I am a Product Designer with a passion for end-to-end design and prototyping using various tools and technologies. For the past 15 years or so I have enjoyed working for leading businesses in a variety of sectors in cross-functional product teams, in startup environments (Iron Group) and more established ones (Hive, Opentable International, Wipro Digital, Gamesys Ltd, Sportingbet Plc, Argos).
I have recruited, led and mentored a team of multidisciplinary designers during my role as Design Lead at Iron Group, contributing to the company's fast and succesful growth from startup to scaleup.
March 2020 - Present
Leading design projects end-to-end (app & web). Successfully introduced advanced prototyping tooling / methods to re-imagine some of Hive's most iconic devices, uniting both digital and physical design.
April 2019 - December 2019
Hybrid Designer / Engineer. Designing new features from end to end and working with engineers. Prototyping in Invision / Framer X. A/B testing, accessibility improvements and introducing use of animation.
March 2018 - April 2019
Prototyping using a variety of tools (design and code), design systems and UI/UX design.
October 2014 - August 2017
Recruiting, managing and developing a team of designers, creating and delivering a variety of multi-channel digital work.
July 2011 - October 2014
Web Designer for Gamesys owned brands such as Virgin Games, Jackpotjoy, Nuts Games, Starspins, Caesars.
August 2005 - March 2011
Created online and offline marketing material for various markets and Sportingbet-owned brands.
With a good dozen years expertise in digital design, I have been able to work in most areas of the discipline, the last few years I have enjoyed focussing on UX/UI and getting into coding again.
The brief was the design & build a responsive "pop-under" for Virgin Casino @ Gamesys
Branding, Webdesign, ResponsiveLanding page design / ideation for FastClaim
Branding, WebdesignThe brief was to suggest an alternative design for Iron Capital's Homepage.
WebdesignEdmon is an in-house product concept / initiative at Iron Group and a combined effort between the Marcomms & Product Managers and myself. Edmon is an admin type of product that aims to help people in their daily lives, from finance to preparing for retirement - essentially a fintech product allowing for a pretty wide scope of features. I designed a landing page and branding elements for the product.
We presented the concept to the CEO, who after seeing the designs became really enthusiastic about the project. She even revealed the designs and branding to the whole company at the next quaterly presentation. Unfortunetaly as I was reaching the end of my employment at Iron Group and this also being a difficult time for the company, it is unclear wether the project went any further.
WebdesignWorking closely with the Communications Manager at Iron on new brands and products, we realised that there was a need for a responsive landing page template that could be easily re-usable to promote the company's various brands. Ultimetaly this translated into a brief to design and build a re-usable responsive landing page template and to demo this for a couple of products such as Wise.Legal, a b2b-focussed legal help product and Simplee, a similar but b2c focussed product. The suggested above design ended up being validated, and I was able to build the responsive html & css for it.
WebdesignThe brief was to design the UX for a back office / admin dashboard for Iron Affiliates
UX/UI DesignThe brief was to deliver a "Multi-theme" template for the business under a very tight deadline. Working closely with the Lead front-end developer and relevant stakeholders, we agreed on a structure and typical flow for the template, which needed to be highly modular. This consisted of a dozen of pages and elements such as the home page, product and category pages, but also a full payment process. The template was validated by all stakeholders involved and ended up being so useful that it was then used for more than 20 themes, such as E-learning (as the Physics example displayed here), Photography, History, Coding or Cooking websites. I ultimetaly was able to brief and coach my team of designers to work on a variety of themes with the validated template I produced.
Web DesignThe brief was to work closely with the Product owner on wireframes, logo, landing page and payment page designs for an online tool "DriverTool" to help users find hardware drivers.
UX/UI DesignAs a personal initiative and objective, I suggested to my manager that we move away from the traditional static type of landing page to a responsive one that could ideally be adaptable throughout Gamesys' portfolio of brands, such as Starspins, Tropicana, Virgin Games and Sun Bingo. After gathering requirements from various stakeholders I designed, built and demo'd an initial responsive template with a structure similar to the above. This resulted in a high approval rate from all stakeholders and my manager, ultimately the template ended up being reused throughout all brands and I was able to coach the rest of the team in the html & css structure and how to work with the approved template.
Responsive Design / Front-endIt has been a real pleasure working with James, who has greatly contributed to Iron’s growth over the past 2 ½ years. He has recruited and developed a superb team of designers, and produced a huge variety of top-quality design work. Whether working on web / UI, comms, social media or product / brand creative, James is a versatile, committed and technically-minded designer.
In terms of leadership and coaching, James has adapted himself and his team to the fast-growing needs of the business during challenging times. As both a team member and as a team manager he is an asset to any business.
François R.V, Co-Founder @ Iron Group
Originally hired to focus on digital, I was delighted to see James’s talent and capability expand across a broad body of work. Together we designed a number speculative programmes to re-imagine some of our most iconic devices.
James has demonstrated a range of skills, from ideation through to advanced prototyping and became a key partner in helping me to unite both digital and physical design under one team.
James is a lovely chap and a solid designer, I'm honoured to have him our team.
Ashton S, Head of Product Design @ Hive | Centrica
James quickly got up to speed during his assignment at Modula. He produced some great UX deliverables helping us craft complex and innovative insurance products. It was a pleasure to work with him and would strongly recommend him as a Senior UX/UI designer.
Paul H, Managing Director @ xVentures | Hyperion X
James is a focused and tenacious senior designer who has made major contributions to shaping new brands and products at Iron. He has delivered a variety of high quality design assets at pace; whether directly or through instruction of his brilliant team of designers. James is approachable and shows great reactivity towards business needs. As a lead or senior team member he comes highly recommended. It has been a pleasure working with him.
Mark P, Product Director @ Iron Group
Last month we spent over £500 on Casino and got zero p2ps. Since this page has been live (29th Jan) we have spent just over £500 and have got 4 p2ps already. Not bad for 5 days spend! :)
Sheron L, Senior PPC Executive @ Gamesys
James is calm, flexible and supportive, making us feel confident in our daily tasks. He knows how to listen. As designer he has amazing skills and I have been able to learn from him as well as develop in my role. As Manager, he has guided the team the through demanding workloads and changes in the fast growing company culture. I’ve also really appreciated being entrusted by James to take on various priority projects for the business, to ensure that I grow my experience. He is a great leader and team player, I highly recommend James for employment and I wish him all the best.
Marta L, Web / Graphic Designer @ Iron Group
James, That Rainbow Riches landing page you made for us has the highest landing page click through rate we've seen this month, by quite a lot! Getting loads of players through it.
Joe T, Marketing Analyst @ Gamesys
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