I'm a laid back person with interests ranging from quantumn physics to politics. I like talking one-to-one to people about things to get their viewpoints and suggestions. I think it's a good way of getting to know people and learning things - two things I very much like. Since I can remember, I have had an interest in UX design - specifically I can remember being absolutely fascinated by a quiz by Tog about Fitts's Law when I was 12, and I still follow his blog to this day.
During my time at MMT, I've worked mostly on front end sites for global clients, moving on to more backend stuff for their biggest client. This included rewriting part of their payment system, which may have taken me until 05:00 one morning, but did get done.
I was only meant to be doing a placement year at MMT, but they liked me enough to ask me to interrupt my study to do a second year, and then again to stay on permanently, which I did. I also won an Award for Excellent Performance during the second year of my placement, when I took charge of the team I was on while the usual manager was on holiday.
I'm often provided for costs that include UI designs, which would be a basic set of wireframes with some descriptive text around them about how it would work, look, and how complex I expect the implementation to be.
The company has recently trusted me to write the best practice documentation for Kentico, which is the core of their business. Everything I've heard about this so far suggests that it's clear, concise and helpful. The other documentation I've created here has been equally well-received.
Over a 4 month period I developed a website and a mobile app from scratch, having had no real previous experience with Objective-C.
Being the only technical member of the team, I architected the built the app alone, fixing the web service that powered the old one in the process. The app was released to general praise, was on Apple's What's Hot list for a time and at one point got more than 800 downloads in a day.
Nobody on the team knew quite how the new UI should look, so I spent a lot of time thinking about this and implemented my design, which was used for the final version albeit with some new thumbnails.
Unfortunately because they couldn't afford me, I wasn't there to update it with new versions of iOS, the App is no longer available in the store.
I co-founded this company as a way to fund myself through university. It filmed and edited amateur violin concerts to be sold to the parents of the children who performed in them; and there was a very basic e-commerce website to facilitate this.
While the focus of the company was video editing, I also designed posters, leaflets and educational materials. This started when I redesigned a poster that my mum had professionally designed for fun and just left it open on her computer. She liked it so much that I did all future promotional materials for the company.
I spent most of my first year going way ahead of the material because my experience on A Level computing meant there was repeated material and I wasn't that interested in what was being set. During the second, I was much more relaxed about it, but payed more attention to the material.
| Module | Score |
|---|---|
| Internet Software Development | 100% |
| Object-Oriented Software Development | 90% |
| Data Structures and Algorithms | 73% |
| Database Design and Implementation | 68% |
| Module | Score |
|---|---|
| Programming in C | 92% |
| Computer Systems | 76% |
| Computational Modelling | 74% |
| Creative Client Computing | 73% |
For my A-levels, I decided it would be a good idea to take Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Computing. It decidedly wasn't; but I managed to get an A in Computing, despite it being the hardest thing I think I've ever done, and reasonably in the rest.
These come from the Award for Excellent Performance that I won at MMT while still on placement. They were officially anonymous, but I have been reliably informed that the first of them is from the CEO himself.
Thomas has worked on one of our toughest accounts, where rewards and appreciation can sometimes be quite meagre, and yet despite the tough daily challenge, has demonstrated enthusiasm, excellence in execution, been a valued member of the team and earned the respect and appreciation of his colleagues in the development team, client services team as well as that of the client.
Thomas has been with us for 2 years and is about to leave. I would like to see his progression over those 2 years recognised, from being the shy and awkward student who joined to being an integral part of the Accenture team, who headed up the unit while Sunil was on holiday without missing a trick. He's an excellent developer, calm under pressure and always willing to help a project manager in a tight spot! He's also great at switching his attention between multiple projects and responsibilities, and has been playing a key role in supporting the new students on the account.
Thomas has been a central part of the Accenture unit over the last 2 years and his development since joining has been really impressive. He makes a huge contribution to the team and can always be relied on to do great job, even when working in stressful environment.