About Reframr
Reframr was founded by one of Aotearoa’s most respected voices in customer strategy, and works with tech companies under pressure to deliver customer acquisition and retention targets, so your teams agree on the right next action.
As social scientists, designers and organisational strategists, we bring the research rigour of anthropology and psychology, the craft of product and service design, and the commercial acumen to turn the evidence into decisions. Context comes first: your goals, your people and your environment. Working across sectors gives us the range to shift your room: patterns others miss, ideas from one industry that unlock another, and divergent thinking that takes you further than you expected.
Who we’ve worked with
Meet the team
Sarah Clearwater
Founder & CEO
Sarah is an anthropologist and organisational strategist, the founder and CEO of Reframr, and the founder of the country’s largest network of in-house design and customer experience leaders. Over the past decade she has worked where ambition meets reality, helping executive teams reshape what their organisation does and how it works underneath, so growth doesn’t come at the cost of the people or purpose that make it worth pursuing. As a business owner, she knows intimately what it feels like to be in the hot seat of business performance.
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Her work with Deloitte Fast 50 companies, technology scale-ups and NZ companies with a global remit has been featured in leading industry publications and podcasts, including Tech Day, Tech Waka, the Service Design Show, This is HCD and the Touchpoint Journal. She helps executive teams see clearly where they stand, align around a direction grounded in evidence, and reshape the business models, services and systems that carry growth forward. Her focus is the same throughout: making the right next action real, and making it stick.
A recognised voice in her field, Sarah is one of Aotearoa’s foremost customer strategists. She advises executive teams on customer strategy, guest lectures on organisational change and resilience, and champions a simple belief: that organisations can, and should, do better, for the people they serve and the people who do the work.
- Customer strategy
- Organisational strategy
- Business model and service design
- Executive advisory
- Technology scale-ups
- Change and organisational resilience
Sarvnaz (Sarv) Taherian, PhD
Practice Lead
Sarv is a research psychologist and service designer who has led product and design in deep-tech and healthcare, and worked inside startups. She uncovers what customers and colleagues truly experience, gives executives the evidence to decide on, and keeps the end user at the centre of every design and strategy decision.
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She honed this over 15+ years across academic, startup, public sector and commercial roles, where she has led product and design in deep-tech and healthcare, working with interdisciplinary teams of designers, engineers and architects. That taught her how technology teams work, how to navigate complexity and competing stakeholder needs, and how to turn complex solutions into ones people enjoy using. She brings the same discipline to Reframr, giving clients research rigour at speed and clear communication on progress and outcomes, so the evidence is trusted and acted on.
Underpinning her work is a rigorous, deeply human approach: research-led, inclusive, and focused on making sure everyone is heard and on board. She holds a PhD in Psychology and Human Factors Engineering.
- Customer and employee research
- Service design
- Product design
- Human factors
- Evidence-led decisions
- Deep-tech, startups and healthcare
Julian Dumo-Tanaka
Experience Design Consultant
Julian is a customer experience researcher and designer who helps organisations understand and visualise how customers experience their products and services, highlighting the moments that make or break an organisation’s definition of success. Backed by insights and evidence, he designs improvements that work for the people those products and services were meant to serve. His human-centred design practice and commercial acumen give him the instinct to see the whole journey end to end, and to ask who a product or service includes and who it leaves out.
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He honed this through his training as an industrial designer, his experience managing the Massey Students Association, and at Deloitte, where he supported organisations across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors to rethink and redesign their services, starting with the customer. He brings that same discipline to every engagement: grounding decisions in real human need, and designing the response so it is valued and used. He is driven by a belief in the power of design to create better experiences and a higher quality of life, whatever the industry or sector. He has worked with people from all walks of life, including vulnerable communities in the health sector, where his contributions aimed to improve health outcomes and experiences for Rainbow, Māori, Pacific and Migrant communities.
Holding a Master of Design in Industrial and Product Design, Julian pairs a designer’s eye for the end-to-end experience with a genuine commitment to impact.
- Customer experience research and insight
- Journey visualisation
- Service redesign
- Industrial and product design
- Inclusive and equitable design
- Health sector experience
- Visual communication
Talk to the team
Book a 30-minute clarity call to see what needs to happen next, what is in your control, and whether we are the right people to help.