From Drawing Boards to Design Movements
On Alex's Design Journey
Alexander Lau, a seasoned design leader whose career has spanned industrial design, education, public service transformation, and now venture building, speaks to us about his design journey and ethos.
Blending candid reflections, years of hands-on experience, and a deep commitment to designing with - not just for - people, Alex may claim he's “just a practical guy” who doesn’t care much for design trends or awards, but we are convinced he’s one of the most thoughtful voices in the field.
Early curiosity
Alex’s journey into design started long before Singapore had a formal design education system. As a child in the 1970s, he was already fascinated by how things worked and looked before the word “design” was a part of his vocabulary. After giving up a place in business school at a local university, he discovered a design studies course in Australia, which was originally a foundation for architecture. This eventually led him to discover and transfer to a course in industrial design at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
Returning to Singapore in the early 1990s, Alex stepped into a local design scene that was still taking shape. He began his career at the Trade Development Board (now Enterprise Singapore), encouraging SMEs to tap into design for innovation, but he felt a strong disconnect: he was advocating for design but not practising it. He felt that he had no credibility in promoting design.
That realisation spurred him to take a leap into the private sector and later set up his own industrial design consultancy, where he worked on long-lasting, deeply functional projects from security systems to transport-related infrastructure.
Pioneering design in public service
After over a decade of running his own practice, Alex transitioned into education, where he redesigned the Design Thinking Curriculum to make it accessible to non-academic learners. Through his stint in education, he chanced upon a role in public service and dived in.
At the Public Service Division (PSD), he led a radical rethinking of how design and innovation could be integrated across government. He championed a model where agencies weren’t simply clients, but co-creators, bringing their teams and commitment to the table. His team’s approach shifted the focus from one-off consulting to building long-term design capabilities across the public sector, influencing major initiatives like the early development of ‘Moments of Life’, which eventually became LifeSG and cross-agency service integration.
Today, Alex is the Vice President of Venture Building at ST Engineering. His work continues to create tangible products and businesses and shape how institutions approach systems, services, and stakeholder engagement.
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Alex’s design ethos is rooted in empathy, practicality, and clarity of purpose. It is clear he abhors romanticising aesthetics or flashy design outputs. In fact, he’s vocal about distancing himself from what he calls “rubbish styling” - design that looks good but solves no real problem.
“I appreciate things that solve real problems that a lot of people can use. Design is about unlocking possibility and removing fear, not just making things pretty.”
He believes designers must engage directly with users and stakeholders, not just to “validate” a solution but to deeply understand the problem. He is also critical of frameworks that are blindly followed and prefers a more “rojak” approach, pulling in the right tools from various disciplines (design thinking, systems thinking, behavioural insights) depending on the context.
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One of Alex’s biggest turning points came when he joined the Public Service Division (PSD). Instead of positioning design as something done to agencies, he flipped the model: design would only happen with them. His team required agencies to commit real people, real projects, and real skin in the game.
“We’re not experts in your field. We help uncover the real problem, but it’s your people who will solve it.”
This shift created not only better outcomes but also stronger ownership and capability across the public sector. It wasn’t about one team doing five polished but unimplemented projects a year. It was about enabling 20+ cross-agency collaborations where insights led directly to action. As he puts it, his team went from being “consultants” to “co-creators.”
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One of the most well-known projects that Alex’s team worked on was the early groundwork for what eventually became LifeSG, the one-stop platform for government services. It started with a simple (but radical) idea: could we bundle government touchpoints around real-life moments, from cradle to grave?
Alex and his team did not start with an app. They started with stories, including citizen interviews, stakeholder workshops, and deep listening. He insisted that senior leaders attend interviews themselves, not just receive reports.
“When the big boss sits in on a citizen interview, they don’t need a slide deck. They hear the insight. They feel the friction.”
That emotional and experiential buy-in helped move things forward. The first MVP to simplify baby registration and baby bonus payouts was successful. However, Alex also cautions about the dangers of chasing success too fast. Subsequent efforts became fragmented, with different clusters and agencies pushing out disconnected services under the same “Moments of Life” branding.
“The tech is there. What’s missing is courage, alignment, and stewardship across the system.”
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Alex is candid about what it takes to grow as a designer:
Lose the ego: Great design isn’t about being the “best designer” in the room. It’s about listening, letting go, and doing what works.
Stay grounded in purpose: Ask why you’re designing something. If the answer is “to make it look nice,” you’ve already failed.
To younger designers feeling disillusioned or unseen in a competitive, noisy landscape, he offers this:
“Unlock yourself. Sometimes people just need permission to try. Once they see it works, they’ll want to keep going.”
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When asked whether the public service is aware of the polarities it sits in and how well these are managed, Alex does not shy away from nuance.
“There are too many polarities, like hiring foreigners and developing local talent, maintaining land prices and ensuring affordable housing, HDB lease decay and the well-being of elderly homeowners. Whether they are well managed or not is anybody’s guess.”
Still, he believes individuals within the system can make a difference.
“As a public officer, the key is to keep driving real citizen-centricity in all our work, and influencing bosses to adopt a similar mindset—not just in words or thoughts, but through action. Engage real people on the ground and don’t take short cuts by interviewing/observing colleagues, friends or relatives just because they are citizens too. Be guided by the real problem to solve, and not be distracted by symptoms or quick fixes.”
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Given the breadth of his contributions, it’s natural to wonder: would Alex have done anything differently?
“I think it would have been good if I had worked under a mentor to guide me early in my career, instead of figuring things out the hard way. It may also have sent me down a very different trajectory.”
He recalls a quote by Jack Ma: At the beginning of our career, we should aim to learn from a good boss and not worry too much about the company.
“That was also a polarity,” Alex reflects. “Learning from others and learning through hands-on experience.”
🙌 Big thanks to SDSG team Rachel Cheang, Brenda Tang, Sharon Tan for putting together the article!
