Our Team
Flow’s experienced team have skills in graphic and UX design, user interviews, front-end development and copywriting. We even have a magician, a parenting expert and an extreme skateboarder.
Phil Barrett
Director
Phil was one of the founding directors of Flow UK. He has over 15 years of interaction design experience, more than 10 of which have been in user experience consulting. He has worked on UX projects for the BBC, Standard Life, Vodafone, Lastminute.com and TV Guide. He has a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Science Communication. His South African experience includes Metropolitan, Old Mutual, MXit, Santam, Mix Telematics and EMSS.
Rian van der Merwe
Director
Rian specialises in helping teams develop their digital product strategy, and making that strategy real. This involves designing and building products that deliver measurable business results. But it also means helping teams get better results by designing software development processes that work for the team. Rian spent 5 years working in the UX team at eBay in Silicon Valley. In South Africa he was product manager at Yola.com and Head of UX for Kalahari. He blogs and tweets regularly about design and technology, and he is also a contributor to Smashing Magazine.
Debré Barrett
Director
Debré is an experienced web producer, interaction designer and usability tester, with over six years working for the BBC. She has also worked for ITV news, Channel 4 News and IOL.co.za. She has a BA in Journalism from Rhodes. Her South African experience includes MWEB, OLX, Primedia, Leisure Books, Clickatell and Old Mutual. She can help you with web copy and content strategy.
Angela Hutchison
Account manager
Angela has worked extensively in research with TNS and Synovate, most recently heading up the Unilever account for product testing in South Africa. She has also worked as CRM manager for IOL, managed the Musica online e-commerce site and produced websites within a digital agency. Angela has a Business Science degree in marketing. She looks after Flow’s client relationships, and also coaches in communication (and parenting) skills.
Philip Langley
User experience designer
Before joining Flow, Philip worked at 24.com redesigning their flagship site News24, together with major sites Fin24, Wheels24 and Channel24. He has also designed apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android devices, as well as various mobile websites. Philip’s imaginative designs of our augmented reality future have been featured in Stuff Magazine.
Chris Metcalfe
User experience designer
Chris’s background is an unusual mix: entrepreneur, industrial designer and magician. He started out as a magician, learning how to work with human perception to deliver delightful and surprising experiences. He went on to build and run a successful events management company for 6 years.
Chris returned to his studies and completed a degree in industrial design from Cape Peninsula University of Technology, where he graduated top of his class. He was awarded a scholarship to study interaction design for six months at Malmö University, in Sweden.
Jennifer Poole
User experience designer
Jennifer studied English, Anthropology and Psychology at the University of Cape Town, and went on to complete a Masters in Linguistics. She worked at The Jupiter Drawing Room in Cape Town before embarking on a freelance career that included copywriting, editing, research, administration and event management. In 2011, Jennifer co-founded Lessfuss Assistants, an online personal assistance service, where she gained experience in product and website design, managing employees and client service. She started at Flow with little experience in UX design, but has demonstrated great skill in interviewing users and a real knack for thinking about design from the user’s point of view.
Alex Maughan
User Experience Designer
Alex is an interaction and visual designer, as well as an experienced front-end developer. His humanities background in Linguistics, Anthropology and Philosophy is largely to blame for his nerdy interest in user experience design as well as his more general obsession with the subject of design within different cultures. He writes future-friendly code that both adapts to the disruptive device and browser market, and is scalable for large teams to manage and iterate over extended periods of time. His interest in responsive design has helped the Flow team to embrace the mobile-first philosophy.
Nicol Ronga
User experience designer
Nicol became interested in user interface design at a young age, creating skins for mid-90s games and software. He went on to study Multimedia and Computer Science at the University of Pretoria, then visual communication at Open Window. Before joining Flow, Nicol designed share-trading and foreign exchange trading interfaces at Purple Capital. His Flow projects have included Mxit, Old Mutual and Sun International.
Melissa Voigt
Assistant & au pair
Melissa previously worked as a special needs facilitator in a school, and also has experience in the sales and hospitality industries. She has studied drama, copywriting, sociology, education and film-making (she once worked on a horror movie). As assistant and au pair, she keeps the office running smoothly and the Flowsters’ children happy. She also makes a mean cappuccino.