The Planning Inspectorate

Interaction Designer

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

Department for Education

Ministry of Justice UK

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS)

Sage

UX Designer

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

Frontend Developer/Interaction Designer

KIDLY

Financial Times

JUST EAT

UX Prototyper

I’m an interaction designer and a GDS trained design assessor. I have good knowledge of the GOV.UK Service Manual, GOV.UK Design System, GOV.UK Frontend and GOV.UK Style Guide.

Here’s my story:

When I was 16 years old, I wanted to design logos and websites.

I had an eye for design, but lacked the practical skill to do it. So I ended up going into frontend development which was more technical.

But most of the designers I worked with gave me complicated and inaccessible designs to implement.

Sometimes I’d suggest changes to simplify the design and improve accessibility. But no matter how solid my rationale or how simple my solution, I couldn’t convince the designers to make changes.

I felt frustrated having to go back to my desk to implement designs which were harder to build, inaccessible and slow to load.

As a result, I started to believe that designers only cared about aesthetics.

In 2014, my wife and I had our home renovated just in time for the arrival of our first baby. But three weeks into a new six-month contract, I was let go. I’d never had so much responsibility and so little money.

But I got a new contract as a UX prototyper at Just Eat, the UK’s leading takeaway delivery service.

Prior to this role I wasn’t part of the design process. So by the time designs were given to me to implement, it always felt too late to give feedback and suggest changes.

But at Just Eat I was embedded in the design team where I could influence solutions from the start.

To my surprise, the designers there weren’t just focused on aesthetics; they cared about UX. We did user research, ran A/B tests and tracked performance.

I worked closely with Mark Jenkins, the lead designer. But he wasn’t like the other designers I had worked with before. He listened to what I had to say and valued it. He advocated for doing the most basic thing, doing it quickly and learning. He didn’t fuss over pixels.

Most importantly, he showed me that, not only was it possible to be a designer like this but that it was better to be a designer like this.

For example, we redesigned the checkout journey by using the most basic and accessible solution. The result was an increased conversion of 5% – 37,000 orders a week.

Mark also encouraged me to start a blog. And 2 of my early posts went viral on Hacker News (multiple times over).

I realised I wasn’t alone and that others resonated with my design philosophy.

Now I’m trying to be the designer I wish I got to work with when I was a dev.

You can find links to my newsletter and courses below ↓

Adam Silver

Github’s Design System now bans toast messages.

In case you don’t know, toast messages are little messages shown on top of the UI to give feedback about an action that you’ve just taken.

Banning toast messages is an excellent decision because they have bad UX and are terrible for accessibility.

Here’s a few reasons why:

(1) They disappear automatically after a few seconds (at best this is stressful, at worst you’ll miss it)

(2) They obscure the content underneath which is frustrating and slows users down.

(3) They’re hard to spot because they’re small and shown at the edge of the screen.

And there are plenty of other issues which I’ll link to below if you’re keen.

Let’s hope Github bans tooltips next.

Designer with engineering background | I talk about designing products that are ridiculously simple and accessible to use.

Webpage titled "Toasts" explaining that GitHub no longer uses toast notifications due to accessibility and usability concerns, with an overview and recommendation to avoid them.

upUX

I use lean but practical techniques to help businesses take critical product and design decisions with greater confidence. I help businesses to understand the needs, behaviour and motivation of their users and customers.

Independent UX consultant

Skyscanner

- Introduced user centred design practices to the company
- Scaled UX research in product teams (over 250 research sessions/year)
- Coached Product Designers and Product Managers in UX practices
- Pioneered experimentation (A/B testing) in the organisation
- Uncovered insights which led to pivots
- Trained and mentored UX researchers from scratch
- Uncovered hypotheses which led to 25% uplift (relative) in conversion
- Had a great time working with amazing people

Senior User Researcher

(Self employed)

I carried out user research for my clients in the form of generative user interviews, usability testing, card-sorting, tree-testing, persona development and expert UX reviews. My clients included Covestor, The Share Centre, Schuh and most notably Skyscanner who I eventually joined as a full-time employee.

I also carried out research projects for a handful of UX agencies as a 'safe pair of hands' for their own clients.

Freelance UX Specialist

The Usability Lab

Usability Consultant

User Vision

Managed and carried out usability projects for User Vision's clients. Including, BBC iPlayer Version 2, Kwik-Fit Insurance Services, The Royal Navy, The Royal Marines, TD Waterhouse, Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Widows, National Australia Group, Glasses Direct, Maximuscle and more.

Project work included usability testing, paper prototyping, card sorting, categorisation testing, user needs analysis and expert usability reviews.

The Royal Bank of Scotland Group

I provided our team's focus on usability.

This included providing wireframes for developers, heuristic evaluation, card sorting and facilitating user-evaluation sessions.

I also did a good deal of web publishing myself with strong HTML, CSS and Photoshop skills.

Intranet Consultant

Freelance

Freelance Web Designer

I can help your organisations in 3 ways:

1. I assess and advise on your UX practices, to help you get better results from UX
2. I'm the trusted advisor your UX team can come to for advice
3. I carry out UX research and provide design and product recommendations

After 20 years, I'm still a practicing UX professional. This puts me in the best place to give you advice on your own practice.

I've worked with organisations of all sizes. Skyscanner, Trustpilot, Gartner, Standard Life, Abrdn, BBC, and ITV, as well as many start-ups.

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