I’m an interaction designer and GDS trained design assessor. I have good knowledge of the GOV.UK Design System, Service Manual and Style Guide. SC cleared.

Here’s my story:

When I was 16 years old, I wanted to design logos and websites.

I had an eye for design, but lacked the practical skill to do it. So I ended up going into frontend development which was more technical.

But most of the designers I worked with gave me complicated and inaccessible designs to implement.

Sometimes I’d suggest changes to simplify the design and improve accessibility. But no matter how solid my rationale or how simple my solution, I couldn’t convince the designers to make changes.

I felt frustrated having to go back to my desk to implement designs which were harder to build, inaccessible and slow to load.

As a result, I started to believe that designers only cared about aesthetics.

In 2014, my wife and I had our home renovated just in time for the arrival of our first baby. But three weeks into a new six-month contract, I was let go. I’d never had so much responsibility and so little money.

But I got a new contract as a UX prototyper at Just Eat, the UK’s leading takeaway delivery service.

Prior to this role I wasn’t part of the design process. So by the time designs were given to me to implement, it always felt too late to give feedback and suggest changes.

But at Just Eat I was embedded in the design team where I could influence solutions from the start.

To my surprise, the designers there weren’t just focused on aesthetics; they cared about UX. We did user research, ran A/B tests and tracked performance.

I worked closely with Mark Jenkins, the lead designer. But he wasn’t like the other designers I had worked with before. He listened to what I had to say and valued it. He advocated for doing the most basic thing, doing it quickly and learning. He didn’t fuss over pixels.

Most importantly, he showed me that, not only was it possible to be a designer like this but that it was better to be a designer like this.

For example, we redesigned the checkout journey by using the most basic and accessible solution. The result was an increased conversion of 5% – 37,000 orders a week.

Mark also encouraged me to start a blog. And 2 of my early posts went viral on Hacker News (multiple times over).

I realised I wasn’t alone and that others resonated with my design philosophy.

Now I’m trying to be the designer I wish I got to work with when I was a dev.

You can find links to my newsletter and courses below ↓

It’s 2026, we’re all worried about AI taking over design but check this UX out...

Let me explain:

We stayed over at Blackwood Forest over xmas.

When we arrived, I plugged the car into the electric charging point.

After it was charged I tried to release the charging cable.

But it was stuck.

I spent a few minutes scouring the charging point, but I couldn’t find anything:

- No button.
- No feedback.
- No instructions.

Luckily the service desk was still open, so I went to ask someone there.

The lady came out to help me and pointed to this 1.5mm bump.

You had to hold your finger on the bump for a few seconds to release the cable.

But think about this:

Someone, somewhere, on earth, designed this “button”.

Not sure what led to this design but I would guess:

They wanted to have a really "sleek" and "minimalist" charging point.

You can’t have obvious looking buttons ruining all that.

What about the 3 second delay?

Because it doesn't look like a button and doesn't move, they might have thought people would accidentally touch the bump and accidentally release the cable.

It’s certainly possible.

Of course, they could have just designed a button that looks and behaves like a button.

It’s not hard, so why do so many designers screw this up?

Adam Silver

Talks about #ux, #uxui, #design, #webdesign, and #webdevelopment

Designer | I talk about designing products that are radically simple and accessible to use.

Last week I presented some flows I'd been redesigning to a room full of product managers and stakeholders.

The goal was to show how you can use patterns from the GOVUK Design System (and a few of my own) to design complex case working systems -and to encourage other feature teams to follow the same patterns.

It did that.

But it also did something I didn’t expect.

Toward the end, the conversation shifted to the value of designing in code and creating HTML prototypes over Figma.

So yesterday I sent a newsletter to 9,714 designers explaining some of the benefits of designing in code (including some unexpected praise).

If you fancy a read, I’ll pop a link below:

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Here you go...

Use the code "FORMSL" when you check out to get $100 off.

https://formdesignmastery.com

p.s. enrolment is only open until 9 September.

"Will AI make you a better designer?"

It's not that simple.

It comes down to how good you are at design in the first place.

If you’re good at design, you’ll ship good design faster.

If you’re bad at design, you’ll ship bad design faster.

In short:

AI is an accelerator.

But there’s a problem:

AI tends to design digital products badly. Because it references what most designers and engineers create.

And what do most designers/engineers create?

Slow, bloated, inaccessible products that use React and Tailwind.

That's the average. 

And that's what AI knows.

But it takes craft to do the opposite.

To build user-centered, accessible products that work on any browser, on any connection.

AI won't give you that craft.

You have to bring it yourself.

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