UX and user research consultant.
Based in Manchester.

The iTunes Music Store opens in the UK. Buying a single track, legally, becomes ordinary.

YouTube. Video stops being a download and becomes something a page just has.

Google Analytics goes free. Every client can suddenly see what users do, and opinion starts losing arguments to data.

BA (Hons) Design Futures, 2006 – 2009 · First Class

Twitter. Publishing collapses to a sentence, and brands acquire a channel they cannot control.

PAS 78. The UK gets written guidance on commissioning an accessible website, and buyers start asking for it.

iPhone. The web stops being something you sit down to.

BBC iPlayer. Television arrives on demand in the UK, and the schedule stops being the thing that decides.

Apple publishes iPhone interface guidelines. Mobile design gets a written standard rather than a house style.

Universal Search. Results stop being ten blue links and start mixing images, video and news.

Android ships and the App Store opens. Software becomes something you browse for on the device you use it on.

WCAG 2.0. Accessibility gets a version number procurement can point at, and starts appearing in contracts.

Spotify reaches the UK. Music becomes access rather than ownership, and subscription becomes a normal way to pay.

iPad, and responsive design gets its name. One product, many screens.

Instagram. Mobile-first and image-led, and everything else starts looking dated beside it.

The Equality Act. Reasonable adjustment becomes the frame everyone in the UK argues accessibility inside.

Caffeine. Indexing goes near real-time, and publishing cadence starts to matter.

2011

Siri. Talking to a phone stops being a novelty, and interfaces start needing an answer as well as a screen.

Bootstrap. Reusable components go mainstream, and every project starts from something rather than nothing.

Holo, with Android 4.0. Android gets a design language of its own instead of borrowing one.

Panda. Thin, mass-produced content stops working, and content quality becomes a ranking problem.

2012

Netflix reaches the UK. On demand becomes the default, and waiting starts to feel like a fault.

4G arrives in the UK. Mobile stops being the constrained version of a service.

The cookie law bites in the UK. Consent arrives as an interface problem, and every journey gains a banner in front of it.

Penguin. Bought links stop working, and SEO stops being something done to a site from outside it.

2013

BlackBerry 10 arrives too late. Enterprise mobile moves to iOS and Android, and every corporate estate has to follow.

The App Store passes a million apps. Discovery replaces availability as the problem worth solving.

iOS 7. Apple throws out the textures, and every client asks why their product still looks heavy.

Atomic Design. Teams get a shared vocabulary for the pieces, which is what makes a system discussable.

Hummingbird. Google starts reading meaning rather than matching strings.

Sep 2014 – Mar 2015

Material Design. Design systems stop being an in-house habit and become the way teams ship.

The GDS Service Standard. Government publishes what good looks like, and private-sector clients start quoting it back.

HTTPS becomes a ranking signal. Security stops being optional for ordinary sites.

Apr 2015 – Sep 2015

2015

Sep 2015 – May 2016

Apple Watch. Interfaces get small enough to force real prioritisation.

Apple Pay reaches the UK. Paying with a phone becomes ordinary, and checkout friction gets a new benchmark.

The mobile-friendly update. Not being usable on a phone starts costing traffic.

RankBrain. Machine learning enters ranking, and the rules stop being fully knowable.

Jun 2016 – Oct 2016

Oct 2016 – May 2017

Consumer VR arrives, and voice assistants reach UK homes.

Figma. Design moves into the browser, and the file stops being something one person owns.

The EU Web Accessibility Directive. Public sector accessibility stops being advice and starts being law.

Jun 2017 – Jan 2019

iPhone X. The home button goes, gestures replace it, and safe areas become something every layout has to know about.

Monzo and the challenger banks. A bank that behaves like an app resets what every incumbent is measured against.

The GOV.UK Design System. A public, evidenced, reusable system becomes something clients can point at and ask for.

GDPR applies. Consent, data and purpose become design decisions rather than legal small print.

WCAG 2.1, and the UK public sector accessibility regulations that reference it.

Mobile-first indexing. Google starts judging a site by its phone, not its desktop.

Jan 2019 – Oct 2019

Nov 2019 – Nov 2020

Folding phones ship. Screen size stops being a property of the device and becomes a state it is in.

Design tokens. Decisions become data, and a brand change stops being a redraw.

The first UK public sector deadline. New sites have to meet the regulations, and audits become a line in the budget.

BERT. Search starts handling the way people actually phrase things.

Nov 2020 – Mar 2026

Lockdowns move whole services online in weeks, ready or not.

Zoom and Teams become infrastructure. Video calls stop being a feature and become where work happens.

Utility-first CSS takes hold. The argument moves from how to name things to whether naming them helps.

The second deadline. Existing sites have to comply too, which is the one that reaches legacy estates.

Material You. Design systems start bending to the user rather than the brand.

Core Web Vitals becomes a ranking signal. How a page feels starts affecting whether it is found.

ChatGPT. People start expecting to ask rather than navigate.

The helpful content update. Writing for the algorithm stops working.

Smart glasses become a consumer product rather than a demo.

WCAG 2.2. Target sizes, focus visibility and dragging alternatives move from good practice to criteria.

Generative results enter search. The answer starts arriving before the click.

2024

Vision Pro puts spatial interfaces in front of a paying audience.

The EU AI Act enters into force. Transparency about what a system is doing becomes a design requirement.

AI Overviews. Search starts answering instead of listing.

2025

Apple's Liquid Glass. The first wholesale change to Apple's design language since 2013, and every product on it inherits the question.

The European Accessibility Act applies. Accessibility becomes a trading requirement, not a good intention.