Jordan was born in London, England to an American father and British mother.
From 1993 to 2000 Jordan worked at Philips Design in The Netherlands where he specialised in user research and trend analysis.
[citation needed] He started his own consulting firm, The Contemporary Trends Institute in 2001 while still at Symbian.
This company, which he ran until 2007, had clients including Starbucks, Gillette, Nokia and Microsoft.
[citation needed] In 2001 Jordan co-founded Include,[2] an international conference on inclusive or universal design.