About
Garry Burns
Service Design & CX Transformation Consultant · Essential Craft · Dubai, UAE
Garry Burns is a UAE-based Service Design and CX Transformation consultant with 15+ years of experience across luxury hospitality, telecommunications, finance, aviation, government and social impact, working through his independent practice, Essential Craft.
He helps organisations clarify ambiguous goals, build stronger teams and deliver more coherent customer experiences. His work connects customer insight, business priorities and technical delivery so leaders can make better decisions and teams can act with confidence.
A note on data and AI
Most organisations already hold more data, insight and technology than they can act on. Garry turns that complexity into clear priorities, creating the conditions for meaningful innovation: designing practical AI-enabled services by defining where AI should support customers, employees and operations, how human hand-offs should work, and how adoption, trust and value should be measured.
15+
Years in service design, CX & innovation
6
Sectors: hospitality, telecom, finance, aviation, government, social impact
4
Recent markets: UAE, Australia, Serbia, Saudi Arabia
Capabilities, methods & tools
What each capability is for, and how it gets done
User research, secondary research and problem framing
Understanding user needs, business context, service friction and opportunity areas when goals are unclear or evidence is fragmented.
Research planning, stakeholder and user interviews, contextual enquiry, service audits, voice-of-customer analysis, market scans, AI-assisted secondary research, synthesis, personas, opportunity framing and insight storytelling.
Tools: Dovetail, Miro, FigJam, Gamma; ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity for secondary research and synthesis assistance.
Service and experience definition
Translating evidence into coherent journeys, service concepts, operating requirements and experience principles.
Journey mapping, journey management, service blueprinting, ecosystem maps, stakeholder maps, design principles, prototyping and design-to-technology communication.
Tools: Smaply, Figma, FigJam, Miro, Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma Make, Cursor, Codex, Claude Code, Make.com, Zapier.
Prioritisation, alignment and measurement
Helping teams decide what matters, sequence work, clarify ownership and measure progress.
OKR and KPI framing, prioritisation, roadmaps, responsibility mapping and RACI, initiative tracking, decision papers, governance rhythms and success measures.
Tools: Jira, Confluence, ClickUp, Miro, FigJam, Gamma.
Facilitation, leadership alignment and capability building
Securing executive buy-in and building the design capability of teams so change outlasts the engagement.
Executive workshops, co-design sessions, design thinking training, team coaching, role clarity and governance rhythms that move boards and steering committees from insight to funded action.
Tools: Miro, FigJam, Gamma.
AI-enabled service design and measurement
Defining where AI can improve customer, employee or operational services, and how its role, adoption and value should be designed and measured.
AI opportunity framing, AI touchpoint design, service blueprinting with AI moments, human hand-off design, customer and employee impact assessment, trust and risk considerations, adoption planning and feedback loops.
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Miro, Smaply, Dovetail, Make.com, Zapier; with product and technology teams where AI platforms or APIs are required.
Education & teaching
Grounding and giving back
University of Dundee · BSc Product / Service Design · 2004 – 2008
RMIT University · Invited Service Design Mentor, RMIT Online · 2019
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