Hi, I'm Matt.
As a designer with twenty years experience, I'm now working on a venture called Hunch Labs where I form collaborations, explore ideas, build products and launch services that help people navigate the unknown.
Product
Quest
A new type of knowledge based for manufacturing companies, built as an 80s retro game.
Service
Code Collab.
I can help you build apps that integrate ai agents, and humans in the loop to serve people in new ways.
Ideas
Reflection on the Design Practice inspired by the EP-133
Twenty reflections on the practice of design inspired by the teenage engineering EP-133 synthesiser.
Product
Hunch
A free tool to help you learn to talk to those you want to serve and discover insights into what they need.
Ideas
Design Tooling
I'm currently talking with designers, innovators, and consultants about the tooling and approaches they are using today.
Product
Aura
An app that helps connect interesting opportunities with interesting people. Build for times of unknown where the waves of ai are displacing people and their roles.
ideas
Customer Conversation
Some thoughts on discovering what your customers need for twenty years of customer conversations.
Service
HunchOS
A way to have ongoing conversations with your customers to understand their changing needs.
Product
Quest
The organisational knowledge base game actually came from another knowledge based tool that I was shutting down. An engineering team in a biotic company wanted to keep using the app, so we started a conversation about what a knowledge base app could look like that better suited what they needed.
Their engineering lead was looking to find ways to remind the team about the tasks of sharing knowledge with their production staff. We started discussing the core reasons why people would be motivated to explore the systems of a manufacturing operation at all.
One thing led to another and next thing we started exploring the ways that a manufacturing operation could become a territory to explore, discover and share with others. This conversation led to others among the engineering team to delve into why they came to work. The range of response was so interesting as engineers shared of their passion to understand how a system works, or tinker with tools until things became clear.
What emerged is a new game called Quest, built from the ground up to support the different ways engineers explore and share the systems of a manufacturing operation.
Quest is now in beta with this biotic company, but get in touch if you are interested in discussing it.
Design Practice
Reflection on the Design Practice inspired by the EP-133
Twenty reflections on the practice of design inspired by the teenage engineering EP-133 synthesiser:
1. Problem-solving as invitationRather than thinking of a design as solving an explicit problem, consider it as inviting someone into a new world or identity. The Teenage Engineering EP-133 doesn’t “fix” an existing problem, it invites you into the identity of a musician.
2. Utility as a pretext for meaningPerhaps people initially justify purchases through problem-solving (utility), but their deeper motivation is actually the pursuit of meaning or personal expression. The EP-133’s functionality might serve as a subtle justification, while emotional resonance is the actual goal.
3. Design as emotional enablementInstead of framing it as solving problems, think about design as enabling emotional experiences. The EP-133 “enables” rather than “solves,” making musical expression accessible and emotionally compelling, even if there’s no explicit “problem.”
4. Problems are rational; desires are humanPeople might justify spending rationally (solving problems), but true willingness to pay is often emotional. Under this frame, your job as a designer isn’t primarily solving problems but activating latent emotional desires.
5. Design as narrativeRather than problem-solving or strictly evoking emotion, design can be understood as creating stories people wish to be part of. The EP-133 invites you into a narrative of creativity, experimentation, and musical adventure, where the design itself is a doorway into personal storytelling.
6. Design as cultural artifactRather than solving a need, some designs reflect or shape culture. The EP-133 isn’t just an object—it’s a manifestation of a subculture, a vibe, an ethos. People aren’t buying a tool—they’re aligning with a cultural signal.\n
7. Design as playNot all design needs to be purposeful in the utilitarian sense. Some things exist to enable exploration, curiosity, and joy. The EP-133 might be more like a playground than a hammer—its value is in what it allows you to discover, not just do.
8. Design as aesthetic technologyGood design can be thought of as technology in service of feeling. It’s a blend of form and function where function alone is insufficient. The emotional texture—the tactility, rhythm, tone—is itself a kind of functionality, just on a different frequency.
9. Design as identity amplificationProducts often serve as mirrors or extensions of the self. The EP-133 may not solve a problem so much as affirm: this is who I am. People don’t just buy functionality—they buy identity, and design gives them the language for it.
10. Design as future nostalgiaSome designs anticipate the kind of emotional resonance people will one day remember. The charm or aura of the EP-133 may be in its ability to feel already nostalgic—as if it holds future memories inside it, waiting to be unlocked.
11. Design as a conduit for latent humanitySome designs don’t solve problems — they surface what’s already inside. The EP-133 doesn’t manufacture creativity; it coaxes it forward. It’s less an instrument, more a mirror—revealing the musician hiding in the background of someone’s life.
12. Design as dignity restorationWith its precise craft and joyful restraint, the EP-133 quietly asserts: you deserve something made with care. It respects its user not just as a consumer, but as a creative agent—offering tools that honor their time, talent, and attention.
13. Design as human-environment mediationThe EP-133 creates a personal ecosystem — a small, ordered world within the chaos of everything else. Its scale, materials, and affordances allow a musician to reorient themselves in space and time, forming a kind of sanctuary through sound.
14. Design as catalyst for presenceRather than pulling attention outward, the EP-133 draws it inward. Its tactile buttons, intimate screen, and focused constraints encourage a kind of musical mindfulness—where each gesture has weight, and the moment is the medium.
15. Design as social choreographyWith its portability, approachability, and charm, the EP-133 creates new kinds of shared experience. It turns a park bench into a studio, a friend’s curiosity into collaboration. It sets the stage not just for music, but for unexpected connection.
16. Design as a rehearsal for better worldsUsing the EP-133 can feel like stepping into a reality with different rules—where spontaneity is prized, and complexity is beautiful. In this way, it becomes a tool for imagining alternate modes of living: freer, more expressive, more attuned.
17. Design as the cultivation of inner architectureThe act of composing on the EP-133 invites rhythm, patience, and attention to form. It trains not just the hand, but the mind—shaping the inner life of its user through repeated engagement with structure, timing, and flow.
18. Design as poetic structureThe EP-133 feels like a poem you play instead of read—compact, surprising, evocative. Its design is suggestive rather than prescriptive, creating emotional texture through silence, constraint, and nuance as much as through sound.
19. Design as a vessel for careEvery detail of the EP-133—from the satisfying tactility of its buttons to its lovingly minimal UI—communicates thoughtful intention. It’s as if someone asked, what would it feel like to make music joyfully, anywhere? and then answered through design.
20. Design as liberation from numbnessIn the landscape of modernity — dominated by frictionless feeds, notifications, and passive interfaces—the EP-133 is a defiant outlier. It demands interaction, invention, and improvisation. In doing so, it revives a part of the self that modern tools so often anesthetize: the playful, present, fully engaged human.
Product
Hunch
This is a product of years of practice and reflection on the practice of design. I also conducting 140 in-depth interviews with tech founders and designers around the world, exploring what led them to build their product, or latest feature.
What I discovered that there was a common pattern to the key decisions that these people were making when it came down to the moments which were truely influencing what was built. They were using their intuition.
While the situations varied wildly in the people I was talking to, from high growth teams with an array of data tools, to solo developers with notebooks. When the big decisions were made, it was their intuition that was the deciding factor.
So are started building a tool with this insight as central, a tool to help people inform their intuition. It become a note taking tool, because this was another thing that seemed central in the decision making processes of the people I spoke with. I called it Hunch.
Ideas
Design Tooling
Over the last twenty years, I’ve been engaged in the practice of design, with an increasing interest in the tools and approaches that support good work. With recent developments in ai language models, there has been an explosion of new tools that are fundamentally changing what and how we design.
Through a range of conversations so far, I’ve noticed some interesting perspectives on how people are thinking about the tools they use to design.
Firstly, designers are finding that the tools they’re most familiar with (e.g., figma) remain the most helpful for their everyday work. This seems to be because these tools offer comprehensive ways to edit and configure designs, while gradually being augmented by ai capabilities that speed up the more tedious aspects of the process.
Secondly, I’ve noticed that designers are using different kinds of tools to quickly generate prototypes, tools that help others in their organization grasp interesting new ideas. These tools don’t need to carry designs through to production; they’re about exploration, so they don’t require the full editing and configuration capabilities of mainstream design platforms.
Thirdly, I’m seeing designers begin to consider new tools that support their understanding of the challenges they’re addressing in their work. Tools that help them step back, gain fresh perspectives, explore alternative viewpoints, or question the assumptions they may be unconsciously following.
I’m continuing these conversations with designers, innovators, and consultants as we all navigate these evolving times. So if you’re interested in discussing this further, feel free to get in touch.
Product
Aura
This is a collaboration with two brilliant designers, and friends of mine from Brazil and New Zealand. The purpose of Aura is to help people find a place to flourish in a new opportunity. This could be a permanent job, contract, project, or other type of collaboration.In times of change and unknown that we are starting to experience as the first waves of ai hit our organisations, there are roles, teams and functions that are being changed.People can find themselves out of a role without much notice. So Aura is a community where interesting people can find interesting opportunities in which to flourish.Aura is all based on stories. It came form the insight that when finding a new opportunity, people are discovering who they are, and what they want to do. Where they could flourish. On the flip side the leaders of teams that are trying to grow and hire people are also discovering who their team is and who they need to join it.As people share their stories, Aura helps make connections.
Service
HunchOS
I now have twenty years experience in helping organisations talk to their customers to discover their needs. I coach people with the customer conversations course. The HunchOS service involves setting up a way to make this practice of talking with customers a practice within your organisation.
The process of setting this up takes involves three virtual sessions of one hour each. This is designed to be fast, and straight to the point of want is needed based on my experience.
In the first hour, I will lead a conversation with one of your customers for 30mins, followed by a 30mins conversation to introduce a customer conversations framework. In the second hour you will lead a 30min interview with one of your customers, followed again by 30mins coaching. The final hour will be a walk through of a customer conversation framework and your tooling to have regular and insightful customer conversations.
The overall cost of the sessions is $US800. If you a ready to setup HunchOS in your organisation to enhance your capability to discover customer insights, get in touch.
Service
Code Collab.
I love working with founders, designers, builders, and creators who are driven to serve people through software. We now live in a world of ai collaborators, and I’ve already built a range of software that integrates ai in interesting ways.
I like to structure projects so that both the product and the codebase involve ai agents as collaborators. Often, people building software get stuck relying on developer partners to create what they need. But with ai agents in the mix, non-technical people can also contribute directly to the codebase. I’ve been setting up projects where I’m just one contributor among others—helping solve challenges, imagining new capabilities, and getting things unstuck when needed.
I have a rate of $NZ160/hr, and I make sure nothing is worked on unless we agree, with a clear and way to document what is being worked on. And things get built in weeks, not months. You will be surprised at how fast things can be built these days.
If you’re interested in chatting, flick me an email and we can set up a time to talk about what you’re hoping to build.
Ideas
Customer Conversations
Some thoughts on discovering what your customers need for twenty years of customer conversations.
Starting ConversationsWhen you want to start a conversation to understand the view of someone, it can help to ask questions that can only be answered by a story. Stories are a great way for people to share their experiences because they also include how they made sense of what happened. A great question to start with is 'tell me about a recent time you had this experience?'
Taking Notes
You can take notes in a range of different ways, just try to just note down key phrases in their words where you feel that they are expressing themselves the best. If the people you are talking with is happy to record the conversation, you can get their exact quote later.
Forming Hunches
A hunch is just something you find important for some reason. It could be a helpful question, insight or idea. You might not even know why it is important, but there is something that you feel is worth exploring. If you are using a note tool, you could use hashtags or linked notes to reference your hunches across your conversations.
Asking Questions
Great questions evoke stories, so work on trying to get people to share what they have done, grounded in real events. You could ask questions like this: 'Walk me through how that happened?', 'Tell me more about that?', 'Who were you talking to there and how did they respond?', or 'What was helpful at that time and how did it play out?'
Following Hunches
Over your different conversations, your hunches will form as each conversations gives you a new view to shape your thinking. This is where having notes for your hunches can help, as you reflect on the different ideas and views that you are forming.
Sharing Hunches
Unique and valuable points of view need to be shared so that you can integrate further viewpoints. This is where you can invite others into conversation with you about the insights you can discovered. Try to create some object or experience that can show the implications of the points of view that you have discovered. Helping people see the new insight playing out in a story can make it easier for them to get the impact of what this new insight means.
I hope this helps. If you are interested in building the skills of talking to customers and want some coaching, I run a six week coaching program for helping you with this. Check it out here: