Insights to Decisions: Making Qualitative Research Actionable
Welcome to the fourth episode of The Qual Point of View, a limited podcast series featuring expert voices from the field using qualitative insights for real-time decision-making.
In this episode, Ooloi Labs co-founder Akshay Roongta speaks with Anjali Moorthy, now a Service Design Lead at Care City, about what it takes to design and conduct research in settings where people cannot pause their work to accommodate ideal processes, where systems are overstretched, and where insight must respond to frontline realities rather than the other way around.
In this conversation, we explore:
The realities of human-centered work and what actually changes when we move beyond surveys and metrics
Why research so often sits unused and how to move it into action
How to use stories responsibly without overextending them and ways to build trust in research within operationally stretched environments
How qualitative and quantitative approaches can strengthen each other to shape not just services and interventions, but the way institutions think, decide, and act.
If you work in research, service design, public systems, or any role that shapes decisions affecting people, this episode offers thoughtful reflections on designing with humility, bringing the “why” behind the numbers into everyday practice.
In this podcast
Anjali Moorthy
Anjali Moorthy is the Service Design Lead at Care City, where she leads design projects aimed at improving health and care services in North East London. Her work spans a variety of activities: from reviewing research on dementia to facilitating workshops with the people who run local care services. Over the past decade, Anjali has worked around the world with underserved schools, prisons, public hospitals, and local authorities; serving as a teacher, manager and designer, each adding new dimensions to her practice. When time permits, she enjoys designing small, playful experiences to explore big, complex challenges: think games, immersive experiences, or townscapes. Design Ward is a space she is currently cultivating to capture and develop these ideas before they disappear. When she’s not designing, Anjali enjoys long hikes in cold weather, saunas and cold plunges, and noodling with languages or one of the many instruments scattered around her living room.