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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