A designer’s impact is limited by how much influence they have on the team around them. You can uncover valuable insights, but if you can’t frame those in the correct way to convince your team to act on them, they’re not so valuable. It’s easy to get fixated on design…

Mistakes were made but here’s what I learned — Late last year, I moved from a role as an individual contributor into a new job as a people manager. I have made a lot of mistakes in a short space of time which, of course, also means I have learned a lot. Based on a talk I gave at…

I used to tell my colleagues that if they wanted to make money, there were many easier ways to do it than drug research. How wrong could I have been! In business as in science, it seems that you are often most successful in achieving something when you are trying…

If you want a concept to stick, give it a name. With objects, we can see them and touch them. A cushion is a cushion. But concepts can be abstract and hard to discuss. In the ‘User Experience Team of One’, Leah Buley discusses ‘listening tours’ as an activity to…

Out of all the reading, watching, listening I’ve done to people in the design industry over the last year, this Paul Adams talk from UX London has been the one that’s altered my perspective the most. You should watch it or read the summary on the Intercom blog, here. Here…

I used to be a slave to the chocolate overlords. In my old job, every day at 3pm, I’d make a quick coffee. We had a Nespresso machine at my office, so when I started making my coffee I’d have a few seconds to kill. I would open a drawer right above the machine and grab a mini chocolate bar…

As I’ve worked in design, my focus has moved from the practice of design work and “nitpixeling” (thanks for this word Jon Moore) to focusing on the bigger picture. By the bigger picture I don’t just mean company objectives, or working with the executives. I’m talking about the team I’m…

15 years ago, I made two major choices before I went to school in the mornings. I picked what cereal I would have (how good were Ricicles?), then sifted through my CD collection before popping one into my Discman for the day.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been writing a couple of Medium articles and putting together some content for a new eBook that I’ve been creating called ‘UX on a Budget: The Practical Guide’. I’m pleased to say the eBook is now ready to go :) I’ve made the book free for the first week, and after that I’ll charge a small amount which I then hope to re-invest into creating the next book in the series (pay for illustrations etc).