Bluespark welcomes Mark Dodgson as User Experience Strategist

Mark Dodgson is a designer at heart. Even before graduating from Mohawk College in Ontario, Canada with a degree in Advertising and Media Communications, Mark had several years of experience in visual design and art direction. He continued to advance as a print and web designer with various companies, and soon moved into a management role as director of web services at an advertising agency. 

He describes his transition from a visual design focus to user experience design as a natural evolution. “Partly it came out of necessity — as web projects became bigger and more complex, there was a greater need to focus on strategy to control scope and cost. I was attracted to the thoughtfulness user experience brings to a project. I like thinking about user goals and aligning those with stakeholder and business goals.”

In addition to his full-time agency job, Mark was also asked by his alma mater to create a three-year web design & development course for Mohawk’s graphic design program. He's also taught 200+ students in the program for several years.

At a certain point, Mark felt he needed to find a better balance between work and family life. When he found Bluespark, he saw an opportunity to achieve that balance. “I felt that I was wearing too many hats, and I wanted to focus on what I really like to do.” The user experience strategist position at Bluespark offered that, as well as the added benefit of working at home.

“From our first conversations with Mark, we were impressed with his variety of experience, his work ethic and his personality,” says Rick Cecil, Experience Strategist at Bluespark. “We’re very excited to have him on our team.”

Outside of work, Mark enjoys traveling with his family; they backpacked through England and France last year. He’s a Liverpool soccer fan, a passion his family shares, along with hockey, the hometown sport.

Bluespark helps you imagine, design and build amazing digital experiences that make you and your users happy. With broad experience across organizations and industries, and specific expertise in travel, higher education and media, Bluespark leverages Drupal and other open source technologies and provides a process to keep projects on schedule, on budget and on point. Bluespark was identified by the independent research firm Clutch as a top web developer of 2015.