The 1990′s
Mark first got bored with the Internet somewhere around 1993.
He had a modem at home (job in IT Support) and used CIX and CI$ through the medium of “offline” readers. This was good because it kept the phone bill (land line obviously) down.
Having seen some intriguing photos in magazines of this clicky web thing, he took a look – but the text-based window to the internet that CIX provided (and a complete lack of knowledge of how to even begin to find something interesting) meant this fascination lasted for about 5 minutes. Five whole minutes of tabbing around a screen of DOS style fluorescent text on a black background wondering how people could be interested in something so dull. Maybe that’s why he’s still not keen on black sites.
Fast forward a whole three years and he was wrestling with Netscape and JavaScript image swaps to build a nice photo gallery. He’d just spent 3 months in Zimbabwe with Raleigh International as part of his “Professional Development” and was working in marketing to help promote (and ultimately sell) one of the divisions of British Rail.
The website thing seemed quite fun, so since then he’s spent most of his career doing it professionally (assuming being paid makes you a professional).
The 2000′s (almost)
After a stint in the late 90′s where he was building internal sites for an investment bank (from idea through to code), he made the break into Advertising. There he settled into a sequence of roles at WCJ / Impiric / Wunderman as a developer / information architect / functional designer… well, you get the idea. As a result he knows a lot more about cars (Ford, Land Rover ), mobile phones (Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Orange) and sports sites and trainer construction (adidas) than is interesting. He’s dealt with content, configurators, help me choose tools and eCommerce. He’s also slightly prone to expressing an opinion having occasionally made some mistakes and learnt from them.
2010 and beyond (roughly)
He left advertising in 2009 and headed back into the world of investment banking to set up a User Experience practice within Lab49. There he is responsible for a team of UX Professionals (Designers, Interaction Designers, Creatives, Information Architects). Life at work is exciting and demanding – defining and designing the interfaces for trading applications where 1 frequently means 1 million. He’s testing things frantically to avoid making mistakes, and helping people cope with the transition from advertising to investment banking…
Whilst he prefers to think of his role as an “Architect of Interaction and Information”, he has settled for “User Experience” as less confusing.
You can find a more professional summary of his career on LinkedIn.
