I'm a versatile developer, programmer, maker, artisan, with a keen interest in delivering innovative ideas and creative visuals. As a creative developer for the past 24 years, I've worked on and delivered projects for mobile, tablet, web, VR, and real-world installations.
I've developed numerous prototypes and proof-of-concept apps, adapting to various programming languages and technologies as they have emerged. Whilst primarily a developer I've also crossed disciplines, working within the creative, concept, UX, and technology teams to explore the new horizons brought about by emerging technologies.
I'm available for contract work inside/outside IR35 emile@neurotech.biz
University of Plymouth
BSc (hons) Media Lab Arts, Interactive media
1996-2000
Grade - 1st
I currently work for Neurotech, a small company that uses technology to improve opportunities for marginalised communities. I bring my experience from working at AKQA to Neurotech where my role expands across creative, ux and development. I've developed the creative and UX flows for three projects this year. Working in Figma to develop ideas and app concepts before further developing some of them into Proof of concept apps leveraging Flutter and Unity 3D.
I am also available for contract work inside/outside IR35.
I joined AKQA in 2000 as their first creative developer (technologist) hire. I was responsible for creating interactive experiences in flash and director shockwave for web and CD/DVDs. I continued this hybrid creative developer role as new technologies emerged. Prototyping some of the first mobile and tablet experiences, working with VR headsets, Hololens & Magic leap. As well as working with IBMs Watson AI Rank & retrieve and Conversational services during beta and post launch. I worked on many brands and clients delivering technical solutions to creative ideas.
www.akqa.com
Built a POC Flutter app to explore seemlessly integrating a persistant AR view into the user interface of a mobile app built to educate patients diagnosed with epilepsy. The AR was built using Unity 3D with niantic sdk and integrated into fluter as a Unity-as-a-library package using the Flutter unity view widget.
Neurotech
I developed the backend services to the allow members of a private members club to review upcoming/past events, book tables and pay bills on site or remotely. This involved integrating DatoCMS, Salesforce, Comtrex, Sevenrooms and Stripe API's with Flutter Firebase cloud functions.
I built the Stranger Antenna mobile app for Season 3 of Stranger things. Bringing a unique experience to users in the US and Brazil where users needed to bring something metal near the phone to tune in the videos. I Improved a flutter plugin to support the magento meter to enable this.
AKQA
D&AD award Wood Pencil
Cannes Lion award Gold - Mobile and Innovative use of Technology
I worked on the synchronisation feature for MTV under the thumb mobile app, that allowed video clips on different devices to synchronise with each other. I did this for the Android app and Flash desktop experience. I additionally wrote a test package to deploy and test 80K-100K concurrent users.
For a VR/MR based brain training experience, I explored the use of spatial anchors to facilitate the placement of interactive elements within the real world to help understand the issues of switching between Virtual and Mixed reality scenes. Considering the benefits of isolation in VR vs connectedness with a 3rd party in the real world.
Neurotech
Within Talkback VR we developed multiple lesson based experiences requiring users to complete tasks in a specific order. To facilitate this I built a Mission manager toolkit to help design and track mission tasks and progress.
I leveraged Unity's scriptable objects to store mission tasks, added automatic json backups, and built custom tooling to test mission logic before being implemented into the final scene.
Neurotech
For an amazing artist, Chris Hawtin, I embarked on a passion project to develop an animated 3D world based on one of his paintings that narrated the back story of one of his characters. I leveraged Unity 3Ds recently built Cincemachine library and developed custom plugins to add key frames. Due to the complexity of the animation, I had to render frame by frame and compose the final result in Premier.
Using the datocms template as a starting points I've further developed this site with my own creative and content to showcase my work experience. This has involved initially developing in svelte4 and upgrading to svelte5. Migrating datocms models to support more flexible dynamic layouts and content. Additionally updating my knowledge of css, SSR, CSR and web practices and mobile & accessibility issues (WIP).
I developed an interactive javascript based infinity scroll effect to show that the creative concept that had been designed could work and would perform well on mobile and desktop web. Our (AKQA) web team subsequently built the final project making it even better using css animations. https://www.marv.com/past.html
I helped deliver many parts of the overal project using the custom web framework our web development team built, pre-react. I helped design and implement the overal flow control between sections of the app and the minigames being developed.
When AKQA won the Nikefootball.com website bid I took on the initial task of rebuilding and deploying the flash website using our methodologies and deployment practices. Our creative research and development team subsequently rebuilt the experience from the ground up. I then lead and oversaw the development for all Nike updates. delivering the sites monthly and yearly campaign content until flashes demise.
As a flash developer through 2000-2012 I built and managed various Nike and Top Brand flash websites at AKQA. This required delivering responsive layouts and components in 52 languages world wide. We developed and managed a proprietory flash framework built on MVC principles, leveraging dependency Injection, tracked using SVN (Subsquently Git) and deployed using Hudson (and subsequently Jenkins). This framework underpinned all AKQA flash projects for, Nike, BMW, Mini, McClaren, Fiat, Coca-Cola.
I joined a team delivering AR watch assets (gltf/usdx) for the IWC store to allow users to explore 3D watches via their mobile phone. I worked along side a 3D freelancer ensuring the webgl matched the original 3D assets.
I developed a webgl prototype for IWC to explore the creative concept for the launch of a new watch. I reviewed several webgl platforms (playcanvas) to manage the development and delivery of the experience.
The poc integrated html content seemlessly with webgl content, allowing watch configuration choices to be animated within the 3D view.
The creative brief for this project required us to be able to zoom into Team shirt to view the individual fibres that made up the specialised fabric of the shirt.
The resulting 3D scuplted shirt and bitmaps equated to an impractical 50mb bitmaps and 6million poly meshes. I developed a custom webgl shader to allow us to tile the fabric fibres and subsquently mask them into the appropriate areas of the model. This allowed us to realistically deliver the webgl experience within the Nike football mobile apps webview architecture.
I'm the sole creative and UX designer at Neurotech. I'm developing the Neurotech design system to support rapid development of Proof of concepts that can be continued through into production. I use figma components, variables and tokens to develop our initial concepts. I additionaly use Figma Slides to build our presentions.
I supported one of the many UX teams working across the Jio design system project. My role revolved around supporting the Lead UX during client workshops, capturing information and subsequently applying the UX design decisions across multiple layouts and components to ensure design consistency.
AKQA - User experience
My first User Experience role at AKQA supporting the the UX team developing the interface to allow users to create their own custom maps showing personal or public domain data sources provided by HERE.
AKQA - User experience