A small selection of my work from the past few decades…
There's a lot to showcase, so here are just a few select projects discussing Design Systems and Foundations, Content Management Creation, Researching and Designing for new and non-traditional interfaces, and the perfect Design Process.
ELEKTA:
DESIGN SYSTEMS AND FOUNDATIONS
Helping clinicians treat more cancer patients with increased quality, precision and speed.
Elekta turned the experimental treatment of cancer with radiation - radiotherapy - on its head with the invention of the Gamma Knife in 1972. Now as it moves into the 21st century it’s entering a new, digital transformation, with the marriage of software and hardware instrumental to its future - and the future of cancer treatment across the world.
I joined Elekta in January of 2021 at the very start of the transformation process. My role was to lead a new UX team of eight members - across four continents and five timezones -and to develop the UX/Design processes whilst also developing the new user interface for an entirely new line of product - the first integrated MRI-Linac (Linear Accelerator) with protocol driven treatment methods.
The power behind the new system is an integrated Treatment Session Manager suite of applications that enable a complete transformation of the clinician’s usual environment of multiple computers, monitors and input devices, by allowing for a process-driven software interface to be guided from a single machine, a single mouse and - when infrequently required - a keyboard for text input.
As this is a machine that administers radiation, the regulatory requirements are - as you can imagine - extremely rigid, and differ from territory to territory, so alongside the specific user requirements gathering phase, there is a huge amount of detailed investigation to be completed before work can even begin on a design in earnest.
Hardware and software has been subjected to rigorous usability testing - both as separate components but also from a Human Computer Interaction perspective and as we reach the final six months of development, the outcomes are already looking extremely positive; we’ve successfully managed to reduce patient to treatment time dramatically, whilst also rapidly increasing patient throughput through the simplification of our pre-treatment delivery interface design.
BT SPORT:
CONTENT MANAGEMENT & CREATION
Designing a technical and strategic transition.
When BT Sport launched in 2013 it was to be the spearhead of an entirely new business arm for BT - but whilst the broadcast infrastructure and technology used to deliver the UltraHD sport channels was state-of-the-art, the website publishing architecture that was present to support it was not.
BT was stuck on an old content management system and with display ads taking prominent space within an old ‘portal-like’ architecture left over from its legacy Yahoo! days.
Jump forward several years later and with billions of pounds invested, the already-creaky CMS was in dire need of an update to reflect the wealth of product on offer.
The first piece of work undertaken was an extensive piece of Investigation & Discovery.
Qualitative and quantitative research was conducted with customers using a variety of methods; looking into everything from their expectations of a BT homepage right through to their opinion of video-based editorial within BT Sports’ various touch-points across the BT ecosystem.
One of the largest problems encountered by our audience was the apparent confusion brought about by the inclusion of display advertising across the entire BT real estate - and especially within the homepage. This led to a wealth of - healthy - discussion across the business as we sought to collectively calculate the impact the removal of such a stream of obvious revenue would bring.
Whilst we would continue to design with advertising in mind within the BT Sport specific pages, an early decision was made to remove all advertising from the BT Homepage and this became the first piece of real-estate to get the new CMS treatment (Adobe Experience Manager).
World class data delivery for a world leading service.
ROYAL ENFIELD:
RESEARCH & DESIGN FOR NEW & NON-TRADITIONAL INTERFACES
Developing new interactions for a new breed of motorcycles - whilst maintaining support for the old guard.
BBC:
THE PERFECT DESIGN PROCESS
A Flagship Homepage Redesign Project
Redesigning an icon for a new age.
In setting out to redesign the BBCi homepage we knew that we were tackling a hard task. Many people use and love the homepage, so we know that any changes we make will evoke a strong reaction.
We needed to balance the needs of these users with the needs of our own business. We needed to satisfy a large number of people with a range of different objectives, both inside and outside the BBC.
Any solution requires us to make decisions, but we made informed choices to ensure a sensitive evolution of the page. We wanted to make a clear step change with the design of the page without alienating the users.
To begin with we looked at the way people use the current page using click-throughs and the way they feel about it through emotional response testing. We looked at how people build up relationships with the services and objects they use on a daily basis.
This helped us address the issues we saw in all elements of the homepage, including the main story. Throughout the process, we benefited from continual user testing and internal feedback.
"The resulting page felt familiar to our existing users, but through digital patina, balanced design and excellent functionality, we also believed that we gave it soul"
