Who we help
Commissioning capability
Buying capability that gets adopted
The demonstration went well. The front line still is not using it. And sometimes the build already happened: the capability was fielded, adoption is still failing, and re-opening the build question is politically impossible.
The promise
Someone has to own the journey from a successful demonstration to a capability the front line actually uses. We do. We put users at the centre from the problem statement through to adoption, so what you commission is what they use.
What MilUX does
- User research in military environments, with access to serving and veteran participants through our Military User Research Recruitment Service.
- Requirements grounded in evidence, with option evaluation and capability assessment.
- Discovery with an explicit commitment gate: the discipline that decides whether the build should happen at all.
- Sharpening the problem upstream, so a clear, well-formed problem reaches your specialists instead of a vague one that soaks up their time.
- Adoption-focused design through to the front line, so the valley between demonstration and use gets owned.
- Adoption recovery for fielded capability: we take the journey from where it stalled. No build re-opened, no blame assigned.
We are not a build shop pushing you to the commitment point. We are the discipline that decides whether the build should happen at all. And when you are being asked to contract in months rather than years, that discipline is how you go fast without buying the wrong thing.
What we've delivered
UK MOD, Land Special OperationsWe led the discovery to design a deployable staff working environment for the RANGERS, embedding user research in operational settings before any build commitment.
The challenge. Land Special Operations needed a deployable staff working environment that would hold up in operational conditions, not just in a workshop. Getting it wrong would mean building capability the front line could not use.
What we did. We ran the discovery phase for Project Quicksilver, embedding user research directly in operational contexts to validate workflows, de-risk development, and test interoperability before any build commitment. The work was delivered through the CDW and 2iC consortium.
The value. Quicksilver set a benchmark for user-centred defence innovation: requirements grounded in how the RANGERS actually work, and a build path de-risked before money went into it.
University of London Officers' Training CorpsWe designed and ran a design-thinking hackathon with the University of London OTC, turning real drone threats into concepts grounded in frontline need.
The challenge. Drone threats are evolving faster than doctrine, and the people closest to them, junior leaders, are rarely given structured ways to solve the problem.
What we did. We designed and ran a design-thinking hackathon with the University of London Officers’ Training Corps, taking real-world drone threats through structured creativity to concepts grounded in frontline need.
The value. The event produced usable concepts and showed how structured creativity can drive defence innovation, while giving junior leaders a real stake in solving the problem.
Defence BattleLabWe ran a discovery into why the Defence BattleLab was underperforming, and set out how to turn it into a working innovation hub.
The challenge. The Defence BattleLab was set up to bring SMEs and innovation into defence, but it was underperforming and it was not clear why.
What we did. We ran a discovery that surfaced the core issues in service visibility, access, and user experience, working from the perspective of the SMEs the BattleLab was meant to serve.
The value. The discovery produced a strategic roadmap to improve SME engagement and reposition the BattleLab as a genuine innovation hub, rather than a facility people struggled to use.
British ArmyWe led the discovery for an Army-wide design system, exposing inconsistency across military software and defining the standard to fix it.
The challenge. Software across the Army was designed and delivered inconsistently, team by team, hurting usability, efficiency and interoperability.
What we did. We led the Army Design System discovery, surfacing where and why the inconsistencies arose, and defining the governance, design principles and roadmap for a standardised system across defence.
The value. The work gave the Army a route to consistent, user-centred applications, and the foundations of a design system that improves experience and interoperability across programmes.
British Army, Army Digital ServiceWe ran the British Army's first strategic digital discovery into the deployed warfighting domain, moving command and control from equipment-first procurement towards user-centred design.
The challenge. By 2021 the Army was struggling to deliver interoperable, user-centred digital tools in the deployed space. Decades of equipment-first procurement had left command-and-control capabilities siloed, duplicated, and hard to use. As Defence Digital put it, the Army had repeatedly tried to force the square peg of software through the round hole of equipment procurement.
What we did. Under the MORPHEUS programme, we led a discovery across eight functional domains, from Fires and Medical to CBRN and Intelligence. We interviewed 178 end users and 58 enabling users, replaced unusable persona and journey maps with scene-based analysis, and distilled the findings into 119 problem statements and 48 options to test. In parallel we proved the approach, standing up an interoperable air picture from in-service radios and open-source software in twelve working days.
The value. LDAD gave the Army its first honest picture of its deployed digital estate, and a reusable framework that measured service performance rather than just delivery. It challenged vendor lock-in and unmeasured benefit, and marked the shift from equipment-first procurement to user-centred service design that underpins MORPHEUS and LE TacCIS.
UK MOD, MORPHEUS programmeWe provided and managed expert military users for the MORPHEUS Evolve to Open programme, keeping research operationally credible round after round.
The challenge. The MORPHEUS Evolve to Open programme needed consistent, operationally credible user input across iterative research rounds, the kind of access that is hard to arrange and easy to get wrong.
What we did. We provided and managed expert military users across the programme, keeping the same credible voices in the room round after round so the research held up.
The value. The programme could design secure, user-validated systems with confidence, because the user input behind them was consistent and operationally real. It is the recruitment and research capability we now offer buyers directly.