AE WORKS

Participatory design agency

Soda

Overview

Soda is a participatory design agency that brings disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent people into the design of health services and products. I co-founded it with Charli Skinner and Oli Clayton.

My contribution
  • Co-founder
  • Director
Team
  • Charli Skinner
  • Oli Clayton
Year
2021 - 2025

The journey

  1. 2021

    Year Here

    Charli Skinner, Oli Clayton and I were Fellows together on Year Here ↗, at the RSA.

  2. One year

    Incubation

    Soda began as a Year Here venture, with support from BCG Digital Ventures. We spent a year testing the idea and building a community of disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent people.

  3. Three years

    Running a start-up agency

    We ran Soda as a participatory design agency, working with the NHS, councils and tech companies.

  4. 2025

    Our phase ends

    Soda carries on under Charli's leadership. Oli went to Innovation Unit and I took what I had learned into AE Works.

Three people standing together in front of a large screen showing the Soda logo
Soda's founders: Charli Skinner, Oli Clayton and Alex Eisenberg

What Soda did

We helped impact-driven companies and public sector organisations design more inclusive and accessible health and wellbeing solutions that reach more people, by bringing people with lived experience of disability, chronic illness and neurodivergence to the centre of the design process. We did that in three ways.

1

Co-production for health equity

Working with the NHS, councils and residents, so the people affected by health inequality shape the services meant for them.

2

Inclusive design and accessibility

Helping start-ups and tech companies build products that work for disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent people.

3

Research and policy

Gathering evidence with people with lived experience and putting it in front of government.

1

Co-production for health equity

People sitting around tables with red tablecloths in a community hall, listening to two facilitators
Oli Clayton and Alex Eisenberg facilitating a community workshop in Croydon
  • Community Chest for Social PrescribingNHS North East London

    A £500,000 co-produced programme getting funds to grassroots organisations across seven North East London boroughs.

    Read the case study
  • Patient feedback on hospital wardsImperial College NHS

    We facilitated a co-design process with hospital staff, lay partners and patients to improve how wards use patient feedback. It produced a roadmap for a user insight and quality improvement package across all four hospital sites, supporting staff learning and engagement and more equitable, higher-quality care.

  • Best practice for co-design and community inclusionTransformation Partners in Health and Care

    We ran a best practice review of community engagement and co-design. We gathered insight from NHS and local authority teams across the UK on community health programmes linked to social prescribing, to understand how best to involve local communities in choosing the services most relevant to them.

  • Selected as best practice by the Department of Health and Social CareNorth East London Health and Care Partnership (NHS)

    Waltham Forest's Community Chest, which we designed and helped to implement, was chosen as a case study of innovative social prescribing in a government policy paper on adult social care.

    Read the policy paper ↗
2

Inclusive design and accessibility

Illustration of two people talking on a bench, one with a raised hand
  • Inclusive Design for Disability TechRemarkable

    A learning programme on inclusive and accessible design for a global accelerator supporting disability tech start-ups.

    Read the case study
  • Training impact-driven businessesAllia Future Business Centre

    We trained small businesses and ventures in human-centred and inclusive design, as part of the Greater London Authority's No Wrong Door Open Innovation Challenge with Allia. The ventures support disabled people, women, refugees and young and older people.

  • Accessibility in the ZOE health appZOE

    We audited the accessibility of the ZOE app and helped embed global accessibility standards and inclusive design into how it is developed and rolled out, supporting its expansion to global markets.

3

Research and policy

Illustration of a runner with a prosthetic leg
  • The Power of Sport: A Lifetime of OpportunityDisability Policy Centre, UnLtd and Nimbus Disability

    We researched the accessibility of sport and physical activity in the UK, working with Soda's community of disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent people. The report launched at the House of Lords in July 2024. A recommendation was then embedded in the UK Government's Inclusion 2028 programme, improving teacher training to enable better access to PE and sport for 240,000 pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.

    Download the report (PDF)
203people with lived experience involved
82community health solutions funded
39inclusive prototypes developed

Figures from Soda's Impact Report 2023 ↗. Download the Impact Report (PDF)

We have now shaped our solutions considering a broad cross section of human perspectives, abilities, and backgrounds enabling us to create products where everyone is included.

Jon KayDisability Tech Founder, Remarkable Design-a-thon

Since the Community Chest model was launched, we have seen some really inspiring projects make a difference to communities across North East London.

Professor Kevin FentonRegional Public Health Director, London

What it taught me

Three years of getting clinicians, council officers, community groups and residents around one table. That is the root of what I do now: facilitation, team and group work and leadership development.

Let's chat