So my name is Ben. Original I know. Well my mum thought so anyway.

How Did I become an Interface Designer?

I say interface designer but these days I’m never quite sure how to label myself. I guess for the most part what I end up producing is an interface although my involvement in that can run far deeper than merely creating the ‘look and feel’. Depending on the job my responsibilities can encompass the entire process from writing the brief to integrating the back-end.

It all started back around 1998. Following university I wasn’t really sure what direction I was going in beyond the fact that I desperately wanted to move back in to design - I just completed a degree in photography, following an HND in design.

While trying to get noticed and working all hours behind a bar, I met Mario who had his own company, Omedia, and needed a graphic designer. It was a great opportunity and he taught me all about web design, even the internet, which I had limited knowledge of. Primarily we focused on Flash interface design and banner advertising. I spent a year at Omedia in which time a became highly proficient in Flash, which I built my first site in, started to get a grasp of html and matured in to a knowledgeable interactive designer and developer.

Moving on from Omedia I was lucky enough to be offered a senior designer role at design net, a ten strong and growing agency, where I was given the chance to take the creative lead and learn more about the client facing, business side of the industry. My time at design net lasted around two and a half years and I got to work on a huge range of projects for a host of clients. Again, as well as creating the look and feel my role was to head up the Flash development and my skills grew massively.
design net was a great place to work with a young exciting group of people. Very much part of the whole .com boom time.
When things turned sour and the business dried up the management closed down the company leaving a lot of very angry employees and clients. It was a tough time. With no paying work I focused on developing my skills and soon started contracting. One thing I will say for that period - I really knucked down and sat at my computer for at least 12 hours a day and within a short time I was able to sell myself as a developer as well as designer.

Anyway, after about six months I was told about the job at LexisNexis and went in to meet them. At the time there was a small group newly set up in a small office in Holborn. There were two IA’s, Paul and Chris, who interviewed me and I then became the third member of the then ‘Usability Team’. Initially it was the three of us working with Serco who had been contracted in to assist Paul and Chris. My first job was to offer a design and technical perspective to their wireframing and concept work. Once the interface concepts were beginning to be narrowed down I started cleaning them up in photoshop and looking at the visual design.

I then hooked up with a couple of visual designers from the states and we brainstormed visual concepts. These were eventually whittled down to the chosen design used for the LexisNexis Global Product Release 1 almost four years ago.
Since that I continued to work on the Global Product but also worked on a whole range of other products and concept developments. I then went on to head up a team of visual designers from across the company to write and publish the company brand guidelines following a decision by the company to reposition itself. As well as this I was selected to be the Visual Design Accessibility Guru! This role essentially meant I met with a small group once a week to identify accessibility issues and offer expert knowledge and advice to the rest of the UX team.

In June 07 I took the role of Art Director at a digital agency called Ellipsis Media. This was a big departure from my day to day responsibilities at LN and a chance to step back in to the agency arena. Building on my experience as a Senior Designer and project lead I stepped in to head up a team of designers and developers along side the technical manager, Mike Duxbury. Over the nine months that I worked in this role I was responsible for the day to day running of the creative team. Combined with project managing a variety of briefs, while at the same time providing hands-on creative and technical input on a number of projects of my own.

Since leaving Ellipsis Media I have taken on a contract at Splendid where I am currently working both as an interaction and visual interface designer. This role has given me the opportunity to learn how to use Blend 2, part of the Microsoft Expression suite, and the creation of assets and animation in xaml, for a project for Aston Martin.

Outside of Work

Some of my friends might say I am obsessed with training. Well I don’t think I’m obsessed but I do think I train hard the average joe. For me though it is more about life balance. I like to enjoy myself and the fine things in life. And I think doing sports and burning carbs is a great way to allow yourself those pleasures without feeling guilty. Plus, as easy going as I might come across I am actually extremely competitive! Here I must salute Nike and Apple for creating the Nike + system. It is the perfect way to motivate you to get out and sweat out the crap. You can challenge your friends and race each other with out actually having to go out together to do it. I highly recommend it, although their website could do with a major overhaul. There seems to be a host of issues with how the data is handled and the general performance of the site. Still you can can’t knock it as it is providing a service. Hopefully they will update and fix the bugs soon.

I realise all I’ve written about is running. Well there is much more to me than that! I will put that across in my blogs.

Thanks for visiting!

B