About this site - and me

UX by Example is a glossary that refuses to just define things. Every entry makes you do the concept, because that's how the idea actually lands.

Who's behind it

I'm Chris Daniels, a UX designer and frontend developer in Colchester, UK. The route here was not a straight line, which is rather the point.

It started in customer service, from 2008 to 2013. Years of fielding real people with real frustrations taught me to listen for the pain point underneath the complaint and then go hunting for the fix. That is most of what UX is; I just did not have the word for it yet.

In 2013 I graduated from the University of Essex with a 2:1 in Management of Sport, BA (Hons), and started work as a software engineer the same year. Frontend development is where I have always wanted to be: the layer people actually touch. Most of that career has centred on the driving sector, as part of the team behind DrivingTheory4all.co.uk and Driving-Test-Cancellations-4all.co.uk.

Then I made it official: a distinction-level MA in UX Design from the University of Falmouth. The course ran through reflective practice, user research, UX design, a game development project built with an indie game dev cohort, and a final major project taken from a first proposal all the way to a polished prototype. This site is roughly what happens when that training meets a free weekend.

What I work with

• Design and prototyping: Figma and Protopie.
• Research and testing: Maze and Prolific, for usability testing and recruiting real participants.
• Everyday craft: most of the Adobe Suite and most of the Microsoft Office suite.
• Languages I've built in: HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, C#, ASP.NET, and SQL.
• AI tools in the kit: Antigravity, Claude, and LM Studio.

Fundraising for the BHF

Away from the screen, I fundraise for the British Heart Foundation. Running the 2026 TCS London Marathon I raised £3,370 for them, and I am not done. In 2027 I am keeping it going with a run of golf days and a properly daft challenge: three marathons in four weeks. If you would like to chip in or follow along, my BHF campaign page is the place.

Why I built it

Most UX glossaries read like flashcards. You nod along, close the tab, and remember nothing. I wanted the opposite: a term you can't forget because you felt it. The Fitts's law entry doesn't tell you small targets are slower - it makes you miss a few and then shows you your own numbers. That's the whole idea, repeated ten ways.

It's also my portfolio centrepiece, so the site has to practise what it preaches. It's built by hand with Eleventy and plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript - no frameworks, no client-side libraries, every page under budget, and accessible by default. If a glossary about good design shipped a slow, inaccessible site, you'd be right not to trust a word of it.

It works in the open

This is meant to be research-led practice, done on itself rather than just described. The plan: build the first few entries on hypothesis, talk to real people, then let what I learn steer the roadmap.

Say hello

The contact form lands straight in my inbox. Spotted a term I've mangled? Even better - tell me.