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Employment

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Everything Everywhere

Dec. 11 - present, User Experience Design Manager 

Jul. 11 - Dec. 11, Customer Experience Delivery Manager

Responsible for ensuring Everything Everywhere delivers to our customers the ultimate user experience across brands online. Focusing on improving customer satisfaction, acquisition, conversion and retention through continuous improvements and optimisation to their ecommerce experience. Scoping, plan and manage the delivery of online customer experience deliverables for projects delivered through the Online Directorate. Taking ownership from brief to live deployment and oversee its delivery at all stages.

  • Working with business stakeholders from across the business to define the online brief for tactical and transformational projects.
  • Manage online relationships and the wider business for the delivery of all agreed project briefs.
  • Size the work required by business briefs that include customer exerience deliverables.
  • Plan and prioritise work for the internal customer experience delivery team.
  • Oversee the internal delivery teams and/or external suppliers (where they will for own the delivery process and the relationship for that project) to define and sign off the solutions and deliverables.
  • Managing a significant virtual team to ensure delivery is efficient and high quality.
  • Fully responsible for presenting the proposed customer experience solutions back to business stakeholders and gaining their sign off.
  • Oversee and manage the integrity of deliverables through development and on to the live sites.
  • Evangelise quality and innovation in online customer deliverables with an understanding of multichannel retailing and eService landscape and contibute to the strategic development of those solutions.
  • Support the Head of Online Customer Experience by interfacing with wider business teams including multichannel customer experience teams, propositions, brand, marcomms and media teams to ensure the customer is always represented and the online is at the forefront of all developmental thinking.
  • Build relationships and influence strategic thinking in different business areas.

Launched as the parent company for Orange and T-Mobile. Market leader providing customers with great service, innovation and value.


ThoughtWorks

Mar. 11 - Jun. 11, User Experience Design and Developer 

  • Create lo fidelity wireframes to demonstrate ideas.
  • Create hi fidelity prototypes that can be used by the development teams to build the application.
  • Carry out user testing of prototypes.
  • Showcase progress on a daily basis to the Product Manager.
  • Work closely and showcase progress with the Product Manager to understand the vision for ThoughtWorks and to collaborate on a solution.

Global consultancy building custom applications through Agile and Lean practices and principles for clients from media through to banking and NGOs.


Gala Coral Group

Sept. 10 - Mar. 11, Core Development Manager, Group IT, Contractor 

Responsible for the management, development, performance and recruitment of teams in Core Services, Group IT. Core Services divides into three areas: Websites Development, Accounts & 3rd Party and Back-Office and works concurrently with Programme Group and Remote Gaming to support and maintain business relationships, expectations and deliverables. Management of the day-to-day activities, key responsibilities:

  • People
    • Leadership, mentor and inspire team’s performance, supporting their development plans and objectives.
    • To continuously support the organisation by recruiting highly talented and enthusiastic people.
  • Process
    • Quality assurance of requirements, development, testing and deployment.
    • Prepare for, chair and record meetings at project team meetings.
    • Provide an environment for significant product and system innovation and improvement.
    • Drive continuous improvement and innovations in all areas of the development life-cycle contributing to the best practices across all teams to support business regarding involvement, efficiency and quality.
  • Resource
    • Project initiation, scoping and estimation.
    • Identification and application of appropriate techniques to meet delivery.
    • Build and maintain flexible development capability in-line with the business and customers needs.
    • Create a clear and effective road-map and seamlessly integrate committed work with potential and future work.
  • Reports
    • Provide accurate project status reports.
    • Ensure targets and KPI's are met.
    • Risk and issues management, including timely escalation.
  • Financial control
    • Ensure that all capitalised projects allocated to the development teams (both internal and external) run to agreed time scales and budget.

Sept. 09 - present, UX Design & Development Team Lead, Contractor 

Collaborate business owners, project managers, business analyst, marketing & technology teams and external vendors to build storyboards, proof-of-concept mock-ups, wireframes, demos and prototypes of proposed and planned websites and features. Support ongoing maintenance of all in-house websites and collaborate in the definition of user experience, best web practices and brand guidelines. Liaise and build relationships between Group IT, Group Programme and Group Marketing. Manage, recruit, lead, mentor and inspire website design and development team.

  • Work with cross-functional internal and external teams to produce compelling and fun experiences for Gala Coral Group web related products.
  • Create design solutions that fully represent business, marketing and brand requirements.
  • Identify, address and solve complex user interface and information design challenges.
  • Work with user research professionals and incorporate feedback into flow diagrams, information and site architecture, screen layouts, and interactive design.
  • Create and present multiple solutions to a single design problem and iterate to a single final design.
  • Continuously challenge the effectiveness of design, recommending changes, as appropriate.
  • Rationalise design decisions to stakeholders and peers, support body of work with business metrics or user-derived quantitative/qualitative data.
  • Understand customer requirements for large/complex pieces of work through project/meeting attendance.
  • Agree, prioritise and assign design and development work as required from project proposals to internal and external resources.
  • Constantly look for ways to improve the development environment, coding standards and lead design initiatives towards leveraging the latest technologies.
  • Validate design standards and process for projects and ongoing enhancements to the organisaton.
  • Ensure all completed work meets the business requirements by conducting QC tests prior publication.
  • Support the achievement of team service level targets by owning the completion of all assigned work requests, including planning, content management, testing, quality checking, post implementation reviews and delivering all assigned tasks within the agreed time-scales.
  • Manage and develop concepts from project inception through launch.
  • Manage, lead, mentor and inspire the website design and development team (5-10 direct reports).

The Gala Coral Group is the pre-eminent integrated betting and gaming group in Europe.


T-Mobile

Apr. 08 - Sept. 09, Lead user experience designer, Contractor 

Reporting directly to the head of online experience, part of Online & Telesales department. I am responsible for driving creative excellence online and play a pivotal role leading and mentoring the user experience designers. I work closely with our strategic creative partners, along with stake holders to deliver a coherent brand and campaign experience across all channels to transform the site experience and deliver world class web for 2010. Team members consists of user experience designers and specialist, copy writers, developers, producers, studio manager, project managers, sales, services, business, web analysts and content administrators.

  • Manage, lead and mentor the UX design team.
  • Become the creative voice and brand guardian within the online user experience team.
  • Work with a cross-functional team of producers, managers, business owners, business analysts and developers to produce compelling and fun experiences for TMOUK website and related products.
  • Perform user research and design, information architecture wireframes, site maps, and flow diagrams.
  • Distil user research and business objectives/requirements into functional and interface specifications/ interactive prototypes to demonstrate concepts and to enable rapid iterative support for evaluative research.
  • Rationalise design decisions to stakeholders and peers, support body of work with business metrics or user-derived quantitative / qualitative data.
  • Lead brainstorming activities (workshops, events and meetings).
  • Assign and complete UX design work as required.
  • Create and present multiple solutions to a single design problem and iterate to a single final design.
  • Validate design standards and process for projects and ongoing enhancements to the organisaton.
  • Ensure that all work completed meets the required online marketing and brand standards by conducting thorough quality checks and tests prior to publication.
  • Support the achievement of team service level targets by owning the completion of all assigned work requests, including planning, content management, testing, quality checking, post implementation reviews and delivering all assigned tasks within the agreed time-scales.

T-Mobile is part of one of the largest mobile companies in the world. It's the UK network of T-Mobile International, a major branch of Deutsche Telekom AG whose subsidiaries and affiliated companies serve over 86 million mobile customers worldwide. T-Mobile International operates mobile companies in the USA, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Poland.


Haymarket Media Group

Aug. 07 - Feb. 08, Front end web designer and developer, Contractor 

Banner design (flat and interactive), HTML emails, accessibility, usability and testing. Create themes for a CMS community server utilising CSS, HTML, photoshop, illustrator, drupal and asp.net.

  • Autocar - Front end design (css, xhtml, photoshop, illustrator) and development (asp.net), skinning and make-up onto CMS community server.
  • Whatcar? - Front end design (css, xhtml, photoshop, illustrator) and development (asp.net), skinning and make-up onto bespoke CMS.
  • Caravan Sitefinder - Front end design (css, xhtml, photoshop, illustrator) and creating themes for Drupal CMS.
  • Army - Front end design and development for an eFlyer.
  • Sony Magazine - Front end design and development for a competition and subscription campaign.
  • FourFourTwo - Front end design (css, xhtml, photoshop) and development (asp.net), skinning and make-up onto CMS community server.

Experts in consumer, business and customer magazines, websites, exhibitions and events.


Webjam

July. 07 - Aug. 07, Front end web designer, Contractor

Web 2.0 start-up. Social network utility serving for the web.


Paradigm

Jul. 06 - Jul. 07, Creative Director 

  • To mentor, aspire and recruit a creative team, ensure integrity and serve as the leader.
  • Inspire and challenge the creative team to develop innovative designs and produce first class marketing campaigns and materials for multiple brands and businesses.
  • Translating branding and business requirements into an engaging visual design, compelling content and rich consumer experience.
  • Work closely with the President and Marketing Manager to build and manage client and prospect relationships.
  • Maintain positive relationships and creating new opportunities for the company.
  • Regularly collaborate with the President and Marketing Manager to develop new business and create proposals and presentations. Present creative concepts at client presentations.
  • Establish steps and maintain regular actions to secure the company as the leader of the industry in Japan. Continually educate clients and prospective clients about the benefits of integrated marketing with Custom Publishing initiatives.
  • Enhance productivity and profitability on all projects by defining new opportunities, building marketing and advertising sales efforts and providing managerial and process improvement efficiencies.

Custom Publishing and Design in Toyko, Japan.


Unified Solutions

Apr. 01 - Jun. 06, Lead Web Designer / Creative Director 

  • Creative excellence in all activities.
  • Concept design, illustration and boards, preparation of design and graphics.
  • Communicate creative ideas concisely to project teams and clients on various sized projects.
  • Front end design and development via CSS.
  • Rapid prototyping of mockups, prototypes and production-ready xHTML/CSS for back end deployment.
  • Faithfully reproduce scaleable and extendable designs online for WYSIWYG presentation and approval.
  • Manage all assigned projects through key stages of development, work closely with clients and development to ensure continuity of design intentions and functionality.
  • Web authoring, Information Architecture and Flowcharts.
  • GUI and IA - Ensure the delivery of best practices with accessibility and usability issues, and their implications on interface development.
  • Adhere to WCAG and RNIB compliant guidelines for specific targeted audiences, notably government and public sector services.
  • Interactive system analysis - Ensure HTML cross-browser compatibility.
  • Work on multipart projects with multiple teams and deliver work within agreed timeframes and budgets.
  • Project management and control of creative vendors.

Unified Solutions deliver high quality Information Management Solutions to UK organisations allowing them to realise tangible business benefits.


Hasbro Interactive

Mar. 99 - Apr. 01, Senior Designer - Art Director 

  • Concept design, illustration and boards, preparation of design and graphics.
  • Consistent application of relating to a specific range of products (assigned by Brand) and corporate brand identity.
  • On-going development of visual identities through traditional and electronic media.
  • To successfully direct internal and external resources to produce the highest quality Creative solutions for the European Business.
  • Focus for all creative issues with Marketing.
  • Interpret and execute marketing briefs in line with target audience expectations and business strategy.
  • Management of external creative suppliers and internal design team.
  • Key Player in Creative Forums and Recommendations.
  • Recognise new trends and themes appropriate to brief.
  • Supervise design projects, designers and freelancers when required.
  • Meet agreed timeframes and budgets set by the Creative Services Manager/Marketing Director.
  • Interpret and execute marketing briefs across print and electronic media.
  • Deliver work within agreed timeframes and budgets.

Games Publisher, Division of Hasbro Europe.


Hasbro Europe

Sep. 97 - Mar. 99, Senior Artworker - Designer 

  • Concept design, preparation of design and graphics.
  • Communicate story line and rational to support creative proposals.
  • Leading innovative design on products, graphics and brand packaging.
  • Design through multiple media techniques and cross category.
  • Maintaining brand integrity in line with marketing brief.
  • Work with design managers and marketing to establish design brief and direction.
  • Actively seek information in brand development meetings for product insight and strategy.
  • Supervise artwork to ensure design is coherently understood.

Toys & Games.


Gruppo Di Pose Ltd

Mar. 95 - May 97, Designer 

  • Design and art direction of collections from concept through to fitting to mass production.
  • Responsible for all graphical elements for apparel and clothing range.
  • Providing creative solutions for POS, labels, packages, branding, packaging, promotional literature, campaigns, advertising, catalogue and themes for seasonal shows.
  • Provide concept and ideas for assistance in photography for the creation of catalogue work.
  • Responsible developing and sourcing materials.
  • Deliver work within agreed timeframes and budgets.

Fashion & Apparel.


Photobition PLC

Aug. 94 - Mar. 95, Designer and Artworker 

  • Produce comprehensive digital artwork for small or large graphic design production projects.
  • Work with designers, account executives and pre-press managers to ensure digital artwork are produced to high-end specification in preparation for pre-press data.
  • Justify file make-up to pre-press vendors and Manager.

Display and Graphics.