Thunk Ltd.

Working with businesses and organisations across industries. Providing digital product design & research, leadership, strategy, mentoring, hiring design teams, increasing internal design capabilities and design sprint facilitation.
Clients include: Twitter, Reed, NHS, Fine + Rare, Sensat, Babylon Health, Premier Farnell, Forward Partners, Virti Health, FitXR and some other cool start-ups you've not heard of (yet).

Founder & Design Partner

Google

I had three projects at Google I/O in 2017, two of them as a part of Android 8.0 “Oreo” launching in fall 2017.  As a part of the Android design team in London I led various system UI efforts, including the design for data access and management on Android Oreo Go targeting the "Next Billion Users".

In my time at Google I also worked on Enterprise (Google Apps), Ads (Google AdSense), Commerce (Google Offers), Maps (Google Maps for Mobile), Social (Google+ Local), Emerging Markets, Privacy and Search Ad Formats. I have facilitated many workshops and design sprints across the world, whilst working closely with UX researchers, Product Management and Engineering teams to design and deliver world class products and features.

Senior User Experience Designer / UX Lead

Skype

I worked on a couple of projects at Skype focusing on e-commerce and payment interfaces on both the Skype website and within the Skype client for Microsoft Windows.  I produced various ideas in the form of sketches, wireframes and high fidelity visual designs to simplify the purchase of hardware and Skype credit.  During my time here I also began designing some parts of the first Skype applications for mobile devices.

Interaction Designer

BBC Radio & Music Interactive

During my short time at the BBC I worked on a number of projects for Radio 1, 2 and Five Live.  I lead the interaction and visual design of the Five Live website during the 2006 World Cup campaign.  I ran a number of user studies on features and products for Radio 2, suggested and implemented improvements.  As well as supporting, I constantly pushed the boundaries of BBC processes and design standards to deliver innovative solutions.

Interactive Designer

Yahoo! Europe

As a part of the Ad Technology team I took responsibility for the user experience of rich-media advertising, both on UK, European homepages and throughout the Yahoo websites. This included advising on and upholding usability requirements with clients and the implementation of campaigns using various technologies. I delivered creative solutions, advice and consultancy to both internal and external clients, producing concept designs and prototypes for potential campaigns.

Designer & Front End Developer (Ad Tech)

DMG Radio

During my time in Australia I led the digital media for Nova 96.9fm in Sydney.  Again introducing User-centered Design practices to redesign the site for both user and business needs, also handling most of the technical implementation.  Essentially an extension to the work I'd done at Virgin in the UK.

Design Lead & Product Manager

Virgin Radio International Limited

Led the major re-design of the company's website, introducing user research and testing sessions to create a design that answered user and business needs, standing for almost 4 years.   Worked with external advertisers to create ground breaking cross-media campaigns.

Digital Media Design Lead

Ginger Media Group

I had far too much fun working for Chris Evan's Ginger Media Group on broadcast media websites, redesigning Virgin Radio's site entirely whilst trying to hang around the TFI Friday bar celeb' spotting as much as possible.

Oldroyd Publishing Group Ltd

A graphic design education, taught by old masters. :)

Print and Web Designer

A seasoned digital technology leader, designer, and strategist. I’m an expert in UX design, product & service design and user research.

Blending creative innovation with the power of insight to exceed results is what I do best.

Described as a product design strategy “game-changer”, “visionary”, “ideas guy” and “bloody nice chap”, I've reached 100s of millions of people with my work, worldwide. At Google I led design for and released 3 ground breaking products and features at Google I/O. During my decade at Google I worked on Google Maps, Search, Android and more. Other tech and media brands I've worked with include Skype, BBC, NHS, Yahoo, Virgin, Reed and some fantastic start-ups you haven’t heard of (yet).

I work alongside a range of roles from developers, product managers to managing directors and CEOs. But most importantly, customers and users — the result? Outcomes that increases customer loyalty and meets commercial objectives consistently.

In addition to ‘hands-on design’, workshop and design sprint facilitation I am a consultant to C-Level executives on product design strategies. Working with brands already remarkable in their field who want to push for increased growth. 

★	25 years’ experience in digital technology design, including 10 years at Google

★	I speak designer, customer, developer, executive, sales, user research, team building, product development life cycle, project management and product manager. 

★	It feels like a lifetime ago, but I also hold a 1st Class BA in Interactive Multimedia. 

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► About Thunk –  Thunk transforms businesses with digital product design.

We're a bunch of vastly experienced designers and researchers whose focus is the design-led transformation of products and businesses. We deliver true value every day, and form meaningful partnerships with the businesses and organisations we work with. 

We do two things really well:

★ Design world class digital products and services.
Alongside your teams, we create, improve and reimagine the future, using our design-led processes to exceed desired outcomes.

★ Increase the design maturity of businesses and their teams.
With our decades of experience in improving design maturity within organisations, we take teams and companies to the next level.

We've worked with: 
Twitter | Reed | NHS | Farnell | Sensat | FINE+RARE | + Many More

Book a free consultation here https://calendly.com/thunkltd/intro-to-thunk

Rick Farrell

UX lead for designers and researchers building the next generation of tooling to empower Google's product teams to onboard, deploy, monitor and manage their services on Google Cloud.

UX Design Manager

Microsoft

Design director for the multi-disciplinary design teams that create the Visual Studio family of products for millions of developers worldwide; including Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio 2022, Visual Studio for Mac, Azure Lab Services and Azure Notebooks.

Principal Design Director, Visual Studio

Managed a globally distributed team of subject matter experts and design technologists to optimise the developer experience for the Visual Studio and Azure product lines across Windows 11, macOS and Electron based technologies. The team focused on building out tooling, libraries, documentation as well contributing directly to product code to ensure that products aligned to the original design intent, while adapting gracefully to the personalization and accessibility needs of our end users.

Principal Design Manager, Developer Division

DesignOps lead for the Developer Division; introducing best practices for tooling, design systems and prototyping across over 25 designers working in Redmond and remote locations on Visual Studio, VS Code and Azure developer products.

Senior Design Manager, Developer Division

Managed a team of 8 designers in Raleigh, NC and Redmond, WA, supporting a product organization of over 100 PM's across Azure Boards, Repos and Pipelines (CI/CD) feature sets. 

Introduced briefs, process and design systems to a legacy product team, including adoption of Figma and shared team component libraries. Piloted usage of Figma across Microsoft, including speaking and sharing best practices at internal events, facilitating over 1,000 users within the Visual Studio, Windows, and Azure product teams to move to one centralised design tool.

Senior Design Manager, Azure DevOps

Design and prototyping lead for Skype integration on gaming and entertainment products, focusing on Xbox One and casual gaming. Lead designer for the UWP powered iteration of Skype for Xbox One, as well as managing the design team that shipped the v1.0 product of Skype for HoloLens - including a successful deployment to the International Space Station.

Senior Designer, Skype  Gaming & Entertainment

Design lead for Skype and Lync web applications, integrating rich audio, video and text-based communications into Microsoft's consumer and enterprise properties on the web focusing on Office 365, Outlook.com, Dynamics and OneDrive.

Senior Design Manager, Skype Web Experiences

Partnered with first and third party hardware vendors to explore how future Skype and Lync experiences could adapt across SaaS, high-end conferencing, consumer electronics and automotive platforms.

Senior Designer, Partnership Experiences

User experience lead for Skype on mobile devices; Windows Phone, Android, iOS and BlackBerry in both smartphone and tablet form factors.

Senior User Experience Manager, Mobile

Lead a world-class team of 12 interaction and visual designers defining the Skype and Qik experience across iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, BREW, WebOS, MeeGo and Windows Phone platforms, on all form factors.

Recognized by Apple in 2013 for Skype on iPad being the most downloaded iPad application of all time.

Design Lead, Mobile

Working with carriers, hardware vendors and other partners as a senior designer creating and defining the interaction design and user experience for Skype on mobile and hardware devices including:

 • Skype for iPhone
 • Skype for Nokia N900
 • Skype for Symbian
 • Skype Lite for Android
 • Skype on LG NetCast HD televisions
 • Skype on Panasonic VIERA® HDTV
 • Philips VOIP855 cordless phone
 • 'Skype Lite' J2ME client
 • 3 Skypephone, Skypephone S2 and Skypephone S2x

Senior Interaction Designer, Mobile and Platform

Application UI design for S60, UIQ, Maemo, Java and Windows Mobile devices.

Interaction Designer, Mobile

Ericsson

User interface and interaction design for Symbian and Java handset applications.

User Interface Designer

Three

User interface design and development for the "My 3" self-care handset portal across 3's entire device portfolio.

Handset Product Developer

Development of standards-based web interface and design for 3's customer acquisition and registration software, the customer-facing "My 3" self-care web portal as well as the internal corporate intranet.

Web Developer

ARTISTdirect, Inc.

Working directly with artists and talent management to develop and design the online presence for Korn, Rage Against The Machine, Backstreet Boys, Monty Python, STEPS, Kenny G, Indigo Girls and Long Beach Dub All-Stars.

Senior Webmaster

Tamar

Lead designer for this start-up new media agency, in charge of production and development of Tamar's corporate client sites such as Endsleigh Insurance, J Sainsbury plc and leading city law firms.

Web Designer

Wick Hill Associates

Content development for the Wick Hill corporate web site, liaising with teams in both the UK and European offices.

Consultant

Application, network support and maintenance for internal users.

MIS Support

Sales processing, customer services and marketing administration duties.

Sales Administrator

Mark is an experienced design leader with over 20 years background creating end-to-end experiences for web, cloud, mobile, desktop and consumer electronics platforms.

During that time, he's collaborated with designers, artists, product managers and developers to deliver compelling and user-friendly application experiences across multiple form factors and interaction modalities - be it mobile phones, tablets, desktop computers, augmented reality, smart TV's or game consoles.

Starting off as a self-taught designer, Mark has been fortunate to have a career where he's solved problems as diverse as entertaining hordes of teenage pop fans, helping millions of consumers communicate with their loved ones over video, helping NASA to collaborate with astronauts on the International Space Station and more recently, changing the way that design operates at Microsoft with his pioneering work in adopting Figma and design systems internally.

taplio

The Battle

Rick Farrell

Mark McLaughlin

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