin Dowson, an interim design leader and adviser who’s spent decades helping executives change how their organisations make decisions, not just how their products look.

We move from boardroom strategy to street-level research: what happens when a bank takes its purpose seriously and asks ordinary people what “prosperity” actually means. Martin explains how human-centred design, service design, systems thinking, and ethnography can reveal the real barriers that stop organisations delivering good outcomes. We also dig into why financial health connects directly to mental health and physical health, and how treating every person in arrears as the same “process” quietly creates harm.

The conversation doesn’t dodge the hard bits. We revisit the PPI era as a cautionary tale about box-ticking compliance, then connect it to today’s AI governance debate and the risk of a new scandal built on “we didn’t know” while the warning signs were visible. Along the way we explore principles-based regulation, outcome-based regulation, consumer duty, and why “visibility is accountability” is more than a slogan.

If you care about design leadership, customer centred transformation, trust in banking, and building ethical technology with real governance, this one will give you language, stories, and practical ways to think. Subscribe, share with a colleague who owns decisions, and leave us a review with your biggest takeaway.

Support the show

DHABA

Brewed slowly. served warmly. crafted with care