Rhys Thomas
😊 Hi there,
I'm a designer 📱✏️
I mentor other designers
I lead design teams
I define creative strategy
I champion UX in whatever I do
You might want to jump to view my work or view my CV.
Creative strategy
I lead overarching creative approaches to digital products and services. Putting on my 'Head of UX' hat, I push for features and functionality that would improve our user experience. As design lead, I challenge the team to push boundaires, to really get under the skin of a project, leaving no grey areas. I provide subject matter expert knowledge to business development conversations, and outline our value proposition on pitches. I have defined what new strategic creative services look like, resulting in additional revenue streams. And I show the value of my expertise through thought leadership pieces, delivering webinars and cross-team collaboration.
My strategic matras - Accessibility is fundamental, not an afterthought. Take people on the journey with you. Sustainable design is modular, component led and understands affordances.
Design leader
Fulfilling an art director role and a team lead role, my responsibilities are very fluid. I'm always involved in; creative process streamlining, product improvement, lead-gen creative webinars, quality gatekeeping, estimating, managing direct reports, workload distribution, project planning, reviews, 1-1s, mentoring, workplace culture.
- Webinars12+
- CrUX projects
(2020-23)162 - Team members3
- Delivered work
(2020-23)[aov~£21k]£3.4M
My 'design people' mantras - Always reserve time for 1-1s. Information hierarchy is in everything. UX is everywhere. Be passionate, diligent and proactive. Stay hydrated.
Project delivery
The bread and butter of any designer. Discovery phase workshops, wireframes, high fidelity design prototypes, design systems, websites, intranets, portals, apps, motion graphics. Using Adobe Creative Cloud, Miro, Figma, Sketch.
My design principles - Good design uses a consistent visual language. It should say 'look at this' not 'look at me'. Any grey areas in a project will always come back to bite you. Create statement character with your 'big brush' (my favourite brush).
NHS / housing
I've had the honour to work across multiple large-scale public-sector web solutions, driving in excess of 1 million hits a month, each.
- NHS trust websites5
- NHS trust intranets5
- Specialist websites32+
- Self-serve portals4
View all my NHS / Social Housing solutions.
SMB / eComm / creative services
Working with some of the biggest names in consumer electronics and security software, I've produced marketing and eCommerce solutions for; Sennheiser, Lenovo, Razer, Norton, Avast and Kasperskey.
- SMB websites300
- Enterprise eCommerce sites50
- Motion graphics6
- Apps2
UX focus
Everything I do is centered around the user. Good UX uses the unwritten languages of affordance and expectation. It starts by collecting information in stakeholder workshops to make informed design decisions. Continues by ensuring solutions meet accessibility standards, and is rounded off by UAT sessions and benefits realisation. Adjacent services I've delivered include; IA audits, persona creation, user journey mapping, in-project process engagement, ESG analysis, site speed analysis and A/B testing.
UX principles - Get something in front of the client as early as possible. Workshop framework - [As a... I want to... So that I can...]. What do we want users to do, know and remember? Legends: Erik Kennedy, Dan Roam.
And I build the dang thing too
Senior Front End Developer - HTML5, CSS, LESS, jQuery
This website has seen many iterations over the years, from a collection of Flash elements to embracing the power of pre-processor mixins and variables. This site is hand-scultped, using some Bootstrap to handle my flexing columns, scroll snap, font awesome, php includes. (& Inevitably has some legacy elements)
My CSS mantras - Avoid: 'magic numbers', display:none, z-index:999999, !important. Lean into: CanIUse with fallbacks where possible. Work from the general to the specific. Structured and nested LESS (but not too deep). Tehnical accessiblility is paramount, and works hand-in-hand with semantic HTML. Legends: Jen Simmons, Chris Coyier.
Digital professional
I am a versatile and experienced multi-disciplinary designer, with a proven track record of design leadership, delivering revenue-driving campaigns through high quality user experiences and creatives.
Having worked in a fast-paced branding / production environment, an indie games company, a globally recognised ecommerce provider, marketing agency, and digital solutions provider to the NHS, I am uniquely positioned to bring my breadth of expertise to any challenge. Whether it is analysing and presenting a UX audit to a client, or designing a business' entire online presence, I have tackled it and everything in between. Websites that wow, experiences that enrich and campaigns that convert. Designed and built by one person.
Creative background
Designing digital media on the foundations of analogue art. Charcoal, pencil, paint, photography.
