Having cut his consulting teeth as a Senior Consultant at Optimal Usability, New Zealand’s first usability consultancy, Blake joined forces with co-founder Steve Alexander to establish Purple Shirt as a dedicated UX Consultancy. Blake has since been at the cutting edge of UX research leading some of New Zealand’s most innovative user research projects to uncover customer insights for product and service design. Blake has pioneered the use of emerging technologies such as AR and VR to revolutionise the way user experiences are tested and refined prior to significant investment. He is now one of New Zealand's leading UX research advisors and practitioners advising many of New Zealand's largest and most successful organisations.
One of Blake's early successes was when he was heavily involved in researching, testing and refining Air New Zealand's highly innovative Skycouch proposition. He then went on to support the research programme that underpinned the airline's Inflight entertainment system and onboard wifi where he tested prototypes during scheduled flights and using a full-scale cabin mock-up. He then went on to leverage VR technology to test the physical functionality and service design of a proposed property for a tourism hostel business. This led onto a cutting edge research project for the physical build and service design of the new Auckland Airport terminal leveraging a 3D interactive prototype to walk participants through the passenger experience from check-in and departure, to landing and the arrivals hall.
Blake lives in Auckland and outside of work his focus is on fatherhood, friends and his own personal development... plus getting as much time as possible on the water to surf and wingfoil.
