In the Spotlight

Sometimes it’s the small things that define us. Side projects that are close to our heart can blow up into the venture we’ve been waiting for…or even side projects that weren’t close to us. And were more of an accident. Tom Carrington Smith, Chief Product Officer of CharlieHR, talks to us about how a side project became his and his… Read More ￫

Remember the Shot Glass Chess Set? That was created by Tom Boardman & Michael Smith, owners of Firebox. Their infamous Chess Set spiraled into the idea of an online retail store with the mission of helping people find gifts, even when they’re not sure what they’re looking for. 17 years on and Firebox has survived all the bursts and the… Read More ￫

An individual’s creative style is unique and has the potential to act as a signature throughout their career. Rich Waldron, CEO & Co-Founder of tray.io, speaks to us about the importance of gaining a variety of perspectives when designing a digital product. Speaking with different companies about their design process tends to bring to light new techniques and methods they… Read More ￫

The world that we operate in today has changed, from the design tools we rely on, to the devices we use. James Gill, Co-Founder and Designer of GoSquared, talks to me about the importance of product design in an ever changing space. For GoSquared, the changes over the past ten years since its inception have been fast and monumental. At… Read More ￫

Analytics is more than just collecting data. It frames industries, guides decision-making, future-planning and customer-profiling. Giovanni Luperti, UX Lead at Qubit, talks to me about web personalisation. Customer experience is such a buzzword nowadays but very few companies know how to do it well. It’s disappointing to see words like ‘care’, ‘authenticity,’ and ‘honest’ get thrown around so much that… Read More ￫

Somewhere in a quiet street of East London, Animade, an animation studio, is digitally crafting stories and rendering reality, one frame at a time. Mike Guppy, its Senior Designer, talks to me about the power of video. “Animade is a forward-thinking animation studio. We make everything from TV ads to social campaigns to video games—all with lashings of character!” There… Read More ￫

Roomr isn’t about filling space but building houseshares. It champions housemates, community, friendship, the second family. I had a chat with co-founder Paul about the app, and how it plans to solve, and make enjoyable, the housesharing search in London. The home has changed. We don’t establish roots the way we used to anymore. We are expanding its definition beyond brick… Read More ￫

Bumping randomly into an old friend is one of life’s great pleasures. Unfortunately, that rarely happens, even if they were in the same area. The problem is we just didn’t know. We spoke to Sup on how to resolve the annoyance of missed encounters, because frankly, we’ve had too many. Why is it so hard to meet people? Perhaps the… Read More ￫

Sometimes things are so obvious, it’s easy to miss them. Sometimes the best way through, or the simplest solution is right there. We spoke to Dojo about why their app feels so fun and personable (spoiler: it’s because they are fun and personable!), and how they built a tool just for them to do what they do best. Dojo App… Read More ￫

The field of education, like every other sector, is being disrupted by technology. Yet, unlike other sectors, education is largely focused on a digitally native generation. A generation who will grow up in a world with incredible access and opportunities, but also with great challenges. Kids today will require an entirely new range of hard (coding, UX, data mining, systems)… Read More ￫

A 2015 report from Econsultancy and Adobe entitled ‘The Future of Agencies: The progression of agency value in a digital world’ found that ‘customer experience’ was seen as the most exciting opportunity by the 500 mid-level to senior-level agency practitioners surveyed. The creation of Marvel pre-empted this finding — co-founded by ex-agency employees, Marvel is a product of the creative industry,… Read More ￫

It’s no surprise that in the wake of the banking crisis a new breed of financial startups, known as ‘FinTech’, have emerged and now threaten to topple the traditional systems and the institutions that uphold them. Technology sits at the heart of FinTech firms, but so does a dedication to, and respect for, consumers. Unlike big banks, these startups are making… Read More ￫