Cennydd Bowles

Current

User Experience Designer at Clearleft Ltd

Past

Lead User Experience Designer at UpMyStreet.com
Lead User Experience Designer at uSwitch.com
Web & Information Architect at Business Link Nottinghamshire

see less...

Education

University of Nottingham
University of Nottingham

Recommended

8 people have recommended Cennydd

Connections

206 connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

Cennydd Bowles’s Summary

I am a senior user experience designer, author, speaker and community evangelist.

My eight years of UX practice include work for Business Link, uSwitch, Gumtree, JustGiving, WWF and the Open University. I now work for Clearleft, .net magazine's Design Agency Of The Year.

I am the co-author of "Undercover User Experience", to be published by New Riders this September by New Riders, and a regular writer for several blogs and magazines including A List Apart and Johnny Holland.

I speak regularly at user experience events worldwide including the Information Architecture Summit, South By Southwest and UX London. I am an active user experience mentor, and co-founder of the UXCampLondon 'unconference'.

I take a creative and inquisitive approach to design, with my work aiming to reflect my passion for user experience, the web and innovative technology.

Cennydd Bowles’s Specialties:

All branches of user experience, including information architecture, interaction design, design research and usability. Particular strengths include Agile user experience design, prototyping (HTML/CSS) and stakeholder management.

Cennydd Bowles’s Experience

User Experience Designer

Clearleft Ltd

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

May 2008 — Present (1 year 11 months)

User experience specialist at a world renowned user experience consultancy. Project and UX lead for several external projects, ranging from start-ups to globally-recognised charities. Clients include Tourdust, JustGiving, Gumtree and WWF, for whom my work was nominated for "Redesign Of The Year" in the .net awards.

In this role I also helped to set up the UX London conference, including speaker selection and pricing models. I was also responsible for interface improvements to our popular usability software Silverback, and contributed to Clearleft's business and marketing strategy.
Lead User Experience Designer

UpMyStreet.com

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

September 2007 — May 2008 (9 months)

Achievements included redesign of FindMyNearest location tool, increasing advertising revenue while maintaining good user experience. Also tactical and strategic design leadership through a period of transition to external ownership, and design and prototyping of an unreleased UpMyStreet iPhone application.
Lead User Experience Designer

uSwitch.com

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

April 2007 — May 2008 (1 year 2 months)

In this role I headed up User Experience efforts through a period of rapid change at this large comparison dotcom. I managed two in-house UX staff, acted as sole design sign-off for all new features, and helped to create and monitor agency and freelance relationships.

Alongside ongoing user experience design work for uSwitch's Marketing, Personal Finance and Energy channels, I introduced personas to the business, conducted a large research project to establish future UX and content strategies, and managed the company's user experience budget through a period of severe market conditions.
Web & Information Architect

Business Link Nottinghamshire

(Government Administration industry)

May 2002 — March 2007 (4 years 11 months)

Responsibilities ranged from web interface design to strategic information policy. Notable achievements included developing Business Link’s website into a thriving customer touchpoint accounting for 20% of annual activity, creating a major customer research project directly responsible for a 10% increase in market penetration, and interaction design and usability work for a large government extranet.

Cennydd Bowles’s Education

University of Nottingham

MSc , Information Technology , 2000 — 2001

Modules including Human Factors, Internet & World Wide Web, Artificial Intelligence, Commercial Systems Design.
University of Nottingham

B.Sc. , Physics , 1997 — 2000

Final year dissertation 'Flutter In Liquids' awarded best in year prize.