I left my role as Head of Design at Lunar Energy at the end of July this year after roughly 2.5years. I originally posted this to LinkedIn at the time, but thought I would repost it here where I own the words (a bit) more.

After 2.5 action-packed years, today is my last day as head of design at Lunar Energy

I’m grateful to my colleagues for all I’ve learned during that time, and for Chris Wright, Simon Daniel and Kunal Girotra for hiring me in the first place, after I left Google back in 2021.

It was a fantastic challenge to work hands-on across every aspect of design at a startup again – from the brand identity, to the industrial design, app UX all the way to compliance labels, packaging and installer collateral. Oh and all the fun internal schwag like the ‘mission patch’ stickers you can see here on my laptop as I hand it back.

I’m really proud of the work the team have done so far – elevating great design and experience in the service of their mission to move our homes to be powered by the endless energy of our Sun.

It was fantastic to see that work recognised recently in the Fast Company Innovation by Design awards, and in 2023 when we won iF design awards in both product & UX categories.

Lunar will continue to deliver on the design and quality of end-user experience – as it ramps up installation of the Lunar System this year. I’ll be cheering them on, but as the 0-to-1 challenges have slowed, it’s time for me to move on.

Special thanks to my small but perfectly formed design team of James Jackman, Paulina Plizga and alum Ryan Pflaum – and my colleagues in design engineering on the hardware side, especially Kielan Crow and Eamon Briggs. Thank you to folks in brand and marketing –  Marissa Muller, Robert Pierce, Guste Stephens and Mara Casadio for taking chances on helping tell a different, more hopeful story around clean energy.

Finally, a deep deep bow and thanks to colleagues in product and engineering – Sam Wevers, Sophie Yates, Katherine Dick, Yosi Kwaw, Sebastian Wolf for caring about the customer experience in a sector that.. well, hasn’t very much. And the same to those in our engineering and front-end design teams – Charlotte Zhang, Xian (Amber) Tang, Christian Møller Takle, Ruby Rosenthal, Louis Edwards João Bernardo Dias da Costa Chris Ablitt amongst others for all the inspiring conversations and work to make it real. I can’t wait to see what you all do next.

What’s next for me?

Well, a bit of a break through August and hanging out with the family – I think it’s the first time in a couple of decades I don’t have something new immediately lined up, so I’m going to enjoy that feeling for now!

I have some speaking and teaching lined up which I’ll be able to speak about soon – but very up for a chat about the near-future if you think that there’s something matt-shaped there I should know about.

Aside from clean energy hardware, software and services – I’m keen to get back into the fray of AI, especially personal AI experiences across hw & sw such as I’d been working on prior to leaving Google.

But for now, deleting slack (phew) from my phone… and onwards!

Well – August is over, and now I’m actively looking around for those Jones-shaped jobs.

Get in touch if you would like to chat to me about teaching, consultancy, project work or even full-time opportunities in the realms of AI across HW&SW, design for the energy transition or anything else that you think my be up my (Kardashev) street.