Leading user research on the data platforms team.
UX Research Lead: Arrival (Permanent) - April 2021 / April 2022
Leading UX Research for Arrival's digital products. Informing the following workstreams:
My contract was geared towards uncovering research insight to inform and develop the Skyscanner’s value proposition work. Work included:
I helped John Lewis identify the most effective means of engaging and connecting their customers with in store services. Work included:
I worked with the Premier Inn brand, leading the following research initiatives:
Visiting lecturer at Winchester School of Art & London College of Communication
Led research and innovation projects for clients
“James is an excellent lead researcher with a strong degree of diligence in his work, thorough attention to detail and people skills that make him highly pleasant to work with. James helped us draft and execute research strategies and insights across multiple product platforms of various complexities - from internal Enterprise systems to complex, technically heavy connected device products. As a result of his ongoing reliability and the splendid work and insights he produced, I continued to rely on James as our go-to for digital user research programmes.”
“It has been great collaborating on a number of Arrival products with James. He's super proactive, easy to work with, with top user research skills delivering great insights and a good strategic vision on things.”
“I have had the pleasure of working with James not only at Arrival but also at Skyscanner, two companies where his diverse set of skills had great impact. James has the ability to dive deep into various novel and complex subjects to gain valuable insights utilising a variety of methods and distilling the information into an easy to digest format for product teams to utilise.”
“James is a fantastic UX researcher and communicator. I was reliant on James to uncover insights about our users and make sound recommendations of ways to design for their needs, and James always came through. He has a keen eye for user behaviour, and always delivered complex observations with subtlety, nuance, and empathy. An absolute asset to any product team.”
“What truly stands James apart is that he cares about business success. He isn't just another UX Researcher, but a true business partner that is fully invested in the idea of doing the best for commercial results.”
“James was a fantastic partner to pair with Design, his skillset means he was able to wear the hats of researcher and facilitator well. He also introduced me to the Value Proposition Canvas of which we used to run ideation workshops. James is a wonderful guy to work with, really thorough in his research and empathic to users but also colleagues.”
“I particularly loved the way James led a half day workshop with the whole team after each day of testing where we synthesised our findings ready for the next sprint. I think these workshops were key to keeping the team customer centric throughout the process. I would strongly encourage anyone looking for highly skilled ux research and service designer to look no further than James. You can rely on him and he’s not afraid to speak up and challenge leadership to be more customer-centric.”
“James is a highly skilled researcher who quickly builds rapport with people. Throughout my time working with him, he consistently demonstrated his ability to grasp core business challenges and identify the customer needs which needed to be satisfied to meet them. I hired James into the Experience Design team at Whitbread as a Senior User Researcher for Premier Inn, initially on a 3-month contract only to extend him multiple times due to the quality and impact of his work, leading to us working together for almost 18 months. I happily recommend James, and do so in person to my clients whenever I have the opportunity, especially where the research need is complex and extends across both physical and digital interactions."
I built this website to get my portfolio online, and to teach myself the basics of web development; HTML, CSS, and a little Javascript. I'm sure there are many possible improvements to the site's layout and code. Honestly it's a work in progress which I hope to improve as I learn more.
I was motivated to build this site since I feel it's important to get to grips with the core technologies that modern sites and apps run on. My work involves running research and making recommendations to improve user experience with all kinds of digital products. I'd like the recommendations I make to be grounded in a fair appreciation for the work involved in actually building them, and that has been my motivation to develop this site. I hope you find it interesting.
Some helpful resources I used to put this site together