About
I'm Laurence Knutsen. Lead designer and front-end developer.
For over 15 years I've been collaborating on the design and build of effective, accessible, user-centred, award-winning, solutions for screens, that bring about meaningful, impactful change and outcomes.
For nearly 10 years years I've been designing and building tools and systems that help people live better lives and be more productive in their professional environment, in the public sector for Maldaba. The majority of the work on this site is from my time at Maldaba.
Previously I designed and built systems for Wolters Kluwer UK, a global leader in the Legal & Regulatory and Tax and Accounting industries.
What I can offer you in my next role
My core skills are Visual Design, Front-end Development (the building) and ensuring the systems I've helped to create provide a great user Experience.adhere to allow the use to achieve their goals.
I designed using the principles of Mobile First and Responsive Web Design, with a User-Centred Design approach. I also encompass many of the more visual tasks associated with UX Design, including sketching, wire framing and prototyping.
I’ve been responsible for raising awareness, adopting an undercover UX approach, regarding the benefits of providing good experiences to customers by adopting a user-centred design approach. I'm a strong advocate of providing the best possible experience to the highest number of users through good accessibility.
I’m good at understanding problems and identifying the needs of users and have a keen eye for attention to detail, having previously studied engineering to degree level. I’m a good listener and communicator, having demonstrated technical equipment to company director level in a previous role. I’m happy to go the extra mile as is required, receiving an ‘Agile Brave Clear’ award from my peers in 2012 as recognition of my work. I was also named ‘Most Outstanding Colleague’ in 2007 when working as part of a technical product support team.
For my full work history please see my LinkedIn profile.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Selected clients
Recent clients for Maldaba include University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust, Coventry University, Homerton University NHS Foundation Trust, The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, The Humber NHS Foundation Trust and Together a leading mental health charity.
In a previous life at Wolters Kluwer a global publisher with nearly 20,000 employees, I designed and built the interfaces for software used by 29 of the top 30 Accounting practices in the UK, also used by the likes of HMRC, Rolls Royce, Lloyds Bank and BP, as well as industry leading Legal & Regulatory solutions.
How I got here
I've been a designer for most of my life. Haven't we all to some degree. Constructing various structures and vehicles using Lego, before most of the pieces became bespoke parts, and Meccano, with a few Airfix models thrown in for good measure. Then there were the dens in the garden and bedroom. I once built a cable car from Lego, some form of string/wire, and a fishing rod reel. It was to replicate the cable car scene from Where Eagles Dare, one of my favourite films. I think I was about 12. I was a sucker for some Sunday afternoon escapism, North by Northwest and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, being other favourites. At school it was art, and then technical drawing, which evolved into some CAD work many years later.
I created my first paid for site back in the early 2000s, and having travelled to Southeast Asia and Australia in 2002/3 on a working holiday VISA, moved to London not long after, specifically with the goal of working with the web.
I'm a self taught Web Standards advocate. I bought Dan Cederholm's excellent book Web Standard Solutions followed by Dave Shea's groundbreaking CSS Zen Garden book, having been so inspired by what I saw at the CSS Zen Garden, and the rest is history. Since then I've been designing using standards-based practices to ensure the best possible experience for all.