I like making delightful things, be they websites, cocktails, on paper or gizmos; I've been doing that freelance for ages. I cut my teeth as a Technical Consultant at Headshift | Dachis Group for 3½ years, and Director of Technology at openDemocracy.net & chinadialogue.net before that.
As a freelancer, I love to work with startups, agencies, consultancies and established companies. I don't put a lot of stock in job titles, but I've been called a UX designer, Information Architect, full stack developer, UX developer and creative technologist.
With an academic background in psychology, community management + maintenance, and user experience - plus decades of experience in technical implementations, I'm great at making things work on the internet — technically and always rooted in the user's needs. I can help you with:
I'm not good at making things pretty, but love working with visual designers. You can see a selection of my work over the last decade below.
If you're working on something and you'd like me to be involved, drop me a note at [email protected]
TLDR; I make nice things, I like using Python, Ruby with Rails, Wordpress, HTML5/CSS3/JS and Raspberry Pi. I'm comfortable with AWS or GCP and other cloud platforms, and have experience with a lot of devops tooling. I bloody love a good cocktail.
I also run the Manhattans Project , a mail order cocktail business, and opened and managed Every Cloud, a neighbourhood bar in Hackney ranked 322 in the World's Top 500 bars. Currently I live in Margate and own and run Daisy, a restaurant and cocktail bar in Cliftonville, Margate.Short notice redevelopment of static site with over 50,000 pages to support company acquisition and reimplement functionality from dynamic Adobe CMS to work on static site files - including extensive SEO requirements, content and asset migration scripts and managing developers to reimplement core and vendor Javascript functionality. I was also heavily involved in stakeholder management and requirement gathering throughout the process.
Development and ongoing support of new public site including extensive custom built integrations with Salesforce API as editorial workflow into Wordpress, requirement gathering and implementation.
Architecting and developing the site for this large charity; including devops, responsive and accessible design implementation, internationalisation, complex content migration, infrastructure consulting and integration with their activism platforms. Extensive data analysis and microsite/project development over the COVID-19 period.
Launched a 'Cocktails By Post' brand over the period of lockdowns, delivering over 18,000 cocktails to guests across the UK, relaunched as a RTD canned cocktail brand in 2024.
Opened Daisy, a cocktail bar & restaurant in Margate serving modern cocktails and bar food overlooking the sea in Margate.
Feature development in Rails and React component work including payment processing and authentication user flows for an active and extensive online learning platform - this work was in the early stages of the COVID lockdown and the scope and scale was significantly extended due to this.
Development and retained maintenance of projects and main site for doteveryone, a charity focussing on digital literacy, ethics and policy.
Opened and worked as managing partner at successful Hackney bar, Every Cloud. We recieved a large number of accolades and were extremely well reviewed, as well as being both profitable and the first date location for several married couples! The bar was ranked 322 in the World Top 500 Bars.
UX and development for a bespoke Rails application for a public sector organisation working with sensitive data and non-expert users to upload resources and undertake an extensive accreditation process.
User Experience strategy and design pattern consulting for a large technology company launching a new product and product category. Experience design for a competition using the new product with content creators.
Extensive Rails and Ruby work on a number of client sites, ranging from copy updates to functionality rebuilds, and managing infrastructure using Heroku.
UX design and implementation of the Lloyd’s of London Annual Report 2014, using Jekyll, Grunt, SCSS and other modern web development tools. We worked closely with Pentagram who provided visual design direction.
Extensive experience design and user experience for a large luxury brand exhibition and accompanying iOS app. The work involved extensive user journeys feeding into wireframes and prototypes, as well as mapping visitor flow in the physical space and the user experience for interactive exhibits.
I was invited to join the Stellar Development Network project as a Creative Technologist, and enjoyed learning from experienced practitioners in writing, game design and experience design. Our group built a prototype for Sutton House in Hackney, using the Raspberry Pi and small FM transmitters to provide the experience of being a ghost, eavesdropping on conversations that had happened through the history of the house.
As a teacher at General Assembly in London, I've taught several courses in front-end development; ranging from their 10 week evening course through to the Programming For Non Programmers course, and recently the UX Immersive students, with a special focus on using HTML/CSS for building prototypes and wireframing.
I worked with Hide & Seek & Yahoo on a project for the launch of the film 'World War Z'. We developed a game that tested a users ability to survive in the event of a global catastrophe, and had over half a million players over the two week promotional period it was live (across 6 different regional Yahoo sites). Stats were collected and used to generate a number of infographics for marketing purposes.
Hide & Seek had an engagement with the Gaite Lyrique in Paris, and I build the backend and interface for the final game of a series, a touchscreen panel and the 'brain' of the building, generating and producing an artefact based on their performance in other games, and integrated with several internal APIs. The exhibition and 'The Building is...' series of games were very well recieved.
In a similar role to The Amazings, I worked with Platter to help develop the product concept and understand how success was being measured and actioned. I managed an offshored development team to build iOS and Android apps which integrated with a Ruby on Rails application and API I developed.
I worked with The Amazings to help take their initial, MVP style platform to a more mature Ruby on Rails based system that allowed them to understand users better, test their content effectively and manage their content much more effectively.
I worked with LonelyLeap initially to help them engage with their new website needs, leading workshops and producing a series of recommendations. I was then able to work with their design team on the basis of wireframes I produced, and worked on the project to completion and launch of the site.
I have worked with a number of large and small agencies on pitches and projects; from helping out at the ideation stage, to UX and IA designing, and planning releases and campaigns.