Siddharth Vadgama
I make things
Who I am
I'm Sidd; a technologist. I like creating both virtual and physical experiences, being versatile enough to tackle large and diverse parts of projects. Focusing on bringing all elements together to create a streamlined user experience.
Currently, I'm based in London working as a Lead Technologist at frog. Previously at Tribal Worldwide, and British Airways.
Some things I've done
Cards for Humanity
I'm the tech lead for Cards for Humanity, an empathy tool that helps product folk, designers, and developers create more inclusively. It allows players to discover combinations of persona and trait cards. The goal is then for those players try and understand how their product/service might work for that person. We've been featured on Figma, and have won awards from The Drum, and core77.
Via Outlets
I led a team of three other developers over two months to build a solution that would allow the rollout of 11 different outlet websites, using a single codebase and deployment pipeline connected to 11 instances of an identical CMS. This also incorporated prerendering, internationalisation, and the ability to add future instances (12, 13+) with ease if and when required. Examples include Hede, Batavia Stad, and Zweibruecken.
The Blade
This was a chiptune keytar built by Greig Stewart, Sam Wray, and myself at BuzzJam. It comprised of hacked Guitar Hero guitars, a Rock Band keytar, two Game Boys, an Arduino Mega, and a Raspberry Pi, and a Leap Motion. The Blade was featured on the BBC and Vice.
Mobius
My final-year university project, Mobius, was a framework for creating wireless “Internet of Things” Ardunio projects with web-based control. Mobius generated both, the web-based control and the Ardunio code. Acting as a GUI tool, it allowed you to create huge portions of a DIY home automation flow without writing any code.
British Airways
I worked at British Airways on the team responsible for feature delivery on the new ba.com booking process as well as building sharable components. My main contributions were the ba.com search bar and the technical architecture of IVSG, our sharable design library.
N9 Design
N9 Design is a creative studio at which I previously worked as a Junior Developer/Designer. During my time here, using the N9 CMS, I built nine content-managed websites and contriuted to ten others. Along with this I produced around 70 e-flyers, and 300 pieces of artwork for various campaigns.
Quartz
Quartz was an interactive installation. As an individual walks past a physical phone, the phone will ring enticing the user to answer it. Once answered the user will be connected to a random phone number from a database of people who have opted into the project, creating a conversation between two strangers.
Laptop Screen Monitor
This was a project I undertook when my previous laptop died. Aiming to reuse as many of the components as possible, I modified the laptop's screen to function as an external monitor. This project was quite popular, generating around 1.2 million hits across a number of media websites, including Hacker News and Reddit.
KOTH
KOTH was a game based on 'king of the hill' that takes place both physically & digitally. Players must enter randomly generated codes on their smartphone, the active code is displayed in a set location. After a user has entered the code, they become king. This initiates a cooldown on the code screen until the next code generates.
TermiSoc
TermiSoc is Plymouth University's computing society, of which I was chairman of for two-and-a-half years from 2011 to 2014. Together we ran weekly events, and more infrequent larger events, such as 50+ person LAN parties. I also was in charge of creating all branding, promotional material and other media for the society.
The Only Way is Freshers
Branding and promotional media work I did for a student event. The event was a several-hundred person student night hosted by a cast member of the depressingly popular TV show, The Only Way is Essex.