AI PRODUCT DESIGN | OPERATIONS TOOL | MINING
Putting AI in the hands of the experts
Blending decisions in a manganese mining operation happen multiple times a day, under pressure, with consequences that ripple from ore quality through to export compliance. At a large mining operation in Northern Australia, geologists understood their stockpiles — but translating that knowledge into a blend instruction was slow, manual work. Each assessment took up to an hour. There was no way to model alternatives, no way to move fast when conditions changed.
APPROACH
The starting point wasn't the technology — it was the geologists. Their language, their daily workflows, and the lived experience of working those stockpiles became the product specification. Through weekly co-design sessions, we built a tool that reflected how they actually worked, not how we imagined they might.
The AI generates optimised blend recommendations. The geologist makes the final call. That wasn't a compromise — it was the design principle. Every decision in the product reinforced it: the geologist's judgement is the asset. The tool makes it faster and better informed.
I led a multidisciplinary team across data science, engineering, and design — fully remote, across five time zones — and took the product from proof of concept to a working MVP used in live operations.
ROLE
Design Lead and Project Manager across the full engagement. I owned the co-design process with the geology team, led product definition, and managed delivery across a complex, fully remote environment — multiple disciplines, five time zones, and no ability to be on-site with the people we were designing for.
Digital Product Design | Co-Design Research | Systems Mapping | AI Collaboration | Design Systems | Product Defintion and Roadmap | Stakeholder Management. 
IMPACT