Speakers
Rochelle Gold
Rochelle Gold is Head of User Research and User‑Centred Design at NHS England and is a driving force in ensuring that teams deliver large-scale digital services that meet the needs of the people that use them.
She built NHS England’s user research, UCD operations and inclusive design capability from the ground up, and now focuses on how national digital products can better support local care — especially through co‑design with places and communities.
Originally trained as an occupational psychologist, Rochelle has spent over 25 years working across public services, health and academia. She’s drawn to complex systems, where change happens not through control or certainty, but through trust, relationships and shared purpose.
Outside work, she founded a voluntary organisation supporting people with a cancer‑causing genetic mutation, sits on the Yorkshire Cancer Research Advisory Group, and brings lived experience as a patient representative on national and international research studies.
National products, local reality: What neighbourhood work teaches us about co-design in the real world
We’re used to designing for users, journeys and products. But what happens when your “user” is a neighbourhood?
In digital neighbourhood health work, design meets complex public systems where funding, power and accountability are split across organisations, and where “the right thing to do” isn’t always the easiest thing to deliver. National product teams are looking to scale solutions, while local services are dealing with the realities of place, relationships and complexity.
Drawing on work to support neighbourhood health through digital, this talk explores what happens when design moves beyond single organisations and tidy personas. I’ll share lessons from work using co‑designing to bridge the gap between national product delivery and local care, both from a methodology and organisational perspective.
This is a talk about designing for place, not polish; about co‑design as a bridge between national intent and local reality; and about relationships as infrastructure. Most of all, it asks: can we truly co-design in the real world—and what needs to change if we’re serious about doing it?