Hi! I'm Michael, a freelance digital design consultant working in the fields of interaction design and user experience. I specialise in user interface and application design for web and mobile devices, but love to work with all things digital.
Working both in-house and for design agencies, I have over fifteen years of experience in the industry and offer design team management as well as more hands-on design services.
With a formal education in Product Design, I was fortunate to gain an amazing grounding in design, not only from a creative perspective, but also a commercial one as well. For me, the success of any product or service lies with finding the right balance between the two; combining aesthetic beauty and ease of use with the realities of commercial viability.
I believe design should be an evidence based process built on good up-front research, followed by testing and iteration throughout the design phase and then continual measurement post release.
"Good design doesn't stem from intuition, talent, or luck (although I'll take a smidgen of each). It comes from research and understanding." — Mike Monterio, co-founder and design director of Mule Design
I'm also a big advocate of making digital products and services that are accessible to all. When done well, they can play a large part in the lives of those with physical and cognitive disabilities, offering the opportunity for greater independence and social equality. Something, I think, that's worthwhile doing.
With the convenience of mobile banking increasingly driving its use, making certain the mobile banking app delivered a great customer experience was becoming even more essential for RBS.
Creating a five star banking app experience
With over 10 million customers now coming through internet banking's doors, more services coming online and a growing use of touchscreen devices, internet banking was in need of a spring clean.
Internet banking responsive site redesign
Following on from the success of its new website (awarded 'Best Web Design' at Auto Trader Click Awards 2013), Mazda turned its sights on delivering a more immersive and multi-channel experience for its car configurator.
Interested in how I like to tackle design problems? You can read about my design process in detail here.
I've worked on projects with companies both large and small, across a variety of business sectors including financial services, telecommunications and retail. Some of them include:
Not the be-all and end-all, but its nice to receive the recognition of your industry peers once in a while! I've been lucky enough to pick up a couple of awards:
Have a project or role you'd like to discuss? Just drop us an email or give us a call.
If you need to pass on my details to a colleague, you'll find my CV below. Alternatively, just share my LinkedIn profile. It has all my details!