Devon Young

Groundbreaking garden designer and technologist

Part of the Tech Women Celebration 50 – a curated list of some of the most inspirational women working at all levels of tech

Devon Young is a senior experience designer with over twenty years’ experience designing for humans. She focuses on making tech and process accessible and relevant for people. She is also a people lead, a mentor and a career adviser. She not only excellent at design but also strategy, and building and nurturing talent.

What does the nominee consider to be her biggest achievement to date?

Devon has been the Design Lead at the Avanade Intelligent Garden which won both a Gold Medal and Best in Show for Construction (which included our technology). This technology is groundbreaking in our fight for sustainability and helping horticulturists, scientists and gardener's understand trees and help people save our urban trees which are critical to our environmental health and well-being.

This garden and the technology behind it has been highly lauded in the press with multiple appearances on the BBC - Newsround, as well as BBC Radio 2 and 4, and ITV Lorraine (Devon was in a live interview); The Times, Telegraph, France24, TechInformed, International Business Times, The Standard, The Herald, Microsoft (MSN) and Homes and Garden to name a few.

“Our garden designer - Tom Massey - said to me "Thank you for giving this programme to Devon, she had made all the difference," remarked Annette Giardina, UKI Innovation & Sustainability Lead at Avanada.

What is the most significant challenge the nominee has overcome?

Annette Giardina said: “I asked Devon to do something no one had done before - talk to trees - and use sensor driven data to understand the health and viability of each tree. BUT, I also asked for it to be responsible - additive AI not reductive; to be as sustainable as possible and to be creative and fun.”

To do this Devon had to assemble a team of horticulturists, scientists, sensor manufacturers, AI specialists, IoT specialists, UX designers and mobile app designers to see what was possible. In some cases, she had to commission the design and build of custom sensors to get us the information needed.

“She worked with our Green Software Foundation team to ensure that we wrote green code, she recruited scientists and horticulturist volunteers to help train the SLM to make it efficient. She had to deliver all of this in a very tight timeframe to launch at a highly public event - featured every night on the BBC, visited by 155,000 people, dignitaries, politicians, celebrities and most importantly horticulturists. The reception was overwhelming with people of all ages connecting, with professional and amateur gardeners being excited and with great interest from those responsible for our urban trees and forests.”

Tell us something about the nominee that people would find surprising

She doesn't like public speaking or being filmed, which is somewhat difficult when you end up participating in multiple videos, on live TV and radio, and being interviewed by countless journalists.