Showcase
About
I’m a problem solver with a passion for creating beautiful & engaging User Interfaces.
I have an extensive background working with Product and delivery teams, including Product Owners, Delivery Leads, ensuring deliverables, are designed, developed and QA’ed to a high standard utilising agile methodologies.
As a designer and front-end developer, I understand the perfect user interface should look good and work even better. With over Eleven years of experience in the digital industry, I have worked for global creative agencies including Ogilvy & Wunderman, but also with integrated clients having the opportunity to work with John Lewis, Homeaway, BlackRock, ITV and many more.
I love to deliver projects from an Initial Discovery & low-fidelity wireframing phase through to beautiful crafted high fidelity visuals while maintaining a user-centred & scalable design approach.
I maintain a high standard of work even on tight deadlines while exploring various ways to continually enhance my workflow, by keeping up to date with industry-leading rapid prototyping, usability & design tools such as Sketch, Adobe XD, InVision, Balsamiq & Principle to name a few.
My development knowledge extends from HTML5, CSS3, SASS, Bootstrap, Json, Handlebars.js, Highcharts.Js through to email development, all whilst working with back end developers using collaborative version control tools such as GitLab.
Services
UI
Motion Design
Email Design & Development
Illustration
3D
Social
Process
1. Discovery
It starts with the Discovery phase by creating user personas, journey maps, understanding a user’s pain points and competitor market research. As this will be a fundamental foundation for a successful solution.
2. User Flows
By creating user-flows, we illustrate the path a user follows through your website/app interface to complete single or multiple tasks, is a great way to map the products journey and interaction features.
3. Wireframing
Low & mid fidelity wireframes created as part of an initial skeletal framework of the site/app which will be used to visualise components, layout & hierarchy to perform a specific purpose and focus on functionality and validation of approaches.
4. Visual Design
We start High fidelity visuals by creating a visual language, Introducing detailed design specs like typography, colours, theme, styles, guidelines & Icons. A pattern library is created using an atomic design approach with, functionality, scalability & accessibility in mind.
5. Prototyping
With a visual at hand, the prototyping process takes it one step further. It will allow me to show the stakeholder’s an interactive product journey and communicate the design with more clarity. These prototypes are also used in the user testing lab.
6. User Testing
Sitting in user test sessions is a great way to understand how users are interacting with the proposed design allowing for a better judgment of the required iterations design improvements in the iteration phase.
7. Design Iteration
When visuals have been tested in lab feedback is provided on the bases of the results these are then implemented into the visuals and tested further to measure if its adaption was successful this is a refinement process until the results are improved & confirmed.
8. Build & Release
On confirmation of successful design validation. The build is initiated using code UI partial libraries with both front-end and back-end developers working in situ to ensure that logic is working correctly when the code is committed when using Handlebars.js. This then gets through QA & end to end testing before placed on our weekly release.
9. Measure & Learn
The MVP or features are then measured using split tests, analytics, client feedback. The Leanings allow us to analyse the user behaviours and will influence design decisions for better user experience.
Testimonials
Joao was an amazing asset to the Blackrock team in the digital realm. Joao was always quick to pinpoint solutions to problems we faced, and always looked to innovate within the company by taking advantage of the latest trends in digital. On top of that, Joao is a great UI designer who has a knack for aesthetics, as well as a keen eye for UX design patterns.
Joao is a talented designer who has a eye for detail and is always up for a creative challenge. He has the ability to turn messy doodles or vague descriptions into beautifully designed works of art.
One thing I massively appreciate in a person is when they take time to share knowledge and expertise – this is something Joao always does. He is never too busy to guide his colleagues and share his quick tips and tricks!
Joao brings a new dynamic to digital design. At BlackRock his skills and expertise influenced multiple campaigns. Much of the digital communication material produced by BlackRock is modular based, limiting appearance, structure and navigation – as a result emails often appear dated and uninspired. Joao set about understanding these tool, he wrote new code and considerably improved the UX across a very restrictive set of platforms. The enhancements to our event emails meant they became visually more engaging, promoting the event theme earlier in the user journey, but more importantly they were more effective, reflected in the increased open/click-through rates.
The power of simplifying the complex is immensely important in today’s digital world. It is our ongoing responsibility as designers to educate, nothing is more effective at doing this than relatable storytelling. Presentations are often the ‘shop window’ to any company, and Joao’s skills in the Adobe Animate software meant he was able to collaborate and bring to life engaging scripts – his speed and clean style meant his solutions to a storyboard were enthusiastically received and promoted within the wider business.
I previously worked with Joao during my time at Fourfront Group, and found him to be an absolute pleasure to work with. He worked diligently to understand our design brief and more importantly what our overall goal was. Not only did he approach our brief with the creativity it required; but he also was able to advise on the technical parameters of items such as email templates and in effect challenge the brief to deliver a better outcome. I would not hesitate to recommend Joao as he was great asset to the work we did together.
Joao helped me with the design of the RestRelax.com website. At the initial meeting I presented some UX and Wireframe designs along with brand guidelines. Joao took the wireframes and presented both desktop and mobile versions of the website design.
From the initial consultation it was clear that Joao was a fantastic designer, with a keen eye for symmetry, great design with a sharp attention to detail.
I will use Joao again on future projects and can recommend his services for anyone looking for digital and print design
