About Us
Founder & Creative Director
Bart Higgins
Leading his own Experience Innovation Practice, Future Perfect X, Bart partners with clients globally to enable and activate brand design and experience innovation. Focusing on the development of new services, programs, environments, technologies, and branded offerings, Bart’s work helps build meaningful and lasting relationships between brands and the communities of customers they support. With Future Perfect X, Bart has helped develop new business models, invent groundbreaking services, places and experiences, and drive business growth for some of the world’s leading companies.
Whether creating a new retail concept for CVS Health, developing a service model for Four Seasons, re-imaging the beauty experience for Chanel, or driving workplace transformation for GlaxoSmithKline, Bart’s relentless quest to help brands empathetically connect with people is at the center of all of his work.
On his way to creating Future Perfect X, Bart worked with Wired Magazine leading global operational and organizational expansion and A+I Design Corp leading workplace and retail strategy and development. He also served as a Partner at the groundbreaking creative agency, Pompei A.D. creating global retail, cultural, and hospitality brands and experiences, and more recently as a Partner at ?What If! Innovation building a global retail innovation practice that developed new strategies, business models and platforms for some of the world’s leading retail and hospitality businesses.
Borrowing from Wired Magazine’s patron saint Marshall McCluahan, Bart’s mantra in his work is “The medium is the message.” The place where we engage people, the way we communicate with them, and the emotional and empathetic relationships we build with them are quickly becoming as important as the products we develop for them. Working to this end helps brand focus on the most important stakeholder, the customer.
Bart’s mantra in his work is guided by Marshall McCluahan,
“The medium is the message.”
Partner, Design Strategy Director & Digital Anthropologist
Katie Hillier
Katie is a blend between digital anthropologist and strategic innovation leader, with over a decade of experience running digital anthropology labs (mixed method qual/quant consumer research) and leading global innovation projects and teams.
As a leading digital anthropologist and Social Intelligence Insider Top 50, Katie is a cultural insights futurist, committed to understanding what it means to be human in this age of digital transformation.
With her extensive experience in insights, innovation and strategy, she has helped some of the worlds most loved brands re-imagine the future possible to drive growth. From working with Chanel to re-imagine the beauty retail experience of the future, partnering with Viacom to drive product and marketing innovation, to helping one of the UK’s largest social housing providers re-imagine how to make every home a platform for life.
Previously Katie was an innovation leader at What If Innovation, while founding their digital anthropology lab. Later she moved to London to become the Principal Director of Innovation at Accenture. While there where she built Accenture’s digital anthropology practice in Europe, while leading innovation projects globally. Most recently Katie was the Chief Digital Anthropologist at the Liiv Center, a non-profit working with UNESCO to advance digital anthropology for the public good.
Katie believes that when we get our understanding of people and cultures wrong – we get everything wrong. This belief continue to fuels her journey helping brands and organizations innovate by deeply understanding the needs of the people and communities they serve.
“When we get our understanding of people and cultures wrong – we get everything wrong.”
Who We Are
Design – We are design strategists who drive the development of actionable brand experiences, systems, and products
Insights – We are context junkies that design and activate learning plans that provide multidimensional perspectives and intelligence
Business – We are business partners that are obsessed with strategies, ideas, and actions that drive business growth and impact