Complex systems don't always need simpler UI. They need intentional design.

I bring human-centred transformation and lean systems thinking to organizations ready to make design a driver of tangible business and user outcomes, not just a step in the process.

Aveline Viau
19+ years in IT 10+ in UX
6+ domains SaaS · healthcare · supply chain · Consulting · Travel · Space · Etc.
0→1 design practice built at Tecsys
5 years at Polytechnique Montréal User Research lecturer
"I don't just design AI features. I eliminate the work that shouldn't exist."

When I design AI workflows, I look for waste first. Not inefficiency in the abstract, but the specific patterns lean manufacturing has named for decade. These patterns are everywhere in enterprise work, and they are exactly what AI agents are built to absorb. Applying lean thinking to AI design is not a methodology. It is a mindset shift. Instead of asking how do we add intelligence to this workflow, I ask what in this workflow should never have required a human in the first place. That question changes everything, what gets built, what gets cut, and whether people actually use what ships.

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What I Do.

i.

Human-centred transformation

From assumptions riddled with risks to resilient, grounded decisions. That is what I help organizations do. By bringing all stakeholders back to the center, organizations learn to prioritize and create products and services that exceed expectations.

  • User research
  • Design thinking
  • Organizational change
  • Risk reduction
ii.

Design leadership

I build, grow, and structure design teams that have a positive influence on culture, product, and the bottom line. I devise both in-team and cross-organizational mechanisms for people to grow in their craft and in the organization.

  • Stakeholder alignment
  • Organizational change
  • Team building
iii.

Strategic thinking

I connect design decisions to business strategy, translating user insight into product direction and organizational change. I do not just do design, I genuinely care about impact and business outcomes.

  • Product strategy
  • Business outcomes
  • Design strategy
  • Roadmap planning
  • Executive communication
  • Systems thinking
iv.

AI integration

I bring a unique POV to AI adoption that focuses on lean thinking, human factors, and user-centred design simultaneously. This approach eliminates the waste that kills most AI initiatives: wrong priorities, broken workflows, and humans set up to fail by the very tools meant to help them.

  • AI/UX
  • Lean thinking
  • Workflow design
  • Human factors
  • Cognitive load
  • Enterprise AI
v.

Innovation

I think holistically about the problem space and bring ideas from domains most designers have never visited. To me, creativity is the ability to recombine solutions from different places into something entirely new. It is not always about inventing from scratch.

  • Creative problem solving
  • Cross-domain thinking
  • Ideation
  • Concept development
vi.

Grow people

I invest in the humans doing the work: coaching designers, mentoring new practitioners, managing up, and teaching at master's level. Because the quality of the team determines the quality of everything else, and happy teams build better products.

  • Coaching
  • Mentorship
  • Leadership development
  • University teaching
  • Team performance
  • Design education

Selected work.

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Case study · 02

3-Reducing cognitive load in hospital receiving workflows

Hospital receiving workflows are deceptively complex. Packages arrive at the dock, and from there, things get murky — items get lost, orders tracked on paper, staff with no visibility into where their shipments are. This was the first project to go through a real user-centred process at Tecsys, and in many ways, it became the pilot for everything that came after. I designed the research process around what we actually needed to learn and when — field visits, contextual inquiry, stakeholder interviews, iterative prototyping, and multiple rounds of user testing. The goal wasn't just a better UI. It was accountability and traceability built into the experience from the ground up.

Cognitive Load Enterprise UX Field Research Healthcare UX Iterative Design
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Case study · 03

2-Designing Isn’t the Hard Part, Making it count is

When I joined Tecsys, UX existed in pieces — embedded in other roles, but not really influencing how decisions were made. The product was powerful, yet far from intuitive. Teams could feel something was off, but lacked the tools and language to fix it. Building a UX culture isn't just about producing good work. It's about making that work land. Over five years, I built a UX practice from the ground up — growing a team from 3 to 8, reshaping how design was positioned across the organization, and creating the conditions for UX to be pulled in rather than pushed. This is the story of how I turned UX into something that actually influenced decisions.

Design Culture Organizational Change Stakeholder Alignment Team Building UX Leadership
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Case study · 04

5-When Research Challenges Business Models

I joined an organization where UX was brought in to execute, not to inform. I left one where research shapes how the organization is structured and how decisions are made. The shift did not happen because of a single project. It happened because a research study predicted a product failure accurately enough that the right people started asking different questions. Combined with a leadership change and a pre-existing desire to evolve, that credibility compounded into something lasting. This is a story about how design influence actually works inside large organizations: slowly, through accuracy, and through being right when it counted.

Design Maturity Healthcare Leadership Organizational Influence Research Strategy
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I bring the field into the classroom. Every fall semester, on purpose.

At Polytechnique Montreal, my alma mater, I lecture on User Research at the master's level in an engineering faculty. I tweak the curriculum every year. Not because the fundamentals change, but because the field keeps evolving. When generative AI entered the conversation, I did not add a warning slide about it. I integrated it as a required tool, then built critical thinking exercises around it, contrasting what AI produces with what real field research actually surfaces. My students learn to use AI fluently and to know exactly when not to trust it.

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5 cohorts of master's researchers, since 2021
Course User Research · IN8407
Aveline provides useful perspective and creative options for the designs. As a patient and polite person, she is easy to work and collaborate with. She did a nice job turning around feedback under very tight deadlines.
Director of Product
Your expertise in understanding complex business needs is truly remarkable. Your proactive nature and ability to adapt quickly to changing requirements are a huge advantage for our design process. You are a driving force in delivering exceptional user experiences..
Director of Product Development
Your expertise in understanding complex business needs is truly remarkable. Your proactive nature and ability to adapt quickly to changing requirements are a huge advantage for our design process. You are a driving force in delivering exceptional user experiences.
Senior Director of Strategy
She has taken on leadership roles for a wide variety of projects under the team’s remit and has become a domain expert in each project she’s led. From agentic AI flows to Healthcare [...], Aveline takes on each project as a fresh challenge and excels at understanding user needs, business requirements, and creating inventive, holistic experiences based on them. Stakeholder partners have reached out to me to tell me how helpful and flexible Aveline is in her approach to the work...”
Manager
If I were to go in and do these interviews myself, I would ask specific questions about the workflow and what’s wrong. I’d never think to take a step back and have them map out the process itself. Just that difference in how you asked the questions versus how I would have approached it — that change alone has been eye opening, and has helped me prioritize work for the future.
Product Owner
We gave them a prototype they were able to test with us, and we watched how they used it. We learned that things we thought were obvious were probably not as obvious as they could have been for the end users. It allowed us to get a better idea of who our customer is and how they use the product. In the long run it is going to save us time — now we have a better idea of exactly what they wanted, and we can focus on those things.
Lead Developer
There are a couple of wins when you do this type of research. The first is obvious — you get the information you need to build the product the way the customer wants. But the hidden benefit is the respect you get from the customer. We constantly get comments that customers are happy to engage, happy that they are being heard. When the customer is involved and engaged, they feel like part of the project. When there are issues or mistakes, they are a lot more understanding and a lot easier to deal with.
Business Analyst
If I was going into a client site, I would tend to lead the discussion in the direction of what I want. I don’t have the interviewing skills — I’m not a trained interviewer. But I’ve seen the responses that your team has gotten, and frankly I probably never would have got that type of information. Because that’s not where I would have directed the conversation, given my bias about how the operation should work. This stuff is invaluable. It gives you data points you weren’t expecting.
Director of Product
“She helped our product teams learn how to frame and solve problems based on user research and critical thinking, aligning with the data-driven approach the product teams were adopting at the time. She was always revealing actionable insights that even resulted in some product managers re-prioritizing their roadmaps, which resulted in a faster time to value for the solutions to timely problems uncovered in her research. She also brought innovative approaches to solutions that pushed the boundaries of the current state, giving the product teams a new way of thinking about how to solve customer and user problems, bringing excitement and vision to what is possible.”
Manager

If you'd like to know more, let's talk.