Portfolio | Case studies and writing
I’m interested in how people move through digital environments. Where they start, what draws them forward, where they get stuck, what makes them stay.
LM-W-0062026Live
A release pipeline and hosted MCP server that take MotifSpec’s specifications to every project at once, so anyone can prototype in the design system with one prompt and be held to the same rules as production.
LM-W-0052026Live
GA4 reporting for Ara that followed prospective students from a campaign link to a completed enrolment, so marketing could see where people dropped out while recruitment was still running.
LM-W-0032026Live
A region-aware consent layer for ara.ac.nz that controls every analytics tool on the site, and fails to the strict version whenever something goes wrong.
MotifSpec’s MCP server worked in Claude the first time I added it. Gemini said it had trouble connecting. Once it connected, the same kind of request showed how far the design system bends beyond a portfolio.
We planned to move Ara’s analytics from GA4 through BigQuery to an Azure warehouse and Power BI. Costing it showed the data could simply stay in BigQuery for under a dollar a month.
A Clarity heatmap showed that 80% of clicks on Ara’s home page went to one arrow. Making each click move a full page of subjects brought that down to 25%.
Sample post: why MotifSpec 1.7.0 kept two unused tokens, and how the validator stops anything from using them.
Sample post: a one-line script in the head applies a stored theme before the first paint, and the toggle clears it when you match the system again.
| Area | What I’ve done | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Front-end engineering | Extended an Optimizely site of about 2,000 pages with C#/.NET, Razor and JavaScript: reusable, responsive components and smoother editorial publishing | A two-column Razor block; newsroom WYSIWYG improvements |
| API integration and course discovery | Connected curriculum data to programme search, improved back-end filtering, and diagnosed integration bugs across the CMS, APIs and SQL-backed services | Campus-aware course search; a SQL query defect investigation |
| UX, navigation and information architecture | Made information easier to find across the website and student app, from city-based course filters to centralised content navigation | Explore Ara navigation in MyDay; contextual page links; the subject slider |
| Analytics and consent | GA4 and Tag Manager tracking, conversion-path reports and subject-level events; behavioural analytics to find friction; region-aware consent that fails safe | Enrolment funnel reporting in GA4, Measurement under consent, The slider that moved one subject at a time |
| SEO, accessibility and web quality | Found site-quality issues and keyword opportunities with Acquia Web Governance and Semrush; fixed metadata, broken links and heading order; set image-optimisation practice | Ara website governance and optimisation |
| Current development | Design systems with documented components, design tokens and contrast checked at build time; interactive 3D with React, Three.js and GLSL | MotifSpec, Pinned planet |