Employment
What I can do
- Run workshops with project stakeholders to agree, and get buy-in for, strategy, business requirements and user requirements.
- Design and clearly communicate great user experiences with task models, personas, sitemaps, wireframes and prototypes.
- Validate information architecture and user experience with card sorting and user testing, face-to-face or remotely.
- Run a programme of continuous improvement for clients using surveys and multivariate testing.
- Research and implement effective SEO strategies.
- Hand-code HTML5 / CSS3 templates accurately, providing a progressively enhanced experience across all browsers and devices.
- Think commercially, maximising the impact of clients’ budgets.
- Communicate effectively with clients up to board level.
- Be a positive and valued member of a multidisciplinary team.
- Recruit and nurture excellent team members.
- Talk tech with developers.
- Manage project scope and budget to protect profitability, while embracing change.
Search Consultant at Search Johnston
I help clients understand how their (potential) customers express what they are looking for, and how best to benefit from that insight.
User Experience Designer/Information Architect, 3Sixty
3Sixty is a Bristol-based digital creative agency using commercial thinking, technical know-how and design excellence to make a difference for their clients.
3Sixty specializes in the travel and financial sectors for clients including Bristol and Birmingham airport, Cofunds (the largest financial platform for IFAs in the UK), Bibby Financial Services (independent invoice discounters), Deutsche Bahn and Denplan (dental insurance provider, part of AXA PPP).
At 3Sixty, responsibilities include user experience research and design; front-end development and SEO excellence; quality; and finding and managing great freelancers.
Achievements
- Extending 3Sixty’s user experience offering from sitemaps and wireframes to the full UX lifecycle including running depth interviews, user tests; card sorts and running workshops; and creating mental models, task models and prototypes.
- Part of the team that doubled Bristol Airport’s website visits, increased car parking conversions by 3% and grew customer database by 800% in 5 years.
- Understanding, simplifying and validating complex information architecture and user experience of the Cofunds financial investment platform, working with the Cofunds team to plan a phased approach of achievable improvements.
- Running workshops with Denplan, bringing strong opinions together facilitating the creation of a shared strategic vision for the website.
- Developed a long-term strategy for recruiting excellent staff by enhancing the reputation of 3Sixty as a great place to work as well as creating a profile for existing staff, allowing them to create their own reputation as experts.
Project Manager, Outscope
Outscope was a young, dynamic and ambitious agency, offering its clients project-managed access to its offshore production unit based in Sri Lanka. Clients were able to buy a high quality outsourced product at a low price.
As a project manager responsibilites included business development, marketing, managing build and quality, as well as delivering projects on time and to budget.
Clients included Eclector and Duo Boots.
Freelance
Website design and build for small clients including Moulton, Emorsgate Seeds, VW world series and Motivation.
Project Manager, Open World
Open World was a global company with offices in Europe, Asia and the USA. We built more than 1,000 hotel websites, representing more than 5,000 hotels, attracting over 70 million visitors a year and generating $100million revenue per year.
Worked with high profile brands such as SRS-Worldhotels, SLH, InterContinental and Peninsula. Responsibilities included establishing and monitoring budgetary controls, establishing and monitoring schedules with other departments and developing specifications and full documentation.
Achievements
- Developed an online design scheduling tool, offering an overview of ongoing projects, using PHP and PostGreSQL. The web-based application was secure and had multiple access levels.
- Developed a process for scheduling and monitoring Flash tasks across all offices, using a standard bug tracking tool to log and push out updates to stakeholders. This proved invaluable to deliver Flash projects on time.
- Introduced usability to Open World in 2002. Two years later, no design went into production without passing a usability assessment.
- Developed a universal hotel booking engine interface in Flash which increased revenue for our hotel clients. The application was written in ActionScript 1 and was based on the Model-View-Presenter object oriented programming design pattern. It made extensive use of XML.
Web developer, Edge.be
While still at university, I worked at Edge.be, a Belgian web design firm, and learned to use Photoshop, HTML, CSS, ColdFusion and MS Access to design and build dynamic websites.