The name Taylfin is a portmanteau* of the names of the owners, Jeremy Taylor and Janine Griffin. It reflects our complementary skills and how we use them to get a good grasp on how a technology works and how to communicate that to users. In short, we transform geek-speak into words non-technical people love.
Jeremy trained as a software engineer and project manager. He loves geek stuff and teaching people about it, and he’s also pretty good at putting words together in a way people understand. Visit The Christchurch 360 Trail website to see some of Jeremy’s recent work.
Janine has a degree in zoology, which doesn’t seem like a natural lead-in to a career in technology, but taught her observational skills that come in handy when watching users trying to make sense of technology. She also has a postgraduate diploma in journalism and has worked as a science writer, technical writer and user interface designer, all variations on the translating tech-speak into user-friendly-speak theme. She hates seeing users in pain, which drives her to understand their point of view and make the words work for them.
*A portmanteau happens when you smoosh a couple of words together to make a new word in both sound and meaning. Think of words like brunch, chocoholic, smog and cyborg, all words made up of combinations of other words. For our name, Taylor represents the technologists’ perspective, while Griffin stands for the users’ perspective. Together at Taylfin, we come up with words that work for the technology and those who use it.