About me

Hi, I am Javier Gala, a Senior User Experience Designer with 10+ years of experience defining online experiences. I am currently based in Barcelona but looking for a move to London in order to advance my career.

I am in love with my craft and always looking for ways to learn & improve.

Update

As you may see it’s been a while since the last time I updated this page, so most of the stuff here is not really up-to-date.

If you want to know my current whereabouts and review an updated professional description I’d suggest you take a look at my LinkedIn profile. You can also request a portfolio update at javiergala@javiergala.com.

Main skills

My specialties are Interaction Design and Information Architecture, but I have been doing research, ideation and usability evaluation activities quite often, both in traditional and Agile managed projects, and.

Secondary skills

I believe that a good User Experience Designer has to be some sort of “Digital Renaissance” man, with a broad range of skills that allow a global approach to design issues.

  • Front-end coding: a good understanding of HTML/CSS and some practice with jQuery, PHP and WordPress.
  • Rapid prototyping: from mid-fi (Balsamiq/Omnigraffle/Fireworks) to hi-fi (Axure/HTML).
  • Cognitive psychology / behavioural economics: understanding how people perceive and take decisions.
  • SEO/SEM basics: creating services is just half of the equation, they have to be found.
  • Visual Design basics: Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks & InDesign.

Past Experience

Started my UX career at Telefónica I+D (R&D), the Research & Development branch of Telefónica, world’s third largest telecommunications company.

After leaving Telefónica I have been working at Infojobs (Spain’s leading job board), while doing some freelance work for local clients like MACBA and Bon Preu.

Highlighted projects

Telefónica allowed me to work at several large scale projects like Movistar Mi Mundo (Telefónica’s TV widgets) and Terabox (Telefónica’s cloud storage) among others, but most projects these last years were in the UK under the O2 flag, like Giffgaff (O2’s MVNO, which received the Forrester Groundswell Award 2010, “Most Innovative Community”, and was finalist for Marketing Society’s Brand of the Year 2010 ) and O2’s eHealth services.

There were a lot more, you can find some of them at my portfolio.

Going a little more personal

I am kind of your intellectual-geeky type, I love good films, literature, exhibitions, sometimes theater… but then I like videogaming, hardware, gadgets… I have this dual-nature where I am very interested into people and technology (engineer by education but always into psychology, sociology and the like), and how they behave and work while interacting with each other. And I have a sense of humour, sometimes sophomoric, sometimes pythonesque, and usually dry.

Extra info

You can find more info about me on the net:

Need some more info about me?

Just contact me and I will see what I can do.