Over the past year, the work coming through our doors has changed, not just in volume, but in complexity and responsibility.
We’re increasingly working on long-term, enterprise-scale programmes. Healthcare has become one of our fastest-growing areas of work. We’ve expanded our presence in the US, particularly in New York, and we’re delivering more programmes that span regions, disciplines and years rather than months.
This shift matters. Not because it signals growth for its own sake, but because it reflects a change in the nature of the work.
The products we’re being asked to build today are more embedded in people’s lives, more regulated and more consequential if they fail. That reality is reshaping how we think about digital delivery.
Here are a few of the things we’re learning.
1. Digital work is becoming more regulated, and that’s where value starts:
Much of digital’s early promise was about speed and simplicity. Strip away friction. Ship fast. Improve later.
That logic breaks down in sectors like healthcare, finance, utilities and public services. In these environments, decision cycles are longer. Stakeholder groups are broader. Expectations around reliability, security and compliance are significantly higher. And failure carries real-world consequences.
What we’re seeing is that regulation doesn’t reduce the need for good digital work. It raises the bar for it.
Teams have to design with governance in mind from day one. Engineering decisions are inseparable from risk, privacy and operational resilience. Product thinking has to account for long-term stewardship, not just launch success.
As healthcare work has grown across our studios, particularly in the US, this has become impossible to ignore. The most successful programmes treat regulation not as a hurdle to clear, but as a context to design within.
2. Engagement is harder, and more important, than ever:
Across digital health in particular, there’s a well-documented gap between adoption and sustained use. Many products are downloaded, registered for, or piloted, and then quietly abandoned.
That reality forces uncomfortable questions.
We’re learning that engagement doesn’t just mean frequency of use. It doesn’t mean optimising for daily active use, or constant novelty. In many critical products, value lies in usefulness at the right moment, not in how often someone opens an app.
This changes how success is measured. It shifts product metrics away from volume and towards outcomes. It places more emphasis on behavioural insight, accessibility and clarity, and less on surface-level interaction.
As we work on more multi-year healthcare and enterprise programmes, this long view has become essential. Impact often only becomes visible over time.
This thinking builds on what ustwo has always cared about. Human-centred design is not about delight for its own sake. It’s about helping people do what they need to do, especially when it matters most.
3. AI is no longer experimental, it’s infrastructure now:
Many of the briefs we now see include AI by default. Not as a bolt-on feature, but as part of broader system modernisation or organisational transformation.
What’s changed is the tone.
There is less appetite for experimentation without consequence. More focus on explainability, safety and reliability. And far less tolerance for “move fast and break things”.
AI is increasingly being embedded into existing systems, often legacy ones, particularly in healthcare and enterprise environments. Decisions about data, governance and accountability can’t be deferred.
We don’t approach this as declaring authority. We’re learning alongside our clients, navigating where AI genuinely adds value, and where human judgement must remain central.
AI is becoming infrastructure. And infrastructure demands rigour.
What this means for ustwo in 2026:
We expect this direction of travel to continue.
More long-term partnerships.
More responsibility in the products being built.
More emphasis on trust, resilience and real-world impact.
To support this, we’ve strengthened our senior leadership in technology and operations. As the work has become more complex and more global, the need for clear technical direction and experienced support through change has increased.
The work is getting harder. And that reality is shaping how we think, how we design, and how we build, together.
Bringing leaders like Nick Hegarty and Jasel Mehta into these roles is not about hierarchy. It’s about ensuring the studio is set up to do this kind of work well, consistently, and over the long term.
Complex work deserves care, clarity and the right support around the teams doing the work.
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Updated 23rd January 2025.