Expertise / Capability building
Coaching & Embedding
We place experienced practitioners alongside your teams, working on real projects together until the skills stick. Our coaching and embedding approach builds lasting design and research capability through applied practice — not theory. The goal is self-sufficiency: making Paper Giant unnecessary.
Building capability through real work
Coaching and embedding means learning by doing — with expert guidance woven into every step. We place experienced researchers and designers alongside your teams for weeks or months, working on live projects that matter to your organisation.
Rather than running classroom exercises or theoretical workshops, we:
- Partner with your people on active projects, modelling best practice in real time
- Provide structured feedback and reflection loops throughout the engagement
- Build shared language and frameworks your teams can use independently
- Gradually step back as confidence and competence grow
The result is capability that transfers naturally, because it was built through genuine practice.
How we work alongside your teams
We start by understanding where your team is now and where they need to be. Every engagement is different — some teams need help running their first research study, others need support establishing an entire design function.
Our practitioners adapt to your context. We:
- Assess existing skills, tools, and confidence levels before we begin
- Co-lead early project work, then shift to a coaching role as teams gain momentum
- Create lightweight playbooks and templates tailored to your organisation
- Run regular retrospectives so learning is captured and shared
What comes out of this work is not just project outcomes, but a team that knows how to keep delivering them.
From individual practitioners to entire functions
We’ve embedded with teams of every size and maturity level. Some clients bring us in to upskill a single product team running their first discovery sprint. Others ask us to help establish design research as a recognised capability across the organisation.
The common thread is applied learning. Whether we’re coaching three people through their first qualitative study or helping a large enterprise stand up a new practice area, we work on real problems with real stakes. That’s what makes the learning stick — and what sets our approach apart from traditional training programs.
When ANZ needed to understand their small business customers, we used the engagement as an opportunity to build internal design capability at the same time — training two new teams through applied project work.
Making capability investment count
Embedding practitioners is a strategic choice, not just a learning exercise. When we work alongside your teams, the organisation gets two things at once: immediate project outcomes and growing internal expertise that compounds over time.
This dual return is what makes coaching and embedding valuable at a leadership level. Every project becomes an opportunity to strengthen your team’s skills, refine your processes, and reduce dependency on external support. We measure success not by how long we stay, but by how quickly your teams can fly on their own.
SEEK needed their teams across Asia-Pacific to run their own qualitative research with confidence. We co-designed a tailored training program built around their actual research challenges.
Teams that keep growing after we leave
The true measure of our coaching work is what happens when we’re not in the room. Our engagements are designed to make Paper Giant unnecessary — building teams that run research, apply design thinking, and make evidence-based decisions on their own.
Clients who’ve worked with us through coaching and embedding consistently report:
- Increased confidence in running research and design activities independently
- Stronger internal alignment on when and how to involve users
- Reduced reliance on external consultancies for routine design and research work
When your teams can do the work themselves, every future project benefits from that investment.
Ready to grow your team's research and design skills through real project work? Let's talk about what coaching and embedding could look like for your organisation.
