About Paul Smith

Hello my name is Paul and I am a public focussed designer and coder based just outside my rainy home town of Manchester, England.

Paul stood in front of a room full of people presenting about the DWP Design System

I build products and services based on evidence helping organisations respond to the behaviours & raised expectations of users.

I have over 20 years experience, working in agile, multidisciplinary service and product teams.

I'm a designer with a strong technical & software engineering understanding as well as team management skills.

My primary areas of expertise are:

Interaction Design (UX Design, User Experience Design).
Product Design (Visual & User Interface Design)
Frontend Development

Using these skills I have often worked as Lead Digital Designer for large public and private organisations such as The BBC, Manchester United, The Department for Work and Pensions, The Ministry for Housing and many high profile digital and product agencies.

Work history

A brief rundown of my recent career history. Full details can be found on my LinkedIn profile.

2021 until Present

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

Senior Interaction Designer with the 'Planning Data Team' team working to make planning and housing data easier to find, use and trust.

Lead designer on planning.data.gov.uk and helping the team meet the service standard and go from Alpha to Beta.

2019 until 2021

The National Lottery Heritage Fund

Paul spent two years as lead designer at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, where he helped to build their new in-house digital service design team.

2017 until 2019

Well Pharmacy

The first designer hired for a newly established digital department within the UK's largest independant pharmacy business.

Working with senior leadership, Paul helped to hire the team, shaped their approach to design and to quickly build and test their riskiest ideas and assumptions with users.

2015 until 2017

The Department for Work and Pensions

Front-end Development for DWP Digital (formerly Business Transformation Group) within the Department for Work & Pensions.

Paul worked within a large multidisciplinary design team. Following 'User Centred Design' principles to design end-to-end services that benefit both citizens and government.

Working closely with the Government Digital Service (GDS) and other lead Front-end developers within the department to champion progressively enhanced, accessible and efficient digital services.