Hello. I'm Rich. I make websites and other digital products. I tend not to do it all myself though, so mainly I concentrate on user research, information architecture, user experience design, visual design and prototyping.
Skills & Experience
I'm currently a Senior User Experience Manager at the price comparison site MoneySuperMarket.com. I lead a team of UX and UI designers along with prototypers to build customer centric, innovative, data driven digital products across the MoneySuperMarket domain. Prior to that I was Head of Interactive for award winning digital agency KMP Digitata based near Manchester. Before that I was a lead front-end developer working in the UK and Australia. For a full breakdown of my employment history, see my LinkedIn profile.
My role involves working with a team of analysts, researchers, designers and developers to create innovative, effective digital solutions for our products. We then work closely with the technology teams to ensure the experience is just as we've envisaged in a lean, test and learn agile environment. Part of the process involves facilitation of workshops and design sprints and being an advocate for Lean methodologies and design thinking across the business.
Key skills include:
- Agile working
- CSS3
- Competitor Analysis
- Data Analysis
- Design Sprints
- Responsive design
- Heuristic Evaluations
- HTML5
- Idea generation
- Information Architecture
- Mental Models
- Mentoring
- Pitching
- Planning
- Product Management
- Project Management
- Prototyping (paper based or interactive)
- Requirements gathering
- Sass
- Sketching
- Stakeholder and user interviews
- Storyboarding
- Task Models
- Usability Testing
- User Journeys
- User Research
- Version Control (Subversion SVN)
- Visual design
- Wireframing
- Workshop facilitation
Clients
I've worked with numerous brands since starting to design and build stuff for the web in 1998. Some of them (in alphabetical order) are listed below.
- Aberdeen Airport
- Airportr
- American Express
- AMS Neve
- Asda
- Best & Less (Australia)
- Big W (Australia)
- British Gas
- Carrier (part of Kuoni)
- Chester Zoo
- Dimension Studios (Australia)
- Football Pools
- Home Decor
- Humberside Airport
- IMI Cornelius
- Lakeland
- Littlewoods (now very.co.uk)
- Makro
- Manchester Airports Group
- Miller Insurance Services
- Milligan Retail
- MoneySuperMarket
- National Archives
- Natural Retreats
- Nokia
- NUS
- Shearings Holidays
- Stanley Casinos
- Sue Ryder
- Tensar International
- The Family Adventure Company
- TravelSuperMarket
- Trek America (TUI group)
- United Utilities
- White Young Green
- Woolworths (Australia)
- WWARN
Awards
- Best Agency, Big Chip Awards 2014 - KMP Digitata
- Best Travel Website, The Travel Marketing Awards - carrier.co.uk
- Marketing Society Northern Awards “Best Low Budget Campaign” – TrekAmerica Ultimate Road trip
- TravelMole Awards “Best use of Social Media” – TrekAmerica Live
Side projects
Because I'm a glutten for punishment, I like to keep myself busy on the side by working on these;
HTML5 Doctor
I'm the editor-in-chief of HTML5 Doctor. Along with six others, I've been writing detailed articles on HTML5 since a meet up in 2009. We have grown to become one of the leading websites related to HTML5 development.
HTML5 Gallery
Prior to HTML5 Doctor, I started curating HTML5 Gallery. The first showcase of it's kind to feature sites built with HTML5. I now co-curator the site with several other curators who generously donate their time to help.
Speak the Web
In early 2010, Dan & I put on a series of gig like mini web conferences. Situated in bars in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield the nights were extremely successful with all four selling out. Profits were donated to local charities which totalled over £1500.
Recently Dan and Richard ran another series of Speak the Web which I wasn't involved in but there's more to come here.
Writing & Publications
Books
I'm co-author of Beginning HTML5 and CSS3: The Web Evolved, published by Apress. I wrote five chapters of the book and edited another two. It has been well received and is now on a number of university reading lists.
Visit The Web EvolvedMagazines
Until May 2013, along with Bruce Lawson, I wrote the HTML5 Gallery column for net magazine. Some of those columns have been turned into larger articles for Creative Bloq.
I've also written several tutorials and features on HTML5 and CSS for net magazine, both the print version and online:
- The developer's guide to the HTML5 APIs - Jan 2012
- Discover the power of CSS3 selectors - first appeared in .net magazine, July 2011
- HTML5 - New ways to enhance your forms - first appeared in .net magazine, May 2012 (Currently not available online)
Online
As well as those articles for .net magazine and Creative Bloq, I've written a whole host of articles for one of my side projects, HTML5 Doctor.
I've also written a little about the design sprint process we use at MoneySuperMarket and it's evolution on Medium, which is a write up of a talk I gave at UX Cubed in Liverpool in June 2016.
In 2012, I was invited by Alex Duloz to be part of the Pastry Box Project. I wrote a thought per month throughout the year which you can read in the archives on the Pastry Box site.
Speaking
Although it's not something I do very often, I have given several guest lectures at Manchester Metropolitan University and run several HTML5 workshops for Technique Tech Days in Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle.
UX Cubed
In June 2016, I gave a talk at UX Cubed in Livepool, an event set up and run by the Shop Direct UX team along with NUX and Forward Role. The talk focused on how we use the design sprint process and MoneySuperMarket and some of the things we've learnt along the way. You can see a video of the talk on the UX Cubed site. I've written up the talk on Medium and the slides are available on Speakerdeck.
Camp Digital 2014
For Camp Digital 2014, run by Sigma, I gave a talk about HTML5 APIs and context. It was focussed around how we can use some of the new device APIs to provide a better user experience. You can find my slides on Speakerdeck. There is also a video of the talk available (the sound isn't great though I'm afraid). I also took part in a panel discussion towards the end of the conference for which there is a video available.
Contact
Call me on +44 (0)7799 888 568 or…