FULL UX/UI PROCESS

Freelance Digital Product Designer in Bath

I’m a freelance digital product designer in the Bath area with 20+ years of experience creating usable and inspiring digital products. Over the years, I’ve helped clients research, design and implement SaaS software, digital apps, websites and eLearning products.

Creating a digital product is a journey, and I am experienced in delivering the full UX process including researching user needs and existing experience, through to creating design interactions, prototypes and high-fidelity designs. All while validating hypotheses through user testing.

20+

Years of experience

100+

Figma projects

Collaboration is king

Although operating alone as a freelancer, I thrive on integrating within teams and getting immersed fully in projects. UX is a problem solving activity, and with the right tools and willing team, improved results are inevitable.

The tools for creating digital product designs have developed over the years, culminating in Figma being the current design software of choice across the industry. However, I am also experienced in using other industry standard design software such as Sketch, Adobe XD and Miro.

These tools allow us designers to create sophisticated libraries of components, using reusable styles, button variants, animations and more recently variables – all of which helps us create more efficient and realisting prototypes for users and stakeholders.

At the same time, it’s the research activities that truly allows us to make an impact on user experience for those using our digital products.

PIXEL PERFECT DESIGN

**User research tools I often incorporate into projects…**

Competitor benchmarking

A great primary source of research is benchmarking your competitors. What are they doing well, what are they doing not so well? What can we learn from them? Are the mental models that we should emulate?

Heuristic evaluation

As UX professionals, we have standard rules of thumb, created by experts such as Jacob Neilsen, which allow us to evaluate digital products from a usability point of view.

Surveys

In terms of reach and low cost, it’s hard to beat surveys. Although not as valuable as other research methods, they do allow a very large number of users to be questioned and are easy to deploy.

User testing

Often referred to as the ‘gold standard’ of research activities, user testing is where you put your digital product in front of your users in a realistic manner. Nothing beats observing users interacting with your software, the observations from this are likely to be the most valuable you can possibly gain.

Depth interviews

I like to perform depth interviews at the same time as user testing in order to capture a user’s history. This allows us to work out a user’s goals, behaviours and context when it comes to using products similar to ours.

Affinity Diagrams

Once you’ve gathered your data, it tends to be in a fairly complex and messy format. Affinity diagram workshops allow us to turn messy data into organised outputs.

My UX/UI Process

1. Research

I speak to stakeholders and carry out primary research to get under the lid of the project.

2. Analysis

By using analysis techniques such as affinity diagrams, we can capture the key areas of improvement required for your product.

3. Interaction Design

I design basic interactions to find innovative ways to solve the challenges we have uncovered.

4. Prototyping

This is where we bring the basic wireframes to life, creating high-fidelity working prototypes.

5. Validation

We validate that our solution works with live users through user testing.

6. Delivery

The Figma files and assets are passed onto the development team, ready for deployment.

What my clients say...

“

“Mark helped us make several feature upgrades to our flagship VideoScribe software. His UI and UX experience was invaluable in taking these upgrades from sketches through to full design concepts that the development team could implement. Mark integrated quickly and easily into our internal team and was great to work with. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend him to any company looking for UI/UX expertise.”
Christopher SnellLead Project Manager, Sparkol Ltd.

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“We have worked with Mark on numerous UI/UX projects, allowing us to upgrade and improve our Nimble Author software. This allows our users to benefit from a rich and intuitive user experience as they build their online courses.

I’ve worked with Mark for many years now and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend his UI/UX design services to any company looking to improve their products.”
Neil HydeManaging Director, Nimble eLearning.

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“Mark’s UX and UI experience has been absolutely invaluable in transforming our initial ideas into fully designed prototypes that have allowed us to take our project all the way from concept to commercial implementation.

We are extremely impressed with Mark’s quality of work as well as his attention to detail and professionalism, we’d recommend his services to any company looking to employ UI/UX expertise on their projects. We look forward to working with Mark again in the future.”
Neil TinmouthCEO ACUA Ocean

“

“Mark has been a great asset to us at Sparkol. He slipped seamlessly into our team and wasted no time in making clear, actionable recommendations to improve the user experience of our products. He's been a real pleasure to work with. Thanks, Mark!”
Jane ScaifeUser Experience Researcher