I’ve been fortunate to work on some incredible projects and services over my career, from my first job at HEOR working on data visualisation pieces to creating an emergency service to allow people to safely work from home during the pandemic in 2020. Here are a selection of work that I’m most proud of and want to share with you. I hope you enjoy the stories, Mike.
Government as a Platform
First coined by Tim O’Reilly in his 2011 article “Government as a Platform,” where he posed the question: what if government was organised more like an operating system? This is my most recent case study of how as a designer I’ve been examining that question and assumptions of if the Government Digital Service should bring together it’s tools into a platform for government to use.
Upload a document service
How do you solve the problem of getting paper forms completed, posted, uploaded and processed in the middle of a pandemic and while in lockdown? COVID-19 was a bizarre and often difficult time. Here’s what I was working on during that time.
Report a discrepancy service
Crime arising from money laundering costs the UK 37 billion pounds every year. I was responsible for designing one of the services to combat this problem with the introduction of a new policy and ideas.
Optimising landing pages for a comparison website
Comparison sites are there to help people find the right product for their needs and budget. Here is an example of how I used data, multi-variant testing and design to optimise landing pages for a well known UK comparison website.
Designing a new mega menu
We all love a discount or a voucher, whether that be for fashion, food & drink (my favourite is Italian food), travel or your home and garden. Designing a navigation structure to accommodate for all of these different categories and featured advertisements involves good information architecture and UX design. Here’s how I approached this challenge.
It’s not just work, it’s the people
While I’ve been working on these projects I’ve also worked with the most talented bunch of people and made some good friends along the way. Some of those people have been kind enough to share their feedback about me.
I worked with Michael in designing the user interfaces for systems during the COVID-19 outbreak. Michael is very knowledgeable in his UX specialism. He is adept at quickly assembling components using html, node and preparing services using the gov-UK toolkit.
He demonstrated great enthusiasm in rapidly producing working prototypes, quickly adapting and amending them as the design developed. During the emergency he also assisted the development team in getting things into the production environment when resources were stretched. Michael is able to coach less experienced colleagues to produce high quality products.
He is adaptable, professional and very easy to work with and would be an asset to any team.
Carl Allen at Companies House
I have the pleasure of working with Michael at Companies House. Michael has been a key agent in our scrum teams, providing quality designs and showing a great ability to adapt. Extremely smart and able, he embodies the Agile mindset and practices and also promotes personal development which has been a great contribution to CH so far!
Chloé Bayetti at Companies House
I had the pleasure of working with Mike as his manager. Mike is a very intelligent guy who has a great attitude when it comes to developing himself and others. Mike was a key member of my team and helped deliver more campaigns, improvements and tests than I can count.
Incredibly agile and nimble, Mike was able to change his way of working to suit his environment and deliver tasks and items at pace while maintaining a high level of quality; a real asset to my team not only in testing, optimisation and user experience but also in helping non-technical team members understand the process.
During our time working together Mike was one of my best assets and became a good friend. I’d jump at the change to work with Mike again one day and I’d recommend him to anyone in the market for CRO/UX expertise.
Andrew Isidoro at Go.Compare
I worked with Mike over the last couple of years in both a direct and in-direct capacity. Mike is intelligent, hard-working and has an incredible thirst for knowledge. There wasn’t a project in progress that we didn’t involve Mike in, as his breadth of understanding delivered improvements in all aspects of the projects successful delivery. If I had to categorise Mike, I would say that he a UX/UI expert with a scientific approach to testing and optimisation. Whether it was a new website design, a new data capture/validation webpage or a robust approach to testing user engagement in Optimizely, Mike was able to measurable improve the commercial success of every project he was involved with.
Mike was a fantastic colleague at GoCompare and I look forward to working again with him in the future. He would be a real asset to any company who take testing, optimisation and user experience seriously.
Mark Phelps at Go.Compare
Mike is a talented and versatile developer, with robust experience in SEO, curious and always keen to learn and discover new areas.
Self-motivated, Mike has led the company efforts to adopt AMP, developed chatbots, pushed the agenda on voice search, whilst bringing a critical contribution to embedding a new CMS.
I have been genuinely impressed by Mike’s knowledge and contribution and will happily work with him in the future.
Pascal Moyon at Go.Compare
Michael joined the company to work on the design and production of innovative and interactive tools to help convey complex health economic messages to clients. Michael’s design eye and attention to detail was second to none and he all tools were created to a very high standard. It has been a pleasure to work with Michael.
Mike Hurst at HEOR
Mike worked for us on a freelance basis helping out with clients & running projects.
Mike was enthusiastic and diligent, always keen to do a top job and prepared to go the extra mile. He was great at handling clients and an asset to the company.
Mike will be sorely missed but wish him all the best in his next role.
Joel Hughes at Glass Mountains