V I S U A L + D E S I G N + S T R A T E G I S T
PORTFOLIOwebsite & user interface design
‘‘Creativity is more than just being different.
Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s
hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the
simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
— Charles Mingus
jazz musician and civil rights activist
1INTERNET FLOTATION DEVICES web design and social media firm
INTERNET FLOTATION DEVICES
DESIGN REQUIREMENTS
✴ Create a minimalist design that “doesn’t look like a Drupal site”
✴ Slideshow on front page should highlight primary services
✴ Site must be built using existing Drupal core and contributed
modules, with no custom developer code
ROLE
✴ Concept and design
✴ Build site in Drupal CMS
✴ Create custom subtheme from Fusion base theme
INTERNET FLOTATION DEVICES: home page
INTERNET FLOTATION DEVICES: website services
INTERNET FLOTATION DEVICES: social media services
INTERNET FLOTATION DEVICES: blog landing page
INTERNET FLOTATION DEVICES: individual blog entry
INTERNET FLOTATION DEVICES
BIGGEST CHALLENGES
✴ Creating a minimalist design to demonstrate to customers that
a Drupal website could have a sleek, unique look and feel
✴ Turning the site from concept through production in less than
two weeks
SUCCESSES
✴ Immediately after site launch, company became a partner with
Acquia, the #1 software vendor on the 2012 Inc. 500 list
‘‘To use design to impress, to polish things up,
to make them chic, is no design at all. This
is packaging. When we concentrate on the
essential elements in design, when we omit
all superfluous elements, we find forms
become quiet, comfortable, understandable
and, most importantly, long lasting.
— Dieter Rams
industrial designer
2LIVING YOGA DALLAS community website for yoga enthusiasts
LIVING YOGA DALLAS
DESIGN REQUIREMENTS
✴ Maintain but update the Living Yoga Dallas brand
✴ Create page layouts based on unknown content provided by
site users
✴ Create content, shopping and checkout system incorporating pay-to-post products
ROLE
✴ Concept, design, copywriting
✴ Build site in Drupal CMS with no outside developer resources
✴ Create custom subtheme from Zen base theme
LIVING YOGA DALLAS: home page
LIVING YOGA DALLAS: upcoming community events
LIVING YOGA DALLAS: individual event listing
LIVING YOGA DALLAS: studios landing page
LIVING YOGA DALLAS: individual studio listing
LIVING YOGA DALLAS: instructors landing page
LIVING YOGA DALLAS: individual instructor listing
LIVING YOGA DALLAS: post a listing on the site
LIVING YOGA DALLAS
BIGGEST CHALLENGES
✴ Developing a complex community site on an unfamiliar platform
✴ Iterating on an unproven concept from idea to execution
✴ Creating pay-to-post ecommerce system that novice computer
users could navigate and complete
✴ Designing layouts to successfully display unknown content and
images from community users
✴ Cross-posting event, studio and instructor listings throughout
related pages on the site
LIVING YOGA DALLAS
SUCCESSES
✴ On average, over 100 upcoming event listings can be found on
the website at any time
✴ Over 100 studios and yoga-related businesses pay to display
their listing on Living Yoga Dallas
✴ Yoga studios and businesses from as far away as Los Angeles,
New York, Mexico and Costa Rica turn to Living Yoga Dallas to
promote their events
✴ Slots available for purchase in regularly scheduled email
newsletters are sold out weeks, and often months, in advance
‘‘The whole point of human-centered design
is to take complexity, to turn what would
appear to be a complicated tool into one that
fits the task, that is understandable, usable,
enjoyable.— Don Norman
author, usability engineer
3ALLPLAYERS.COM web application and tools for group management
ALLPLAYERS.COM
DESIGN REQUIREMENTS
✴ Rework a difficult and confusing registration process to allow
visitors to AllPlayers.com to join a group
✴ Reduce the amount of information requested so that users can
complete the registration process faster
✴ Eliminate extraneous elements that could distract users and
prevent them from completing the process
ROLE
✴ Member of team developing use cases and user flows
✴ Create wireframes to guide developer team
✴ Style developer product to align with site branding
ALLPLAYERS.COM: group search page
ALLPLAYERS.COM: registration user flow
ALLPLAYERS.COM: registration user flow
ALLPLAYERS.COM: registration user flow
ALLPLAYERS.COM: registration user flow
ALLPLAYERS.COM: registration user flow
ALLPLAYERS.COM: registration user flow
ALLPLAYERS.COM: registration user flow
ALLPLAYERS.COM: registration user flow
ALLPLAYERS.COM
BIGGEST CHALLENGES
✴ Define over a dozen possible use cases for user flows
✴ Achieve consensus among team members regarding the
approach of feeding users multiple pages with well-defined and
related requested data
✴ Overcome developer blockers to meet release deadline
SUCCESSES
✴ Related support calls dropped immediately after release and no
negative feedback was received regarding the major change
✴ Common thread from users answering feedback questionnaire
was that the process was simple and clear
‘‘Forms suck. If you don’t believe me, try to
find people who like filling them in.… For
most of us, forms are just an annoyance.
What we want to do is vote, apply for a job,
buy a book online, join a group, or get a
rebate back from a recent purchase. Forms
just stand in our way.
— Luke Wroblewski
author and digital product leader
4ALLPLAYERS.COM web application and tools for group management
ALLPLAYERS.COM
DESIGN REQUIREMENTS
✴ Gather information from users that we need to improve their site
experience and prevent user frustration
✴ While the information is important, it is not required or absolutely
relevant to gather this data during user registration flows; in fact, it was shown to be a blocker to onboarding customers
✴ Do so in a way that’s friendly and demonstrates the value of
providing the information
ROLE
✴ Lead designer
✴ Style developer output to meet requirements
ALLPLAYERS.COM: user account wizard
ALLPLAYERS.COM: user account wizard
ALLPLAYERS.COM: user account wizard
ALLPLAYERS.COM: user account wizard
ALLPLAYERS.COM: user account wizard
ALLPLAYERS.COM: user account wizard
ALLPLAYERS.COM
BIGGEST CHALLENGES
✴ Company acceptance to not include non-vital information
requests in the registration process, but at another time
✴ Quickly and succinctly explaining the value of providing the
information
SUCCESSES
✴ Phone number request was previously preventing some users
from registering for a group; this roadblock was removed from
that user flow
✴ Missing time zone data from users was causing confusion on
event detail displays; requesting this information before the user realizes they need to provide it avoids miscommunications
‘‘People DO judge a book by its cover. We may
have the best product, the highest quality,
the most useful software etc.; if we present
them in a slipshod manner, they will be
perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a
creative, professional manner, we will
impute the desired qualities.
— Mike Markkula
Apple Computer, Inc.
V I S U A L + D E S I G N + S T R A T E G I S T
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