FRONT - A Strategy, Design and Technology Studio

So why start by talking about our people? Well, looking from the outside, its easy to judge a studio on the quality of the end product but much harder to really get a sense of what the people there are like - which is what really sets one studio apart from another.

Let’s start at the beginning - Front wouldn’t be where it is today without the talent and hard work of our team. When Jamie and I started the company in 2000, I didn’t appreciate just how important having great people around you would be. Well, I do now. Having an experienced, capable and motivated team is what lets us do great work and I’m really proud to work with the people at Front. We’ve learned lessons along the way, everybody does, but have come on in leaps and bounds through the talents and hard work of our team.

To demonstrate the company’s commitment to our team, Front is working towards the Investors in People standard.  IIP is a scheme that will help us improve how we develop our team in a structured way, helping to grow the company by helping our people to meet their own goals. We’re on track to be fully accredited by the summer, but some changes around learning and development will take a while to really get rolling. We’ll have more to say about this in the coming months.

Values, Attitudes and Behaviours

In working towards Investors in People, what’s interesting is how often the discussion comes back to team culture: what are the values, attitudes and behaviours that underpin the way we work together and with our clients? Core values include:

• continous improvement
• customer value
• collaboration
• to foster experience and learning
• one team
• creativity and problem solving
• pride in our work
• integrity

This is something that we might explore in more detail in another article.

New Experiences, Views and Capabilities

There have been quite a few changes in the team over the last few years; former colleagues have gone on to do amazing things - starting their own companies and helping other agencies to grow and prosper. We’re grateful to everybody who’s helped us along the way.

We now have an experienced, resourceful team and we’ve broadened our skills to cover not just web design and development, but also user experience design, service design, project management, usability testing, measurement & analysis and crucially, post-project support. It’s very exciting to be able to take on such a wide variety of problems and challenges and know that we can do an exceptional job for our clients.

Let me introduce our team…

Paul McKeever, Managing Director (Me!)
I co-founded the company with Jamie in September 2000 and have an incredibly diverse role leading the team here. I’m involved in every project through the senior supplier role, which means ensuring that projects are progressing towards expected outcomes and that things are going well in terms of quality and timeliness.

I’m a professionally qualified project manager (Prince2 Practitioner), and am working on a research project to complete my Master’s based on the idea of co-creation of value (some of the theory behind how online communities create value).

Jamie Neely, Creative Director
Jamie leads the studios creative output and specialises in user experience strategy / design, information architecture, storyboarding and the development of creative concepts.

During a project Jamie will take a keen interest in linking a company’s strategy to the experiences it offers consumers online through a clear design approach. Project interests also include brand development and the creation of appropriate visual language.

Paul May, Business Development Manager
Paul has over 10 years experience delivering media and business projects having worked for several Dublin agencies along the way and spent two years with global consulting firm Accenture.

Paul gets under the skin of our clients and their companies, to understand their consumers, markets, competitors, challenges and opportunities. It’s this understanding that helps us develop and implement strategies to delight their customers: Paul makes sure that what we deliver is solves the right problem. He’s also the guy to talk to if you’d like to hire Front.

Patsy Lagan, Project Manager
Patsy is a dedicated project manager with Front. Patsy coaches and guides the team to ensure work is delivered on time and in budget. Patsy is a lapsed software engineer, having previously worked in technical roles at Keysoft Entellect in Sydney and Invest Northern Ireland. Patsy holds an MSc in Management and Organisation (which comes in handy) and is a registered Prince2 practitioner. We heart Patsy.

Katie Edwards, Client Services Manager
Katie is responsible for all of our post-project services; she makes sure that the work we deliver (and our relationship with the client!) gets better and better and better. Katie has delivered a wide variety of projects in her own right including infrastructure setup, data migration, CRM rollouts, service management and training. Katie is a registered Prince 2 Practitioner and is qualified in ITIL Service Management.

Arlene Kline, User Experience Consultant
Arlene is our dedicated user experience specialist. Arlene works with the team to help us craft great usable and accessible sites.  Other areas of expertise include site evaluations, usability testing and content development.

Prior to joining FRONT, Arlene worked for a well known usability agency in London, and as an independent user experience consultant.

Adrian Dugan, Server-Side Developer
Adrian is an experienced developer and delivers robust, working software using agile methods. Adrian’s core skills are in developing bullet-proof applications which sit at the heart of organisations - everything from e-commerce systems to bespoke content management tools. Adrian previously worked for a large e-commerce company, and developed many of their core systems. Adrian loves object oriented Perl.

John Rowe, Server-Side Developer
Hailing from New Zealand, John’s broader life experience and passion for technology lend themselves well to delivering web applications at Front. John applies great core coding skills alongside his passion for user centred design; working closely with others in the team to translate business problems into useful applications. John, like most people from New Zealand, isn’t shy and likes a pint now and again.

Charlie Neely, Client-Side Developer
Charlie leads our client-side development, working closely with designers, server-side developers and content producers to build sites in clean, standards-compliant HTML, CSS and Javascript. Front’s approach to building sites is to rapidly prototype working solutions, capturing feedback along the way - Charlie is central to this process, bringing it all together. Charlie has substantial expertise in both web standards and rapid prototyping, ensuring that the websites that we build can be widely accessed across a range of browsers and devices.

Warren Sangster, Flash/Flex Developer
Warren is a versatile developer but focuses on delivering rich internet applications using using object orientated Flash and Flex. Working closely with both the design and development team, he brings a deep understanding of both creative design and motion while staying ahead with technical developments within the Flash platform. Warren has been instrumental in helping develop and test our own re-usable AS2 code base that helps us spend less time re-inventing the wheel and more time focusing on the “special bits” of each project.

Eamonn Murphy, Designer
Eamonn works closely with Jamie to craft core design concepts for our sites and has core skills that range from idea generation, content production and animation. Eamonn is a graduate of the excellent Interactive Media Design degree at the University of Ulster.

Jordan Moore, Designer
Jordan Moore is a talented young designer with a passion for clean, sensible design and web standards. Jordan has worked for many of Front’s key clients, including BBC and Carte Blanche Greetings. Jordan also graduated from IMD at the University of Ulster.

Gareth Dickey, Designer
Gareth Dickey specialises in organic, illustrative design and motion graphics and has worked with clients including Dublin City University and Ofqaul. Gareth is also (also) a graduate of Interactive Media Design at the University of Ulster.