Photograph by Tamlyn Rhodes

I design sites and web apps that keep out of the way and let you get the job done. You might call me an interaction designer or a user experience consultant or a usability professional... I'm not sure myself.
More about me.

Blog

Looking for bad user experience? I go DirectGov. 17 Jun

I’ve just moved home and so needed to update the address on my driving license. “Do it online – do it quicker,” says the DVLA website. Well all right, I reply. How naive of me.

Mixtape vol. 11 – “A Few Old Tunes” 2 Apr

A fairly haphazard selection of some of the interesting tracks that I have “bookmarked” and put aside over the past few years.

Designing a better payslip 8 Oct

You know there’s something seriously wrong when your payslip is three pages long and comes with a two page explanatory leaflet. Payslips are often pretty cryptic but the one I received today was so bad it took me over half an hour to work it out. All I really care about is how much have I earned, how much am I getting and, most importantly, where did the rest go?

The only way I could decipher this mess was to draw a kind of bar chart and fill in the numbers. Once I finished I realised that I had inadvertently created a hugely more readable representation of the information contained in the payslip. So here’s a copy of the original payslip and my effort at an improved version.

csv2json: Convert CSV to JSON 18 Jun

I needed to convert some comma-separated data into JSON for a JavaScript project I’m working on. Surprisingly I couldn’t find anything online to do it so I knocked up this script. Hope someone finds it useful.

How @trendingtopics works 5 Jun

I made the @trendingtopics Twitter bot to keep me and others up to date on the (often) interesting topics that are being discussed most across the Twitterverse. This is a slightly technical explanation of how it all works.

Enabling multitouch on Synaptics trackpads 4 Jun

I’ve just discovered that my laptop touch pad has multitouch, it just needed to be enabled! There are two parts to this process and it will take a few minutes but it’s well worth it in my opinion.

Mixtape vol. 10 – “Christopher Hogwood” Edition 29 Apr

This mix starts off a bit electropop then veers off into indie and other good stuff.

The abuse of terror: a letter to my MP 2 Apr

I just wrote a letter to my MP and thought it would be worth sharing here.

Problem: accessing frame URLs across domains 30 Mar

I’ve got a problem and I need some help. I’m building a semantic webby type thing where the web page you are viewing will be augmented with a menu showing other relevant info gathered from elsewhere using a clever algorithm which is already built. 

The west side story 9 Mar

I’m sitting in a bungalow near a babbling creek surrounded by lush, green fields lined with evergreen oaks and nestled amongst rolling, tree-covered hills. This is California and I love it!

At least, this is part of California at a particularly wet time of year. I’m told that for most of the year the creek dries up, the grass dies back and there’s dust everywhere. But right now, where I’m staying in Dry Creek about 10 miles north of Santa Rosa, it’s really beautiful.

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Twitter

  • In Sainsburys, overweight little girl, hands and face pressed up against the glass of the deli counter, staring at the roast chickens. - 30 Jul, 09:51
  • Linux is starting to get good. Installed Ubuntu 10.04 on new Acer Revo nettop and only had to resort to forums for help on two issues. - 28 Jul, 19:22
  • Man jailed for 5 years for obtaining £1m by deception. bit.ly/9jNJI9 £200k/year seems like quite a good deal to me. - 27 Jul, 17:32
More Twitter.

Photos

Your friends like you as much as a single Pringle crisp 26 Jun

Your friends like you as much as a single Pringle crisp

Improving cooker usability (rack on) 22 Jun

Improving cooker usability (rack on)

Description.

Improving cooker usability 22 Jun

Improving cooker usability

The cooker in my new flat is ridiculous. It's as if the designers tried to put the controls in the least logical order possible. Spurred on by this blog post I decided to do something about it.

It works very well as a band-aid solution, even with the rack on.

And don't worry about using permanent marker on your cooker: cookers make excellent whiteboards.

"It wasn't very good but it came in this great box" 17 Jun

"It wasn't very good but it came in this great box"

Chillin on the roof 5 May

Chillin on the roof

Obstructed signage 19 Apr

Obstructed signage

This photo is taken from eye level.

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