Lived Reality was created to help organisations understand how systems, products, and decisions are actually experienced in real life.

We work with a diverse range of lived experience. Our particular expertise lies in centring lived experience from outside the “average user”, including neurodivergent and disabled people, to generate insight that supports safer, more human systems.

Much of what is designed today is built around an imagined “average user”. In reality, many people live outside those assumptions. Neurodivergent and disabled people, people with trauma histories, and others with atypical journeys are often the first to encounter exclusion or harm. Their experiences reveal where systems break down.

Lived Reality works with people who hold this lived expertise and translates their experience into practical insight organisations can act on. This is not therapy or market research, but facilitated listening, qualitative synthesis, and experience mapping, conducted with care and consent.

The practice is grounded in trauma-informed and neurodiversity-aware approaches, with a focus on edge-case users, complex journeys, and realities that are often overlooked.

About the founder

Lived Reality is led by Eleanor, a lived-experience insight consultant with a creative and entrepreneurial background in youth insight, digital strategy, and peer support work.

As a teenager, Eleanor worked with national & international organisations on lived experience youth insight research. More recently, her work has focused on trauma-informed practice, neurodiversity, and understanding how systems are experienced by people outside the “average user” model.

She brings both professional experience and lived expertise to her work, with a particular interest in healthcare, public services, creative and emerging sectors.