James Boardwell

Photo of me in Chatsworth House gardens
In Chatsworth House gardens

I design and develop digital products and services and I’ve done this since around 2000 for organisations including the BBC (in between work on current affairs programmes), Channel4, Science Museum and Hutchison Whampoa / INQ and more recently at the Co-op and in UK GOV for DfE and MoJ. In between I’ve also worked as a Snr Lecturer in Design at Sheffield Hallam (p/t). Right now I’m a Service Owner at the Ministry of Justice working on delivering digital first services for the Probation Reform Programme.

There are a few examples of some work I did at Rattle, an agency me and a few others built to do interesting and useful things with web technologies. One of the founding things we built was Folksy, a place for crafters to sell their work. We had ideas that it would be at the vanguard of Internet of Things electronics, but it took a different direction and you’re more likely to find wooden penguins and hats for dogs than the next gadget.

Writing and presenting

Some of what informs my thinking and why I ended up doing what I do, is captured in this talk from 2018. And this blog post from 2017 (whilst at the Co-op) covers the reason for small sample sizes in product or UX research.

Training in product development and also user research

I offer training in product management and user research, supporting organisations to build teams and capabilities and, in particular, to help the focus on identifying product value. I’ve done this training and mentoring for teams at Bulb, Booking.com as well as IDEO.

DM or message me, below, to chat about potential work.