About

Interaction designer, film maker, educator, equal parts AI evangelist and critic. I've been designing for screens since I was a kid, coding games on my dad's ZX81 with only 1KB of RAM to play with, and making stop-motion animations on 8mm film. Now I watch my own kids animate in ProCreate and build worlds in Minecraft while I build apps with Claude and render simulations in Redshift. The tools change, but the question doesn't: how do you make something with craft and care that communicates clearly and moves people?

I'm based in Norwich, where I lead UX Design and Graphic Communication courses at Norwich University of the Arts. Outside of that, I take on design, research, and consultancy work, and hang around the leading edge of creative technology. My background is a winding path through motion graphics, video direction, sound design, web design, and UX. Which makes me hard to summarise, but useful in a room where disciplines collide.

Practice

Outside education, I've worked as a UX and media consultant, web designer, video director, animator, graphic designer, and sound designer. I created content for Channelflip Media shows David Mitchell's Soapbox for The Guardian Online and Harry Hill's Little Internet Show, and made a movie mashup film series, Multimash, for their Warwick Davis -helmed YouTube channel The Multiverse. I've directed short films that screened at international festivals and featured in the British Animation Awards touring programme. I contributed post-production to Ceiren Bell's The Demon's Head, an animated short film nominated for a BAFTA Children's Award - although Luke Pearson's amazing Hilda series pipped us to the win on that one, which is absolutely fair enough. Having work in the same shortlist as Hilda, Gumball, and Dangermouse was unreal.

Before Norwich, I was a Technical Adviser at Goldsmiths, University of London, supporting animation and interaction design projects with students on BA Media & Communication, MA Digital Media, and MA Photography. A highlight was kitting out the stop motion studios with classic 70s Nikon lenses I acquired from the set of Wes Anderson's stop motion classic Isle of Dogs. One of the students I taught there now runs the UX team at Jones Knowles Ritchie, and has just taken on a UX graduate from Norwich. Those moments are the best.

More recently I've been working with filmmaker Antony Barkworth-Knight on research for AI-driven immersive video project Stable Visions, a 360-degree video work designed for the 10m LED volume at Norwich's Immersive Visualisation and Simulation Lab. We just finished an explainer promo film for a presentation at SXSW for Moth, who are leading quantum computing for the creative industries.

If it's interactive or moves on a screen, I'm up for designing it. Currently mind-melding with Claude Code, hooking up MCP servers, and falling in love with Rive and Cavalry.

Education and Leadership

As Course Leader for BSc User Experience Design and BA Graphic Communication, and Cluster Lead for the trio of Human Centred Design Masters courses at Norwich (MA UX Design, MA Service Design, and MA Interaction Design), I spend a lot of time organising things and figuring things out at the intersection of technology, people, communication, and education. Our students are amazing, and have won the top prizes at the Creative Conscience awards and the D&AD New Blood awards.

I may or may not be the university's 'AI Champion'. I was offered the title by the former Deputy Vice Chancellor, who moved on before I accepted it. I've used it a few times, and no-one seems to mind. AI is simultaneously amazing (I used it to help build this website, which in theory I can update via voice notes to Claude on my phone) but it's also screwing up things we care deeply about, like the graduate job market, which makes it a very difficult thing to champion. I encourage all students to have a 'critical engagement' with AI, to understand it well, even if they disagree with how it's being built and deployed (I do too). It's changing things too fundamentally, and too quickly, to dismiss. The tools always change, but the core design skills remain fundamental.

I sit on the university's AI Working Group, developing principles and guidance for students and staff, mitigating for the existential threat to the traditional academic essay, and working out what to ask students to do instead. We think it's all about evidencing process over outcome, and employers agree with us.

I'm an external examiner for BA Future Media Production at the School of Digital Arts at my alma mater, Manchester Metropolitan University, and have advised on course development at University of the Arts London.

Industry Projects

I've led Knowledge Exchange projects pairing students with clients for live project briefs including Interstate Creative Partners, Foolproof, What Caused This, Virgin Wines, and Coder. These are often the best bits of our courses, where students pick up real-world design experience. My role is arranging and scoping the brief with the client, shaping the research and design methodologies, and making sure the work lands well when they present it back to senior designers, founders or C-suite.

I'm always interested in new ways to combine design practice with education, and in work that doesn't fit neatly into either category. If something here resonates, get in touch.