Guest Post: An Interview with Sparck's Paul Bailey

As part of our Guest Interview series, we've been given the chance to speak to so many different and innovative businesses and individuals. From local businesses making waves in technology, to national companies making changes to the tech community, our posts have allowed us to connect and showcase some of the most promising talent from technology in 2018.

Therefore, when we got the opportunity to speak to Paul Bailey, UX Consultant for Sparck, as part of BJSS, we couldn't wait to get delving into his thoughts on the future of technology, the best ways to network in Nottingham, and how Sparck works to stay ahead of the curve.

Could you tell us a little about SPARCK and what makes it different to other digital design agencies?

SPARCK is the Digital Design Consultancy of ‘BJSS’ one of the largest independent I.T. Consultancies in the UK.

We design business strategies, services and products using a human centred design approach, whilst BJSS architects, builds, delivers and integrates enterprise IT. It’s this seamless combination of our creativity and BJSS’s technical know-how that makes us unique.

Since I joined in January, BJSS has reached over 1000 employees, celebrated its 25th Birthday and has won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category for its Enterprise Agile software delivery approach. It really feels like I joined at the right time.

What was it about SPARCK that first caught your attention?

I’d not heard about SPARCK until I bumped into Rob van Tol (UX Capability Lead at SPARCK) at a ‘Tech on Toast’ event.

I’d been looking for a new challenge for a while and wanted the chance to focus on User Experience. We met for coffee, he told me more about the role and it sounded like the perfect opportunity.

I suppose one thing that caught my attention once I started was the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience across the SPARCK team, everyone really knows their stuff and is keen to share.

I love your use of ‘not robots, just humans’ on the SPARCK website - how does the team at SPARCK ensure that the user is at the core of every design decision and the focus remains on the people at the end of the technology rather than the technology itself?

Put simply, we focus on outcomes, not outputs. A project we’ve just finished for a large .GOV agency based in Nottingham is a good example of this.

We were asked to explore ways of modernising an existing Government service through the introduction of mobile devices to replace a paper-based process.

By focusing on user research we gained a real insight into user needs as well a complete understanding of the service end to end and all the ways that different users interacted with it.

In 16 weeks we spoke with over 110 users across England, Scotland and Wales, held usability reviews with 8 prototypes and delivered a functional iOS app that was successfully deployed to early adopters.

To move to the next phase of the project we had to meet the ‘Government Digital Services Standard’ which is set of 18 criteria that the Government uses to assess the quality of digital services.

As well as gaining a great understanding of user needs and getting really positive feedback from the client and end-users, the project was approved by the GDS assessment panel and work will begin on a Beta stage later this year.
One of the best things for me about working on this kind of project is the feeling that the what you’re doing is making a really positive difference to the millions of people who use that service every year.

SPARCK has a lot of offices across the UK, even across the pond in New York! What makes your Nottingham office special?

We’re about to move into a brand new office just off Market Square, which is a great opportunity for us to shape our own space. We’ve been running workshops with the team to understand the needs of people working in an Agile way and having been looking at other digital agencies like IDEO for inspiration.

The building we’re moving into was actually designed by a renowned local architect called ‘Watson Fothergill’ and was the original Jessops department store, so we’re looking to retain some of this local Nottingham heritage into the final design. We’d also love to pay homage to a local pioneering woman in tech ‘Ada Lovelace’, perhaps naming our innovation lab or auditorium space after her. Once we’re all set-up we’ll be looking to connect with the Notts Tech community by holding events and workshops. The beer fridge location was the first thing to be been planned in.

As a UX designer, how do you balance creative and 'limitless' thinking with the practicality of developing a functional and valuable end product?

I’m not sure about ‘limitless’ thinking!

From a practical perspective I aim to make sure that the user needs and business needs are clearly understood, are being met and that everyone in the team is focused on this too.

Something I learnt from Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden’s book ‘Lean UX’ is that the best designers aren’t rock stars. Where I’ve worked previously the designers sat in a room by themselves and were expected to be come up with all the ideas with only limited contact with Stakeholders and no contact at all with Users. This doesn't produce the best work.

Working in an Agile way means that everyone needs to be involved in the design process. My job as UX designer is to provide fresh thinking, energy and to facilitate to get the best out of everyone.

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What measures is SPARCK taking to stay ahead of the curve for the future?

We’re really lucky to be a part of BJSS, they have over 1000 technologists, including a data scientists, cloud engineers, hundreds of software developers, solution architects, mobile developers, AI specialists, blockchain gurus and they help us understand the technologies limits and potential.

The future's not all about the tech though, it’s got to be imagined first!

That’s why we have regular lunch and learns/workshops where experts come to Nottingham from across SPARCK/BJSS to share their ideas and insight. In the last few months we’ve covered topics like Design Thinking, Machine Learning and BitCoin. This really helps to keep everyone up to speed with new ideas/developing technology and ensures we’re prepared for future challenges.

With the landscape of future technology continuously changing, what new innovations are you most excited about becoming mainstream?

Terms like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Blockchain have all become much more mainstream over the last year or two.

What excites me though is the potential of these technologies when they’re combined together with a great user experience. This opens the way for the rapid creation of completely new business models, products and services that haven’t existed before.

I heard the term ‘The 4th Revolution’ from a workshop with John Davies (BJSS Head of Technology Consulting) and to me that sums things up really well. It feels like we’re at the beginning of a massive digital transformation and for any designer interested in a human-centered approach, it’s a really exciting time.

What are your thoughts on voice or physically responsive UI?

Voice and physically responsive UI will become much more important in the near future as the devices that enable them become more commercial.

At SPARCK Nottingham, we’ve been experimenting over the last few month with the Microsoft HoloLens. We’ve found that designing a user experience using the Gaze, Gesture and Voice approach requires a very different way of thinking.

I also recently met with Professor Gary Burnett at the Human Factors Research Group at the University of Nottingham who’s conducting some really interesting research with Haptic Feedback and Natural Language Processing to improve the way people interact with digital devices in moving vehicles. The Natural Language Processing research was particularly interesting as it has the potential to improve the quality of my driving!

Could you describe Sparck in 5 words:

Human-Centered, Future-focussed, Agile, Inspiring and Fun.

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