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Wiiv
I co-founded and designed this startup service for keeping track of files & projects across the cloud.
My responsibilities span every aspect of Wiiv that doesn't involve writing code: leading a team of five, strategic analysis, brand development, customer research, customer development, competitor analysis, information architecture, interaction design, visual design, video production, marketing strategy and copywriting
2012-2013
Branding, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Recce
I spent much of my time from October 2011 to May 2012 consulting to former Google Director of Engineering, Rian Liebenberg, and his team at eeGeo on their 3D map platform project, Recce.
I led the design strategy, working with the product team to identify a product and brand strategy, conducting primary research with target users to validate our hypotheses, and designing prototype versions of the mapping service.
Recce launched in July 2012 to much acclaim, with rave reviews in TechCrunch, Engadget and other leading blogs. It averages a rating of 4.5/5 on the App Store itself.
Visual design and build of the iOS app is by Midoki.com. All other featured work is by me: product strategy, customer research, website/app UX prototyping and website visual design.
2011-2012
Information Architecture, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Weaver Digital
When I decided to refresh the brand and website of my consultancy, Weaver Digital, I wanted to differentiate Weaver strongly from the competition while communicating our brand values of simplicity, clear communication, insight and honesty.
At the same time, the website needed to work excellently across mobile, tablet and desktop, and also had to work for us from an SEO perspective.
An email newsletter with matching styling, announcing the new site, proved to be a massive hit: I must have received 20-30 enthusiastic replies, which is a rarity indeed for an email marketing campaign!
2012
Copywriting, Graphic Design, Interaction Design
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Vanishing Sail
I helped to turn around a failing Kickstarter campaign for social interest documentary project Vanishing Sail.
My role was as social media strategist, content planner and creative director.
2013
Art Direction, Copywriting, Information Architecture
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Noddle
I researched and designed Noddle, an innovative consumer-facing credit report service that grew to over 200,000 registered users in its first 14 months. Noddle has been praised highly by customers for both its power and ease of use.
Working closely with the Noddle team at all times, I was responsible for a broad range of strategic, research and design tasks:
• strategic analysis
• customer interviews
• competitor & best practice analysis
• information architecture
• interaction design
• visual design (working with a third-party branding agency)
• photo shoot art direction
• copywriting
2011-2012
Information Architecture, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Language City
Language City was an educational game project that aimed to turn learning English into a Cityville-style game experience.
I advised on UX strategy, conducted user interviews and designed the UI for the core language learning experience.
Sadly, the project was shelved during beta launch for reasons unknown to me.
2011
Information Architecture, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Columba Systems
Columba Systems‘ financial events calendaring business had run way ahead of its website and brand identity when they called me in. I lead my Weaver team to create a clean yet atmospheric new look for Columba that their corporate clients can relate too and trust while still feeling Columba’s disruptively innovative edge.
The larger part of Weaver’s work with Columba was a root and branch redesign of their flagship product, Catalyst Calendar . With thousands of daily financial events happening across the world and a massively complex set of data filtering requirements, it was a formidable UI design challenge.
Weaver also created a white label version of Catalyst Calendar for one of Columba's international banking customers.
Weaver worked closely with the client at all times, ensuring that the client's comprehensive specialist sector knowledge could inform the design process as efficiently as possible.
2010-2011
Branding, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Over The Air
A rebranding project for mobile hacking event Over The Air.
The client wanted a simple, playful yet impactful logo that captured the energy and experimentation of the event itself.
I realised that I could combine various symbolisms in a single icon:
• the classic mobile signal icon
• a rainbow (as in, “over the rainbow” and the pot of gold at the end of it)
• completing the circle (the alchemy of the Hack)
• a guardian angel, for the unconditional love of creating new stuff to make the world a better place
The logo had to work well in dark and light versions.
Everyone involved immediately loved my finished logo design, and it was promptly rolled out across digital and physical brand channels (website, social media, stickers, cushions etc).
2011
Branding, Graphic Design, Icon Design
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PeerIndex
I was tasked by PeerIndex to re-imagine their core experience in order to make it more immersive and engaging.
The result was the PeerIndex Tracker — a module that would enable the user to measure and compare diverse aspects of their social media reputation, and which could be surfaced within multiple contexts across the website.
In the end, though (long after my consultancy engagement ended) PeerIndex took a whole new direction with Peer Perks and the PeerIndex Tracker was shelved.
2011
Information Architecture, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Radiation infographic
I have longstanding ties to Japan, and when the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami occurred in 2011, I wanted to do what I could to help the Japanese people.
The incidents at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex gave rise to much fear in Japan and beyond around the possible effects of radiation exposure.
In response, Randall Munroe published a visualisation of the known effects of various doses of radiation on the human body: http://xkcd.com/radiation/
I felt there was an opportunity to reframe the same information on a more human scale, by visualising radiation as a physical volume in relation to a human being. My hope is that what is rather scary information thereby becomes more emotionally intelligible.
I planned the project content and directed and project managed a designer and a developer.
2011
Art Direction, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Elastik Mobile
I co-founded Elastik Mobile with creative technologist Ian Kynnersley in 2009. We spent the next year developing an iOS app platform called Artful Culture, which we leveraged to deliver a number of own-brand and white labelled apps that centred around art and photography discovery.
2009-2010
Art Direction, Interaction Design, Photography
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DFJ Esprit
DFJ Esprit asked me to refresh their brand identity and website.
Rather than radical innovation, what was called for here was brand-appropriate visual design, sector best practice interaction design patterns and an easy to manage CMS system.
I creative directed and project managed a team of designers and a developer to deliver the project.
2011
Branding, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Vodafone Betavine
I headed up the UX strategy, research and design and brand development for Vodafone Group R&D's Betavine Social Exchange mobile developer community project.
I grew a team of six over a period of two years as the client entrusted my consultancy, Weaver, with an increasingly broad remit.
BSX was a wide-ranging and massively ambitious project, for strategic reasons, since became the somewhat more conventional developer.vodafone.net.
2008-2009
Information Architecture, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Vodafone feature phone project
Vodafone Group R&D asked me to visualise UI concepts for a feature phone project they were trialling in a developing world country.
The pixel resolution, colour depth and processor speeds of the basic feature phones the experience targeted were roughly equivalent to an 80s period home computer (think ZX Spectrum).
At the same time, my brief included some very specific cultural mores of the target market.
The above technical and cultural considerations provided me with an excellent set of creative constraints within which to work.
2009
Art Direction, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Blog Friends
My first startup, Blog Friends, was a Facebook application that helped users to find great blog posts—socially.
I was responsible for all aspects of strategy and design, and led a team of two others (developers).
Blog Friends grew to 27k users (including 13 of the world's Top 100 bloggers) within 8 months.
Sadly, our innovative fuzzy-filtering user experience proved to be unscalable from a technical perspective, and we were therefore forced to close the service.
2007-2008
Branding, Interaction Design, UI/UX
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Fashionspace
Fashionspace was a startup attempting to meld the best of MySpace and Net a Porter into a socially-enabled retail platform for fashion designers, boutique owners and individuals.
I spent a month architecting and prototyping a v2 of their site — that in the end was sadly never built, due to lack of funds.
2008
Information Architecture, Interaction Design, UI/UX
