About

I am a freelance designer, originally from Edinburgh, but now living and working in Hertfordshire, England. I commonly call myself a Web designer, though recently I’ve found that job title doesn’t tell the whole story. Designing, building and promoting Web sites is a big part of what I do; however I concentrate on the thinking and planning that happens before any graphics are produced or any code is cut.

I specialise in user-experience design for the Web. My job is to help organisations use the internet effectively to improve their business. I do that by helping them set clear, measurable goals – then find, research, understand and satisfy their customers.

This page is about me personally, so if you’re less interested in my life-story and more interested in what I can do for you, please see the Work page for examples (ps – I won’t take offence if you do).

Skills

Work history

From Mid-2007 to date I have been working as a freelancer, and I am also a founding member of Tactic Group, a Web research, design and marketing agency serving the adventure sports industry worldwide (formed 2007).

Senior consultant at CGI Group (Europe) Ltd.

Projects: Connected Cumbria, Contact Eden, About Me Now, CSIA Risk Assessment Tool.
Dates: 08/2005 to 06/2007.
Working in a medium sized software development team specialising in government ICT solutions. As lead user-experience and interface designer I was responsible for ensuring highly useable and accessible products for local councils and government agencies.

Consultant at CGI Group (Atlantic)

Projects: Connected Cumbria Information Hub (Stage 1).
Dates: 01/2005 to 07/2005.
In this position I was responsible for interface design and website accessibility auditing for a muilti-agency transformational government project. My main responsibility was to create an identity and set of interface standards for a countywide information portal for citizens and businesses in Cumbria.

South Bedfordshire District Council – with Lorien Consulting PLC

Projects:Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) statement 3.
Dates: 11/2004 – 12/2004.
In this short-term contract I was responsible for researching and editing the annual report to central government on the council’s progress towards national targets for electronic service delivery. The report was successfully submitted and helped the council bid for additional funding from government to accelerate their development plans.

Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council

Projects: Local authority Websites (LAWs) National Project.
Dates: 05/2003 to 08/2004.
As a member of the Starter Kit workstream I co-ordinated the development and review of generic web-content resources based on the nationally recognised list of UK local authority services – the Local Government Services List (LGSL).

Porism Ltd. and Improvement & Development Agency (IDeA)

Projects: ESD-Toolkit.
Dates: 09/2002 to 04/2003.
I was employed in a user support role for the esd-toolkit project to maintain the LGSL through submissions from users. I was also responsible for developing the user-community area of the esd-toolkit website and assisted users with operational and strategic queries relating to the esd-toolkit and transformational government development.

Local Government Computer Services Board (Dublin) & European Commission

Projects: Key Elements for European Local Authority Networks (KEELAN) Project.
Dates: 02/2002 to 08/2002.
The KeELAN Project studied and compared ICT usage and e-Government in the (then), fifteen member states of the European Union. I was responsible for a comparative study of ninety UK local authority websites for e-Government maturity, feeding the results back to the project board as part of an EU-wide benchmarking exercise.