Ross Chapman

What I Do When I Lose

I'll have a difficult week. I'll lose a client, finances get tight and sometimes, there's not enough going on - especially in these early months. It's very easy for me to fall into a doom and gloom cycle and honestly, right now - it takes me a good day or

Fear of Success

There's a fear of failure and there's a fear of success. Pick one. Jodie Cook put it beautifully in Forbes. "Fear of success is the concern that once we achieve something, there may be associated suffering. When you sabotage your efforts for seemingly no reason, when you keep yourself playing

My journey

3 Considerations When Starting an Agency

I didn't aim to set out and create an agency last year. I got here through a mix of self discovery and the realisation that I didn't want to create a lifestyle business.

Create a Proof of Concept first

What's the best way to start an app these days? Say you have an idea for an app - maybe it's a new dog-walking service, or maybe a new kind of children's saving account. You know what it's about and the concept is relatively straightforward. What would you do next?

My journey

What I'm Stopping and What I'm Starting

Every December for the past few years, I stop some things and I start some things. I stop projects that aren't working out. I reduce a lot of interests and sometimes just kill some things that I've been thinking about for a while. Then I start some things. I wouldn't

Interview

State of Flow with Raymmar Tirado

I had a conversation with Raymmar Tirado, fresh off the State of Flow event, which looked incredible. To be honest, I had massive FOMO and made me even more excited to be going to the Webflow conference in November.

Advice

Execution is the Game

It’s impossible to have a good strategy poorly executed. That’s because execution actually is strategy.

My journey

My Experience as a Contractor

"What I needed was a situation where I could earn enough to cover the bills, create savings and all at a low effort whilst I put together the masterplan."

Notes

What excites me about No Code

The biggest agencies in the world are spending 16+ hours creating throwaway client presentations. What's the alternative?

My journey

Becoming an Entrepreneur

I shared previously my story of finding it hard to accept that I was a designer. Later, it was about being comfortable being called a facilitator. Now, it's about coming to terms with a new role.

My journey

Why I Quit

Two weeks ago, I called my employer to say that I was leaving. Here's why.

Work

Google Relay

Explore the future of sprints and accelerated collaboration.

Work

Hyper Island Design Principles Course

In the UX Upskill course, students learn how to develop many of the hard and soft skills they will need in the fast-paced world of service and product design.

Work

WWF My Footprint App

How might we make it a cultural norm to reduce your impact on nature?

Work

We Find Venues

What if you could make finding event space better?

Work

Wiggle Checkout

What if we could improve the conversion rate by addressing customer doubts?

Advice Featured

How to prepare for a Remote Design Sprint

A remote design sprint is a method of solving a critical challenge, as a team, in a remote context. Whilst it compresses months of work into just a few days, the clear benefit is that it capitalises on technology from the start. This enables teams to solve more complex problems

Advice

Adding structure to meetings

Activity lacking direction and decision-making? You need a leader. A few years ago, I was a Senior User Experience Designer at an eCommerce business. As part of my job, I would often get called into meetings for a ‘user point of view,’ as that was my key responsibility within the

Interview

The Importance of UX Research and Design

Sharing here a conversation between myself and Misato Ehara for The UX Review, where we talk all things UX Research and Design. Listen to gain my perspective of the importance of user experience research (as a non-researcher!).

Advice

Building Culture in a Remote First Company

From Day 1, obodo has been a remote first business. Whilst we are registered in the UK, our core team have been distributed in Europe - and it's worked. For those that don't know, our model right now is built upon freelance designers in Europe and LATAM. I believe freelancers

My journey

Restarting the Engine

Last December, as we were heading into Christmas, we found that projects would end or pause, ready to restart in January. But when we came back in January, I realised that it actually takes a monumental effort to "restart the engine" and how you shouldn't wait for perfect projects before

My journey

The 3 Changes I've Made Moving into Management

Here's an excerpt from a podcast where I talked about moving into a management position. You can listen to the original episode here, or scroll down further for the formatted article. Enjoy! Becoming Managing Director recently, there's been a number of things that I've had to change about myself and

My journey

My Journey in Product Design so far

Here are my product design career highlights (so far!) and some photos along the way.

Tools

Why I'm Using Contra for my Portfolio (and why you should too)

Great the portfolio of your dreams with Contra!

Advice

My 3 Stage Process for Hiring Great People

We're needing some more people to fulfil key roles as we scale with demand. I'm documenting what that process looks like, so I thought I'd share wider and see if it's valuable. Ultimately, I'll pick the best person for the job, but what criteria do I use and what does