This is the weblog for Dan Murray, a  web designer, developer, and consultant from Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. My web experience dates back to 1999 and my skillset has grown steadily since to include a love of usability, well thought-out design, object-orientation and technologies like Ajax, PHP5 and MySql. My commercial experience as a freelancer dates back to 2005, and I worked as part of the team with several companies before that. I am a graduate of the wonderful University of Hull.

This blog is exclusively work related, and I use it as a method to let clients both old and new know of when I am available for work. Even if there’s not been a posting in a while, it may be worth giving me a call as I tend to get booked up a few months in advance.

If you’re after the full agency service, Gravy can service any web project for you, large or small..

Web Development

I begun my career programming and learning the nuts and bolts and the techniques of application design with tools like TurboC (yes it was that long ago) which naturally evolved to Object Oriented and User Interface programming and design. This then evolved into web app design which allowed me to roll up all the skills I’ve picked up over the years and translate them into some excellent examples of application design.

Today I specialise in developing on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP) stack particularly using Object-Oriented PHP5. I’m a big believer in pragmatic, elegant design with a good commercial reason for doing so. You won’t find bodges or unnecessarily complicated design in my projects.

User Experience (UX)

I have used the past year to build on my experience and knowledge in the art of User Experience (UX) through innovative and intuitive design techniques to produce sites that users love to use and return to.

I’ve conducted qualitative usability workshops and research and spent one on one time with very helpful and patient guinea pigs users who have helped me and my clients effectively iterate and evolve their web application designs.

In real terms, this helps clients achieve better results through improved user stickiness, reduced bounce rates, increased user confidence and conversion to lead or sale.