Luke Brason

Hello, I am Head of User Experience at Grass Roots and have been working agency side in the New Media / Digital Marketing space since 1999.

I currently lead a creative team of 13 (comprised of graphic designers, animators, front-end developers, copywriters and information architects). My main drive is to deliver awesome user experiences. I am a very logical thinker and enjoy balancing logic with creative flair.

Most recently I have been working on digital projects for major financial, telecommunications and entertainment companies.

Away from work Luke spends as much time with his family as is possible – he also tries to get time with his Space Marine army!

Make your website user friendly with core building blocks

I tend to keep an eye on the UK’s most popular websites (Alexa is a good source for this data), as I know that my clients and their customers are likely to be familiar with their navigation features, tools and interfaces.

There is a risk that creating something ‘too new’ or ‘too different’ can give rise to negative user feedback, a recent case in point being Microsoft® Windows 8 lacking a Start button.

For most projects, delivery timescales are tight and there isn’t time to experiment with wild and fanciful navigation.

More importantly, users want to find things quickly. They don’t want to have to ‘learn’ how to use your site, it should be intuitive to them.

by Luke Brason 21 May 2013 09:44am 2 comments

Five steps for working successfully with creative teams

Want to get the best from your design studio?

Whether they’re newly hired or long-standing partners, here are five top tips, based on 15 years of agency-side experience, that will get you results, rapport and respect (and possibly even access to their stash of brightly-coloured confectionery).

by Luke Brason 06 March 2013 10:00am 2 comments

Are you responsive, mobile or app-based?

I was recently asked by a client “If time and money weren’t an issue, what type of mobile development would you do? Responsive, mobile or app?”

“All three,” I replied.

“Ok... And if you could have just one?”

Most of my projects (and particularly the one in question) revolve around brand communications and loyalty programmes, here’s my running order:

by Luke Brason 03 January 2013 12:10pm 5 comments

Interactive design? Do it with murder in mind

There are a lot of websites out there where you can see the 80/20 rule at work; when a website has a good look but just a small proportion of the site’s features and content is doing all the hard work. The rest is maybe distracting, irrelevant or even getting in the way of the customer journey.

Why does this happen? We all know that great stuff just works and consequently great design often goes by unnoticed - simplicity wins hands-down over complexity.

Twitter shows us we can all say more with less, and pictures engage us better than words. Look how image-based Facebook quickly displaced text-based sites, such as Friends Reunited.

I suspect that cumbersome or over-designed websites are often the result of the designer loving what they do… maybe just a little bit too much.

by Luke Brason 22 November 2012 11:37am 2 comments