I like making delightful things, be they websites, cocktails, on paper or gizmos; I've been doing that freelance for ages; previously, I was a Technical Consultant at Headshift | Dachis Group for 3½ years, and Director of Technology at openDemocracy.net & chinadialogue.net.
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.
Put simply, 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've been making things on the internet since 1999, and believe that extensive experience has given me practical skills allied with real world pragmatism.
I'm not good at making things pretty, but love working with visual designers. You can see a selection of my work 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 or Sinatra, Wordpress, HTML5/CSS3/JS, Raspberry Pi, Ansible, AWS or GCP. I also bloody love tequila.
I also run the Manhattans Project , an occasional cocktail bar popup and event consultancy, and opened and managed Every Cloud, a neighbourhood bar in Hackney.Architecting and developing the site for this large charity; including dev-ops, responsive and accessible design implementation, internationalisation, complex content migration, infrastructure consulting and integration with their activism platform.
User requirement gathering workshop and producing speculative design artefacts for internal communications.
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!
Support and class teaching for the Web Development bootcamp offered by RED Academy in London.
Development of a new site for a leading technology and branding agency.
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 Bacardi over a 2 month period to establish UX and User journeys for their home bartender app, Mixed. Once the app entered development, I worked with photographers to ensure every recipe (over 600!) was tested and photographed, and produced photo guides to common cocktail techniques.
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.