The moments you design for least are the ones you're judged on.
A missed payment. A diagnosis. A bereavement. A 2am search. These are the moments customers remember and talk about, and the first places regulators and journalists look. They are also where most products quietly fail.
Joanna Montgomery advises leadership teams and boards on how to make sure their products their products remain trustworthy when people are frightened, grieving, exhausted or in crisis, and what it takes to get those moments right.
Who she works with
Executives, founders and boards in banking and lending, insurance, health, and consumer and AI products: organisations where getting a sensitive moment wrong costs trust, customers or a regulatory finding.
What she brings
Joanna has a unique and in-depth understanding of:
Vulnerable customers: journeys that work for people in difficult circumstances, and the evidence to show it
Hidden harm: where a product fails people in ways your dashboards can't see
AI in sensitive moments: what AI should and shouldn't do when people are at their most fragile
Measures that tell the truth: replacing metrics that reward the wrong things with ones a board can stand behind
How she works
Designing for Sensitive Moments Intensive
A focused, short-term engagement on one critical journey, part of your product, or strategy. Joanna looks at it through the eyes of the person living it, including the evidence dashboards miss, then works through it with the leadership team. The organisation leaves knowing who it's failing, where, and what to change first.
Ongoing advisory
A standing relationship with a leadership team, bringing an outside, human view into strategy and product decisions.
Boards and advisory boards
Joanna is open to a small number of board and advisory board roles where this perspective belongs in the room.
Selected work
A UK retail bank: Bereaved customers were asked multiple times for a death certificate → a single "tell us once" journey, with letters to the deceased stopped on the first contact → 54% fewer repeat contacts per bereavement case
A digital health provider: Test results were released to patients out of hours, with no one to call → significant results now come with a booked clinician call and plain-language context → reduced pressure on overnight phonelines
A consumer AI product: The product counted long late-night sessions as success → it now notices those patterns and gently points people towards rest and real-world support → new metrics adopted at board level