About Ben

I've been building interactives for the public to poke at for over twenty years. Touchscreens in museums, custom hardware at expos, arcade experiences at activations. I take the approaches from these to my online work as well.

Based in London, I've positioned myself to be someone who can provide a full service from discovery through development and all the way to deployment. Writing robust software applications and websites that anticipate the actions and needs of users.

Ben Tandy in a beanie and round glasses

20+

years building for the public

4

national museums

1

award-winning interactive film

3

1970s TVs in one shop window

What I do

Software

  • Touchscreen and kiosk apps that run for months unattended
  • Real-time web apps: live voting, leaderboards, WebSockets
  • Mobile web apps people join from a QR code
  • AR tracking on custom hardware
  • Frameworks and signage systems a museum can build on itself

Hardware & AV

  • Custom hardware: object sensors, buttons, purpose-built tablets
  • Projection mapping and VR for brand activations
  • Signage on whatever screen suits, including 1970s CRTs
  • Specifying and sourcing the kit
  • Running the AV desk on the night: vision mixing, multi-screen signal flow

Design & delivery

  • UI and UX design, from first sketch to Figma
  • Interfaces a school group or a specialist can pick up
  • Working alongside producers, AV crews and clients
  • Building in layers, so the core always works
  • Usage data, so the client knows what happened

Made for

Made for: Mobile, Signage, Touchscreen, Website, Physical hardware, Audio, Projection, VR / AR

Where I've been

  1. GR/DD

    Lead Developer, Shoreditch

    My first role as lead developer. I worked on interactives for the Science Museum and the V&A, including Drench, a tower defense game that ran on a public touchscreen for months and was later released online.

  2. Natural History Museum

    Lead Interactive Developer

    Touchscreens for special exhibitions and permanent galleries. The biggest job was Who Do You Think You Really Are?, an interactive film presented by David Attenborough. We built a custom tablet for every seat, with front and rear cameras and an AR tracking app, and the audience voted as the film played.

    Won the BUFVC Learning on Screen Premier Award

  3. Imperial War Museum

    A kiosk framework the museum could deploy new kiosks on, with accessibility, security and stability updates underneath. A signage system that turned a few details and an image into on-brand posters on screens around the building. And an interactive label that let visitors comment on objects, which started in A Family in Wartime and spread to other exhibitions.

  4. Agencies

    With Engage Works and Analog Robot

    Experiences for activations, galleries and expos, nearly always with custom hardware: object sensors, projection mapping, VR. Clients included British Land, the Rugby World Cup, Facebook, Telefonica, Western Link and Hempel Development.

  5. Goldsmiths college

    MA Experiential Design

    I returned to study experiential design.

  6. Food

    I took a sabbatical to run a food business for 7 years whilst continuing development work on the side.

  7. Now

    Freelance, London

    Back to development and a new focus on web development and experiential design. This year that's meant a live football prediction game for 150 people in a pub, and a window display for a karaoke bar running on three 1970s televisions.

    See Sporf PredictsSee The Lucky Goat

How I work

  • Built for the public

    I like briefs where the thing has to survive contact with real people: kiosks that run for months, screens that get hit by school groups, events where you get one go.

  • Honest early

    I'll tell you at the start what will and won't hold up, so there are no surprises the night before.

  • In the room

    I'd rather be with the producer, the AV crew and the client than handed a spec. Knowing how the rigging and cabling come together makes the integration smoother.

  • Built in layers

    A core that always works, with richer features on top that can be cut if something goes sideways the night before.

  • Fails quietly

    Offline-first where possible, remote monitoring and fast diagnostics, so if something goes wrong on the day it gets fixed quickly and quietly.

  • Keeps you posted

    Long sign-off chains are normal in museums. Keeping everyone informed along the way makes the handover the easy bit.

Got a brief?

Tell me what it has to do, who it's for and when the doors open.

ben@afriendcalledben.comInstagram