Andy Fox

“Andy and I worked together in the discover/alpha for MOT Recalls at DVSA. From our first day on the project Andy was focused on collecting all the important information to inform the as-is and to-be journey. I have been impressed with the ease he introduced design thinking in the team and how thorough and detailed his work is. Andy took the time to share his knowledge and expertise in using new software with me, which highlights how good he is in collaborating with others and supporting his colleagues. He run workshops focusing on our assumptions and hypothesis, ensuring the team was working working together and had a good shared understanding of all the processes, the user groups, their needs etc. It has been a pleasure working with him, as he was sharing his views and solutions while at the same time was open to my (and others) suggestions. I found very useful the way he documented step by step the process of designing his designs. The service design space he created is one of the best I have ever seen in my life and will make the work of the next SD much easier. For all the above reasons, I am looking forward to working again with him in the future.”

“I worked with Andy to deliver the web application that was required to enable the unrestricted movement of goods vehicles between the UK and EU following the end of the Brexit negotiation period. As a team, we inherited an initial service design created by a team who had been highly constrained in the research they had been allowed to carry out. Andy was expected to deliver UI designs for a service where there was no background user research, the requirements were unclear, no user research/testing of the designed UI was permitted (until very late in the project) and which had to conform to the constraints of the Government Digital Service (GDS) design patterns. The end result was (is) a triumph of creativity and 'making a silk purse out of a sow's ear'... which was universally praised by both internal stakeholders and (when we were finally allowed to engage with them) the users. Andy led the creative team of user researcher, content designer and UI designer (Andy) and engaged directly with the primary stakeholders to drive out the web UI design in parallel with my own work gathering requirements. This could have resulted in chaos - not least because our respective stakeholders didn't appear to be aligned - but through a combination of hard work, sharing of information and constant communication we were able to pull the divergent and incomplete stakeholder views together into a unified whole. I cannot over-stress how important Andy's ability to design within the restrictions of the GDS framework was - in addition to using design elements in ways they were not intended to be used, he had to get the GDS 'design police' on board with the 'mis-use' of these elements, which was no mean feat. I would relish the opportunity to work with Andy on a project where his creativity had free-reign.”