Work for Morse & Diagonal (2001-present)

- still learning!

About a year after I'd joined Hughes Rae, the company was acquired by Morse, a pan-European technology integrator who were looking to expand their services offering by incorporating an application development house. This meant that there was a big change in the size and type of clients that we were designing and building for. At the height of the .com boom we were acquiring more and more staff and I ended up with a team of three people, responsible not just for purely visual design but also for all User Interface issues.

Another steep learning curve followed for me as I ventured into the world of usability and workflow and became much more customer-facing. As well as continuing with my design function I found that I was having to incorporate a lot more business analysis and technical expertise into my role as first Design Manager and then Senior Design Consultant as the role also broadened into the fields of conceptualising, prototyping and wire-framing.

With our customers becoming much bigger the role has become much more consultative, with responsibility not only for all visual design issues but also accessibility, usability and other compliance issues as well as often managing relationships with other thrid-party development and design resources. The technical aspects of the job have also widened with our various partnerships with solution vendors such as Vignette and Autonomy.

Recently, Morse acquired another company, Diagonal, and my side of the business was transferred to the new company. So I now work for Diagonal doing much the same thing.