About Me
Hi, I’m Matt, I work across HF, UX, service and behavioural design and research.
I know that was a lot of words, sorry. Basically, I do human-centred design, and I enjoy working with happy, communicative, and respectful teams.
Thank you for visiting my site, I hope you find my work interesting, I certainly do!
I’m an Ergonomics and Human Factors graduate from Loughborough University, a Chartered Ergonomist and Registered Member of the CIEHF, and have a UX certification from NN/g.
I have a breadth of experience from industries including consumer tech, automotive, rail, aviation, energy, public spaces, and furniture design. In these industries I have practiced many kinds of HCD methods, including service design, product strategy, and behavioural design.
Please view my CV by clicking the button at the top right to see my full work history.
"Don't Blame The User"
In one of my first classes at university, a lecturer was speaking about analysing serious incidents to discover the root cause. The true injustice is that many serious incidents get blamed on human error, and the lecturer said “don’t blame the user”. Even in highly complex scenarios, what do we learn by blaming the human element of the system? Nothing. The only way we can innovate is to understand human capabilities, and design for them.
The next time someone says “they’re using it wrong!” - “Don’t blame the user”. I repeat it to myself to this day. It works well.
Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet, we have done incredible things. But humans have faults. Our memory system can store information for a lifetime, but lose it in seconds. Our cognitive system can make repeat decisions in an instant, but stumble when over stimulated. Our visual system can detect changes in colour and value in a more than 180 degree cone in front of us, but miss things when distracted. We don’t make mistakes deliberately, but when they happen, remarkably, we have an innate ability to learn from these situations.
When people use a product, enter an environment, or act as part of a system, they don’t sign up to be blamed. “But Matt, what about when people have been trained to do something and they still fail?” Well, then you have two non-humans to blame - the product and the training. This also brings me to the point of design for failure.
I firmly believe that most climate issues are not up to individual people to solve. Why do we ask people to sort their own recyclable waste, without asking enough questions of companies that produce high-waste products. Why do we ask people to choose public transport over driving, without making public transport easier to choose? If we designed for failure, properly, if we stopped blaming everyday people, we would be closer to solving these issues.
