Who?

Hi, I'm Ben. I'm a web developer who likes making websites that give people the information they need as quickly as possible. I used to claim to be a front-end specialist but I've always been more than happy to dig into the server-side too, so I stopped pigeonholing myself. I like design systems and have talked about building them in my corner of the BBC.

I am a Staff Web Developer for Shopify, where I work on their Polaris design system.

Previously I was the Technical Lead for bbc.co.uk/programmes. My team and I spent our time migrating the site to be hosted on AWS, fully rewriting it in the process. The project is developed in the open, you can see how well that is going by checking out their GitHub repo.

When not making websites I enjoy snowboarding, martial arts, watching rugby and sleeping in.

What?

Websites mainly. Over the years I have worked on:

• polaris.shopify.com — Still kinda new to this (May 2018 – Present).
• bbc.co.uk/programmes — Implemented a redesign utilising responsive design and formulated a standard design system, followed by migrating the codebase to use Symfony (Jan 2013 – April 2018).
• divide.com — Sole developer for their marketing website (Jan 2012 – Dec 2012).
• itv.com — Various projects creating websites for a number of television shows (July 2010 – Dec 2011).
• gm.tv — Implemented a site-wide redesign and ongoing maintenance (July 2008 – June 2010).

When I lived in the UK I was a regular volunteer coach at codebar London.

Where?

I currently live in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to May 2018 I spent 10 years living in London, UK.