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Using data to drive good design

Portrait photo of Dan

I am a qualified User Researcher and UX Designer, with a passion for understanding human needs, capabilities and limitations as a basis for great design.

I have over 15 years of experience of applying human-centred design to road and railway safety. I am a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors. Read more about me >

Some of my work is published in peer-reviewed journals and as conference papers. See publications >

Overview of my experience with UX design methods

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  • Competitive benchmarking of zero waste shops and car hire websites

  • Heuristic evaluation of a vehicle centre console

  • Experimental design

    • Independent measures, e.g. the effects of vehicle instrument panel illumination on drivers' headlight activation errors

    • Repeated measures​, e.g.​ the effects of smartphone use on car driving​

  • ​Observational studies

    • contextual inquiry​ to understand safety issues at a rail operation at a seaport

    • naturalistic field study of drivers' everyday use of in-vehicle technologies

    • usability testing of a zero waste online shop, a car hire website and an classification system for incident causes

    • eye tracking of road users approaching level crossings

  • Attitudinal studies

    • ​Semi-structured or structured interviews alongside observational studies (validated measures of workload (NASA-TLX), fatigue (KSS), usability (SUS), situation awareness (SAGAT))

    • Questionnaire surveys e.g. investigating >7500 railway workers' experiences of fatigue and attitudes towards its management​

    • Diary study of 30 railway workers' use of fatigue prediction devices

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  • Qualitative analysis 

    • matrix analysis of railway incident reports

    • affinity diagrams (remotely, Miro) of design issues with car hire websites

    • customer journey maps for online zero waste shops

  • Statistical analysis 

    • descriptive statistics, e.g. of the number and rate of 'wrong side' door release incidents on a train network

    • hypothesis testing, including t-tests, Chi-Square, Fisher's Exact, ANOVA, Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskall-Wallis tests, post-hoc tests

  • Hierarchical task analysis, e.g. of passenger train dispatch from stations

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  • Design workshops, using methods such as

    • SCAMPER (for level crossing signs) 

    • Crazy 8s (for a zero waste online shop)

  • Interaction design - paper and pencil sketches - for a car hire website

  • Prototype development (Figma) for a car hire website

  • Wireframe development (Figma) for a zero waste online shop

  • Design testing using the research methods above, as a basis for further iterations of the design

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  • Annotation of designs for handover, for example of a car hire website and a zero-waste online shop

  • Research reports (many unpublished) and journal papers. See selected publications>

  • Presentation design and delivery, for example:

    • to operational staff

    • to managers, for example on an analysis of 'wrong side' door release incidents on train, and on fatigue  

    • to scientific audiences of 100+ people at conferences

  • Training courses (for example where it would help a company to act on our research findings) including:

    • Human Factors Awareness Training (2-day)

    • Human Reliability Analysis Training (2-day)

Examples of my work

Drive UX

Designing a hire car booking website for a startup company

Car instrument panels

Quantifying the impact of a design change on driver performance.

Level crossing
signs and signals

Evaluating current signs and signals and designing new ones.

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