Rachel Smith

Before joining Torchbox, I was a freelance artist and creative technologist. In a project with a social design studio, Studio Meineck, I was working on a prototype for a mental health app. It specifically addressed the current crisis with men’s mental health in the UK and was co-designed with a group of men aged 35-55 from Second Step’s Hope Project. I found the co-design process eye-opening, and it helped me consider preconceptions about how users interact with a product.

I’m learning a lot about Django and relational databases and working on a project with the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) which involves participating in Scrum meetings and learning from other developers on the project about git, CI / CD and accessibility, among many other things.

In my spare time, I like making silly robots with microcontrollers. Besides that, I’m a fan of bouldering and watching terrible German TV. I’m also a resident of the Pervasive Media Studio, a creative tech hub based at the Watershed in Bristol.