Tom brings stability, structure, consistency and clarity to his team and work. A highly organised researcher, excellent at helping to see the wood for the trees. Brilliant at helping stakeholders focus on user needs and consider all the insights.
Camara Souleymane
Joint Head of User Research
NHS Test and Trace
Excellent team member, very knowledgeable about work / agile practices, UR, highly approachable, can be trusted to lead URs / achieve high quality stakeholder engagement. I really liked Tom's mentoring of junior members of staff, educating on agile practices, gifting his knowledge to others. Tom is one of our most highly skilled practitioners and he demonstrates his knowledge to others.
Krupar Suthar
Joint Head of User Research
NHS Test and Trace
From scratch, Tom set up a research planning/delivery cadence that struck a balance between the need to respond quickly to change, and uncover insights for longer term improvements. That made a huge difference in the team.
He worked well with every member of the team (and our stakeholders outside the team). Tom is open and approachable, he worked hard to bridge gaps, and adapted his ways of working to strengthen cross-org relationships when morale was at its lowest. He stepped up when it was needed. Tom's tenacious contribution to identifying/monitoring KPIs has put us in a strong position to ensure our decisions are data-driven.
He is always open to talking through problems and ideas. Tom is able to critique ideas fairly and kindly. He's a great communicator. Presentation of insights was always interesting and engaging. A real skill.
User research facilitation was excellent, worked hard to target people with access needs. I was really impressed with the time and effort he always put in to build trust with participants.
Tom was always interested in finding opportunities to improve how we work as a team, which I personally think is incredibly valuable -- and quite uncommon.'
Emma James
Lead Service Designer
NHS Test and Trace
Tom confidently presents to senior stakeholders and wider teams; user research planning has been really great, with all team members fully involved in determining focus and priorities for upcoming UR activity. His playback of user research findings has been extremely useful, distilling the key points. Overall Tom has really helped to raise the profile and importance of UR in making sure services & content meet our users' needs.
Sheila Nicadao
Senior Content Designer
NHS Test and Trace
Excellent rapport with participants. Always positioning and advocating user needs, subtly drawing discussion and debate back to the user need if it tends to wander into organisational objectives, working in Agile, excellent planning, professional and poised attitude to understanding people's experience of accessing COVID-19 help and services.
Jennifer Dawson
Senior Content Designer
NHS Test and Trace
Tom is such a great addition to our team and I'm going to miss working with him. His contribution to the way we work together and improving the user experience has been immense. Tom does everything well but I will highlight the following
Content design - He has helped shape and make testing content better for users. Recommendations from UR testing is always on point. He keeps us focussed on improving the user journey and experience.
UR usability tests and interviews - I'm in awe of Tom's skills. User testing is always well planned, well executed and played back in great detail. He is informative, encouraging, very patient and reassuring. He asks good and purposeful questions, never leading the participant to do or say what want to hear or see. I’ve worked with a few URs in my time but I can honestly say that I’ve learned the most from Tom.
Communication and presenting skills- Tom is a confident speaker and presenter. His playback sessions and show tell presentations are always clear, informative and engaging. It really helps the audience appreciate the work that’s involved and the issues that we’re trying to solve.
Workshops and other ceremonies - Tom introduced creative and interactive workshops that’s kept us engaged and has impacted our work greatly. I will miss him leading our UR planning sessions.' Lino BogaRios Lead Content Designer
Lino BogaRios
Lead Content Designer
NHS Test and Trace
All across the board from the research right through to the project direction and the level of presentation has been top. This was a great participant recruit…some great candidates…very smooth sessions…the preparations in advance really paid off…I appreciate the effort. Tom is an asset to have on a project.
Marianthi Vezertzi
Lead User Researcher
FutureNHS
Tom's training plan for UWE was exceptionally well thought out, pragmatic and beautifully presented. Due to our internal delays the client should be feeling a little neglected but through Tom's hard work they are really happy with our progress to date.
Vicki Angus
Senior Account Manager
Nomensa
I just listened to Tom's talk on the importance of 'No Blame Culture' in agile teams. He spoke eloquently and intelligently. Tom has an easy style, that he delivers with honesty and authenticity, and his expertise is so notable. I am very impressed.
Simon Norris
Co-founder Nomensa
Every time I get the opportunity to work with Tom, he's been amazing. Always offering to support outside of his responsibilities on the project, he's delivered three amazing pitches that I've been involved in, all being successful. A super calm, collected and confident presenter, Tom recently jumped on a GDS presentation with less than a day's notice, prepped his slides in a few hours and absolutely smashed it. Without Tom's effort, we wouldn't have been able to put together a comprehensive pitch for all three opportunities, playing a big part in our success and I always look forward to working with him!
Zakarias Bakouras
Bid Manager
Nomensa
Tom has shown clear and consistent leadership skills and a strong ability to work through complex and often unclear priorities with charm and skill.
Adam Bellagha
Lead User Researcher
NHS England
Virgin Media Ireland LOVED the IA workshop Tom ran this week. They've said that their stakeholders described it as the best workshop they'd been to in years. So glad Tom is going to be training others to help develop their workshop skills. Well done and thank you Tom.
Georgina Moriarty
Account Director
Nomensa
I have loved working with Tom on the Virgin Media Ireland IA project. Tom expertly designed, prepared and led two workshops in a way that ensured everybody involved from Nomensa and from VIE knew what they were doing, and felt at ease doing it. The workshops were a huge success from both sides, an example of what a successful workshop should be. Thanks Tom, I feel I've learnt a lot from working together on this.
Emily Trotter
Principal Experience Designer
Nomensa