HI! I’m Chantelle Staples, a Product Designer and AI Design Strategist based in Sydney, with 17+ years of experience turning complexity into clarity.
WHO I AM
My career has spanned graphic design, brand, editorial, and illustration before moving into digital product design, UX, design systems, and design operations.
I’ve worked across media and publishing, retail, fintech, property tech, education technology, and enterprise SaaS, which means I’ve had to learn how to design for very different kinds of people, problems, and constraints. That breadth is something I lean into. It means I bring pattern recognition across industries that specialists often miss.
Right now I’m Head of Design at Drova, an AI platform company where I lead the design of AI-powered product experiences and shape the design culture and operations across the business.
WHAT I DO
My work sits at the intersection of product design, AI, and organisational clarity.
I help teams move from ambiguity to action by designing experiences that connect everyday work to strategy and give people the confidence to make better decisions.
At Drova, that looks like designing AI features, capabilities, and workflows that surface relevant content, actions, insights, and guidance in human language, facilitating rapid customer discovery, and building AI prototypes that validate product direction before engineering commits to building.
It also looks like something I find genuinely exciting
building a Design Ops agent system powered by Claude AI. A skills-based architecture that allows anyone at Drova to prototype and build in a way that’s brand, strategy, and design-aligned, without needing direct design team involvement. Design scales. Quality holds. And I get to focus on shaping the bigger picture, setting direction, guiding the experience, and ensuring everything feels coherent and intentional.
HOW I THINK ABOUT DESIGN
A few beliefs that have become foundational over the years:
START WITH PEOPLE
Technology and products change constantly. Human behaviour doesn’t. The best solutions come from deeply understanding the people you’re designing for. Their goals, their frustrations, the gap between what they say and what they actually do.
SIMPLIFY THE COMPLEX
Some of the most meaningful design work happens when complexity is translated into clarity. Not dumbed down, made navigable. There’s a real craft in that.
CURIOSITY DRIVES INNOVATION
Great ideas rarely arrive fully formed. They come from asking better questions, staying open to unexpected connections, and giving yourself enough space to think.
DESIGN CAN CHANGE HOW PEOPLE EXPERIENCE THE WORLD
Even small improvements in a product, service, or environment can have a meaningful impact on people’s lives. That’s not a small thing. It’s worth doing well.
“The best ideas come from asking better questions, staying open to new perspectives, and creating space to think deeply.”
DESIGNING WITH AI
Artificial intelligence is changing how products are imagined, designed, and built.
I USE AI TO ELEVATE THE ROLE OF DESIGN
By building AI-powered workflows and specialised AI agents + skills into my process, I’m able to move beyond executing every detail and focus on shaping the bigger picture. Setting direction, guiding the experience, and ensuring products feel coherent and intentional.
AI handles much of the mechanical work of exploring ideas, prototyping and enforcing design rules. In this model, teams can move from concept to implementation faster, while design provides the guidance needed to maintain focus on the human experience.
AI accelerates the work.
Design ensures it still feels human.
BEYOND WORK
Design thinking doesn’t switch off when work ends. For me it just finds new places to live.
The project closest to my heart outside of my professional work is Honey Willow, a lifestyle brand I founded that makes home fragrance products including candles and room mists.
Honey Willow grew out of the same instincts that drive my design work: a love of considered craft, a belief that everyday objects should feel intentional, and a genuine obsession with how environments shape how people feel. Everything I’ve learned about brand, sensory experience, and what it means to make something people love is poured into it.
I’m also a film obsessive, a loud-music believer, a go-karting competitor (ask my friends), and someone who finds patterns everywhere; in team dynamics, in human behaviour, in the symbolism hiding in plain sight in everyday conversations.
WORK WITH ME
I’m open to freelance and consulting work in product design, AI experience design, and design systems.
If you have a problem that needs untangling, get in touch.
THOUGHTS OUT LOUD
Honest reflections on design, AI, creativity, and the patterns that shape how we think and live.