Work history
Ammunition, LLC, San Francisco, CA
Interaction Designer/Information Architect (contractor)
2010 - 2011
Ammunition hired me to help with the user experience and research related to a fascinating touchscreen medical device. We conducted both field research and lab usability, using a range of hi-fidelity prototypes. The heavy involvement of users in our process drove us to a clear understanding of what we were designing and how to design it.
Tangible UX, Mountain View, CA
Information Designer/UI Designer (contractor)
2004 - 2010
Worked with Intuit on a vigorous redesign of the QuickBooks Online
experience. Last year, I helped them complete the product definition,
IA, and interaction design for a browser-based application that draws
data from QuickBooks for Windows.
Previously helped Yahoo! do something they’d never done before: diagram their entire domestic network (.com). Project deliverables (first an enormous diagram, then brand guidelines) allow Yahoo!’s brand-architecture team to do a better job of evaluating the brand landscape as they make decisions influencing the use of logos and word marks across Yahoo!’s array of properties.
eBay also hired us to design a large-scale diagram, but with a very different strategic and tactical focus: holistic site simplification. We designed the diagram to respond to the needs of multiple audiences. eBay reports that the diagram has met with great success internally and continues to be used regularly as a reference.
Sequence, San Francisco, CA
Information Architect (contractor) & IxD Director (full-time)
2006 - 2009
Led efforts to help this design agency completely redesign “old-school”
sites for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and a major cruise-vacation
line. Later projects included a 2.0-strong travel search engine and, most
recently, a social-networking environment for workout enthusiasts.
Method, San Francisco, CA
UI Designer (contractor)
2006
Authored dozens of pages of detailed specifications for an online TV-on-demand
client used by subscribers of a major entertainment corporation. Required
a detailed understanding of workflow, digital-content publishing, and
integration of desktop apps with browser content.
Yahoo!, Sunnyvale, CA
Senior UI Designer (contractor)
2005, 2006
Combined the numerous business requirements of Yahoo!’s Mail client
with the voicemail UI of a major Yahoo! telecom partner to create a seamless
voicemail/fax/email environment for phone and internet subscribers. The
process included user research, a usability study, and extensive visual
specifications for the customer’s experience.
frog, San Francisco, CA
Senior Design Analyst (contractor)
2005
Led a small design team to create highly detailed screen interactions
for a security software application used in airports, casinos, and commercial
high-rises. Outcomes of this exhaustive project led to significant return
business for frog.
Also helped design the interaction logic and digital interface for a high-end prosumer double oven. Included ergonomic parameters for knobs, dials, analog clock, and buttons. Our work on this critical design phase gave us the winning nod in a bake off with Porsche.
Studio Asterisk, San Francisco, CA
Lead Information Architect (contractor)
2003, 2004
Completely redesigned two high-profile software applications used by Homeland
Security and FedEx. We took three years of functional complexity and reshaped
it in three months after gathering extensive ethnographic data from clients
around the world. The outcomes of this project allowed Network Associates
and, later, McAfee to tighten their production cycles and go to market
faster-with more usable products-than their competitors.
Erikman Studios, Austin, TX
Information Architect/UI Designer, Graphic Designer (contractor)
2002 - 2009
Small Pond Studios / Liquid Agency, San Francisco/San Jose, CA
Information Architect (contractor)
2001, 2002, 2003
Sapient Corporation / Studio Archetype, San Francisco, CA
Senior Information Architect
1998-2000
Worked as senior or lead information architect on numerous projects for
major clients in the manufacturing/retail and financial services sectors.
I often acted in the capacity of career mentor, in a project context,
helping junior IAs to move swiftly into higher positions.
Led or assisted in developing strategies, procedural models, user-interface solutions, and detailed screen or site architectures for extremely complex online businesses.
Managed teams of information architects (sometimes up to six additional architects) to rapidly create designs based on business, user, technical, and market requirements. By ushering young information architects with practically no experience through a massive, multi-million-dollar project, I contributed tangibly to the expansion of Sapient’s IA practice.
Successfully advocated the importance of user-oriented design and worked with experience modelers and user researchers to make design solutions as relevant and usable as possible. My work on an important user-research project for HP became a model for how to integrate user needs with business needs in a project context.
Conducted seminars and workshops to increase project teams’ efficiency and nimbleness. These seminars often focused on how to attack a business problem, which tools to use, and methods for distilling huge quantities of data into practical, tactical work plans.
Cox Interactive Media, San Francisco, CA
Multimedia Producer & Community Manager
1998
PlanetOut Corp., San Francisco, CA
Web Producer & Community Manager
1996-1997
Advocate Charitable Foundation, Chicago, IL
Director of Information Systems
1993-1996