Hugh Guiney
Hi, my name’s Hugh Guiney (🗣 GUY-knee). I’m a UX Developer, which means I design and code thoughtful digital products. I’ve worked with organizations of all sizes, from startups to SMBs to household names. In my spare time I build open-source software, play fighting games, and perform improv comedy.
Companies I’ve worked with
🏃♂️ Runkeeper
💚 Oxfam
🦁 Publicis Sapient
🏦 Citizens Bank
🎮 WB Games
👟 Reebok
📰 The Boston Globe
🏙 The City of Boston
Services
Development
- HTML5, CSS3, & JavaScript (ES6+)
- React— incl. Redux, Context, & Hooks
- Node.js
- Gatsby
- WordPress
- Shopify
- SEO¹ & Performance
Design
- UI/UX (Look & Feel)
- Information Architecture
- Components & Design Systems
- Usability/Accessibility
- Copyediting
- Logos & Brand Identity
- Responsive Design
The hughx Advantage:
🐖 Economical.
With traditional app development, there are two main phases: design and development.
First, the designer creates mockups—a series of pictures of what the app will look like. Then the developer translates those pictures into actual code. This duplicates the work of the designer, costing you time and money. Often the designer lacks technical knowledge. At best, this makes the developer’s job harder. At worst this means design revisions. Either way it means more time and more money.
There’s a better way. As a hybrid designer–developer, I don’t do mockups—only functional prototypes. That way you can feel what the product will be like, rather than just imagine it. And with fewer cooks in the kitchen, you get to launch and iterate faster.
♿️ Empathetic.
50% of the world’s population isn’t online yet¹, but they soon will be. As this happens, they will largely arrive by way of mobile, not desktop. And not on the iPhone 11, either—more like the iPhone from 2011. This means sites and apps designed for Westerners with the latest tech will break for the rest of the world.
I believe the Internet should be for everyone. I keep accessibility, performance, and user friendliness top-of-mind at every stage of development. This helps your product reach the broadest possible audience. It’s not just good karma, it’s good business.
🏛 Engineered.
Just because you’re moving fast doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice quality. Today’s MVP is tomorrow’s legacy codebase. Left unpaid, technical debt manifests as bottlenecks. New features start to break old ones. The app slows to a crawl, increasing bounce rate and costing you sales. Current employees get pulled away from product work to help onboard new employees.
Contracting with hughx is an insurance policy against code rot. Modular functions, unit tests, and detailed documentation all come standard. If your customers don’t thank you, your dev team will.
¹ Best practices only. I do not guarantee search engine ranking.
² Source: Statistics on ITU
REVIEWS FROM CLIENTS
Music-as-a-Service company; pre-clears songs for commercial use in apps & websites. Mostly work on new products across all stages ...
Music-as-a-Service company; pre-clears songs for commercial use in apps & websites. Mostly work on new products across all stages of lifeycle, from concept to final delivery. Developed novel algorithm to match Spotify tracks against internal library. Introduced UX research practices. Established front-end coding standards. Interviewed candidates. Architected modern, scalable, testable codebases. Engineering team quickly regarded my work as gold standard in company’s portfolio of products, becoming template for all new products. “Culture Award” recipient for contributing to positive work environment.
- Roles: API Design, Code Review, Content Production, Front-end Development, Interviewing, Maintenance, Requirements Gathering, Technical Writing, UI Design, UX Design, UX Research
- Tech: Git, GraphQL, JavaScript (ES6+), TypeScript
- Tools: Apollo, Balsamiq, BEM, Confluence, Figma, GitHub, Google Docs, Jira, Material UI / MUI, NPM, Node.js, React, Slack, Visual Studio Code, Webpack
RedBlue allows content producers to create “hypervideo” (interactive online video), such as choose-your-own-story films. This is achi...
RedBlue allows content producers to create “hypervideo” (interactive online video), such as choose-your-own-story films. This is achieved by annotating videos with time-based links and UI using our open standard, HVML (Hypervideo Markup Language). Hypervideo provides a more immersive experience than regular video, offering higher audience engagement rates, more rewatchability, better brand recall with ads, and a unique selling point for filmmakers. RedBlue is currently in the prototype phase. With a current team size of one, I handle everything from programming, to interface design, to marketing.
RedBlue:
- Roles: API Design, UI Design, UX Design, Frontend Development, Backend Development, Video Production, Video Encoding, Animation, Marketing
- Tech: JavaScript (ES6+), Web Components, HTML5, CSS3, MediaSource Extensions, MPEG-DASH, WebM, AJAX, Responsive Design, Git
- Tools: Jekyll, Polymer, Atom, Adobe Premiere Pro, GitHub, NPM, Facebook Ads
HVML:
- Roles: Language Design, Specification Writing, Frontend Development, Backend Development
- Tech: JavaScript (ES6+), GraphQL, XML, JSON-LD, RDFa, Microdata, HTTP, REST, Git
- Tools: React, Gatsby, Node.js, Jest, Istanbul, Travis CI, Codecov, GitHub, Atom, NPM
Named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2020, Flare makes smart jewelry that helps women get out of iffy situations by pressing a butto...
Named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2020, Flare makes smart jewelry that helps women get out of iffy situations by pressing a button to call for help. Worked closely with CEO on early-stage startup team to build “911 Services” feature. This feature connects users with emergency dispatchers and reports their location in real-time. Led development effort and assigned/approved work for direct report.
- Roles: Code Review, Front-end Development, Management, Project Management, Requirements Gathering, Technical Writing
- Tech: Git, JavaScript (ES6+)
- Tools: App Store Connect, BitBucket, CocoaPods, GitHub, Google Docs, Google Hangouts Meet, React Native, Slack, TestFlight, Trello, Xcode, Yarn