"Sarah is not only an exceptional designer, she is an absolute pleasure to work with. She is fantastic with the team and with clients and provides strong design leadership to ensure that everyone feels included without the design being diluted by committee. Without doubt we will be working with Sarah again and still consider her a key part of the team."

​

Hugo Pickford-Wardle

Founder and Chief Innovations Officer, Matter AI 

I've worked with

"Sarah is one of the best UX designers I've worked with, combining a thorough and considered approach to information architecture with great visual sensibilities. 

As the only designer in a startup, she covered everything from user flows to button styles, branding to business cards. We really enjoyed having her on Team Racefully."

​

Chris Pointon

CTO Racefully Ltd 

Here's what I do

• Research
• Facilitate focus groups
• Generate personas
• Information architecture
• User flows 
• Wireframes
• Interactive prototypes
• Accessibility
• User testing
• Test scripts
• Analysing feedback
• Product strategy

User

Experience

UI

Design

Graphic

Design

Design

Management

• Concept development
• User interface design
• Product development
• Service design
• Responsive
• Multi-platform
• Micro interactions

• Creative direction
• Branding
• Campaigns

• Project management
• Third party management
• Design management
• Hiring
• Agile

Racefully

Apple Watch & iOS app

Toyota

GT86 Microsite

Dominos

iPad app

Pimm's

Mobile app and Facebook app

Burberry

Trunk show app

Adidas - Golden boot challenge

Mobile site

Audi

Mobile site

Budweiser

Man of the match app

Education First

iPad app

Portfolio

Westminster City Council

Digital self serve platform

Case 

study

Westminster City Council engaged us with two aims.  They wanted 

a new website that would -

1.  Reinvigorate their ageing brand.

2.  Save them money by lowering call volumes to their support centre.

It was a formidable undertaking. Many members of staff had unrestricted access to publish on the website and feared losing 

their “voice”.

Others knew that such change would bring redundancies that could affect their jobs. And senior stakeholders only wanted to see change as long as it furthered their own agendas.

Fortunately, our team was small, agile and up to the challenge.

With 5 rockstar developers, a handful of subject-matter-experts, 

and 2 politically astute project managers I was responsible for the 

user experience, design, developer guidelines and design QA.

Our mantra for the project was simple and direct, “Data wins arguments.”

With so many internal forces working against us we knew our arguments needed to be unassailable.

It wasn’t enough to make a couple of flashy presentations.  

We needed to win people over.  To show them what their problems really were, how we would solve them and turn the skeptics into 

our evangelists.

​

But what we found confused us...

Digging into their Google Analytics we found a site with a high bounce rate but users averaging 2 or more page views.

People came to the home page, left and yet ended up looking at other pages.

And it got worse...

The old site had over 1,000 pages but only a few dozen of them had ever been seen.

​

What was going on?

Then we found the source of the other page views - Google.

That’s right, people were coming to the site, getting confused, leaving and using Google to find what they really wanted.

They didn’t browse the way the previous site had been designed. They had a question, they wanted an answer and the existing site just got in their way.

And it got in their way to the tune of over 1,000 pages.

Analysis &

stakeholder

engagement

Based on our findings the strategy was clear - “Do less”

Westminster didn’t need to give equal weighting to its 1,000 pages of content.  It didn’t need most of the content at all.  No one was looking at it.

​

Well, almost no one ...

All that content didn’t produce itself.  Someone had to write it and those same civil servants wanted to create more.

It wasn’t enough to tell them they couldn’t do it any more.  We needed to get them excited enough about the new site that they didn't care.

​

Fortunately, that's what design does best.

Our analysis had shown us that people had no trouble finding the site.  Their problem was figuring out what to do when they got there.

Enter The Big Six Search

I started with a friendly search box asking, "What do you want to do?" and paired it with 6 big, bold boxes listing the 6 most searched for topics.

The search box filters as you type and the lack of irrelevant content means you find what you're looking for as quickly as possible.

But design can't stop at easy to use.

I created a contemporary design that tells residents Westminster are a progressive council and the site has all the information they need.

It makes bold use of colour and everything about it speaks to time to create the feeling that its as up-to-date as possible.  From the clock in the top right to the breathtaking time-lapse video we had shot for the background.

The design was praised for its responsiveness across different platforms and the gorgeous look it has throughout.  Even by the civil servants who had long since forgotten their original objections.

Strategy

& design

Some designs

Mobile

• Easy navigation
• Strong contrasting colours to account for the glare outdoors
• Larger text to account for all Westminster residents

​

Tablet

Analysis complete, stakeholders bought in and design signed off.  

It was time to deliver and it was going surprisingly well.

The self-confessed, "artistically challenged" dev team needed a 60 page style guide but that was nothing some strong coffee and late nights couldn't fix.

I was nearly finished with it when the Communications Director stomped into the office with damp feet.

"The sodding water main has burst on Victoria Street", she shouted 

at no one in particular, "Someone needs to get a release up on the website."

Our team exchanged nervous glances.  We'd consulted dozens of people over several months to ask for every possible use case for 

the site and no one had mentioned that once in a while they had to publish new content like right now.

We weren't live yet.  That day it wasn't our problem but it would be in four weeks time.

​

The advantage of being agile

Discovering new requirements with four weeks to go sucks but it sucks a lot more when you can't do anything about them.

Fortunately our team was more than qualified to address the problem.

I waited for the Communications Director to dry out and sat down with her to discuss what this kind of emergency update needs to look like.  When there's no official request.  No content editor to write it. No final approval for it to go live.  Just a load of water flooding the street and people who need to know about it.

The problem breaks down into two parts.

1.  Finding out something has happened.  Its rare that the communications director quite literally steps in the problem.

2.  Letting people know what's going on.

I solved the first problem by making site search data more easily available to the communications team.  If lots of people start typing, "Flood on Victoria Street" into the search box, they know about it.

And solved the second by making the Big Six configurable so they could make their public statement as visible as possible as quickly as possible.

It was all ready by launch and the council have reported that its one of the best parts about the new system.

Development

& launch

In more detail

Get in touch

Sainsbury's

in-store shopping app

C A S E    S T U D Y

Cannes lions

archive site

C A S E    S T U D Y

Racefully is a social running app. It’s for people who like the social aspect of running but find it difficult to find a time to run with friends. Using a clever algorithm, people can run with others from around the world. Simply see runners profile’s and connect with them to run in real time. The app is clever enough to determine inclines and weather conditions to make the run fair. For further motivation, you can also race someone’s previous run. 

As the only designer in a 5 person fit tech start-up, I had to do everything from developing the brand, to facilitating focus groups and developing personas to IA, wireframes and design. In just 4 months all of the developer specs and assets were delivered for Alpha and Beta.

Agency: Isobar

My role: Creative direction and UX 

Toyota wanted a rich mobile experience promoting the GT86. This needed to tie in with their above the line advertising campaign and really have the wow factor. We created a rich mobile experience by allowing the user to explore a desert scene with road signs as buttons that took the user on a highly visual journey. We used parallax scrolling which guides the user through information about the car.

As of the 30th of August 2012 there were 9,000 visits to the site. 33% of all visits were from mobile, up from 25% a week after the launch. We dramatically reduced the mobile bounce rate. Bounce is now 14%, compared to 33% pre launch. The average time on site is 3:10, up from 2:07 the week of the launch.

And for an excellent case of why being mobile optimised is so important when it comes to conversions…Brochure request conversion rate is now 7x higher (0.4% to 2.92%) and test drive conversion rate is 13x better! (was 0.03%, to 0.38%)

Agency: Somo

My role: Design

The trunk show app allows customers to pre-order from the latest Burberry collection having just watched it through live streaming in-store creating the ultimate experience for modern luxury consumers.

Customers explore the collection through iPads where they are able to buy immediately through this custom-built Burberry app following a private viewing of the show on high definition screens spanning 3x3 metres with pioneering surround-sound creating a heightened show experience.

The technology enables Burberry to broadcast content directly from its global headquarters across all platforms, into stores, onto multiple devices, re-shaping the way consumers engage with the brand and providing unlimited future opportunity both in-store and online.

A high-capacity, global Verizon Private IP network offered a secure environment to support the live and cached streaming of the event, and integrated wireless local network capabilities enabled local interactivity such as real-time blog uploads, image downloads and instant online and in-store iPad purchasing. The app was released across 25 flagship stores worldwide.

Agency: Somo 

My role: UX and design

This HTML5 site offers a fully interactive, user-friendly mobile experience that showcases Audi’s luxury vehicles within a small screen. The site integrates Audi’s CMS, scaled to meet consumers’ changing demand.

Understanding mobile behaviours and making use of this we designed a site to influence light browsers in the information gathering stage, while addressing the limited time needs of people on the move and providing enough information for uses who are looking to make that big purchase.

The image gallery, a first in the mobile automotive industry, allows 360 views of all available models with in-depth details on the car specifications, pricing and how to arrange a test drive.

The Audi mobile site launched in January 2011 and within three weeks it was achieving 10,000 page views and more than 1000 unique visitors per day, before any marketing campaign had taken place. Ten months on, the mobile site had received almost 220,000 unique visitors and over 300,000 visits in total, achieving 146% of target. Today, almost a fifth of all traffic to audi.co.uk is on mobile and tablet devices.

Agency: Steely Eye 

User experience & design

Education First is the world largest provider of international education programmes. Steely Eye was approached to create a classroom tool that replaced text books and engaged students. The result was a interactive iPad app for students and teachers.

Teachers can create dynamic and bespoke lessons tailored from the vast EF courseware database. This allows the teacher to control the pace of the lesson depending on the level of student comprehension. Students are able to have a more rich experience than the standard text book option. They can complete lessons, watch videos and take tests. Everything they would normally do in class can now be done through the app. Once the student logs in, all their work is in the one place.

The app was well received and was shortlisted for British Council Digital Innovation prize and was a British Council ELTon Award 2012 nominee.

Case studies

• Background is time lapse video
• Search is king
• 6 most common tasks front and centre
• Clear page hierarchy and signposting
• Icons to help identify themes
• Reducing cognitive load
• Enhancing the minimal colour palette
• Forms are simple and straight-forward

​

​

• Responsive design
• Colours reinforce brand
• Day/night background themes to show real-time nature

​

• In a project affecting dozens of civil servants and 1,000s of residents we received almost universal praise for our efforts
•  We lowered call volumes by 17%
•  A friend of mine got a parking ticket in Westminster and called me to tell me how easy she'd found it to pay
•  After the terror attack on Westminster Bridge the council were able to put a public statement in the Big Six within hours of the event