I am a talented usability specialist with over 15 years of interactive design experience in software, web, mobile, and device design. I have extensive experience in all phases of user-centered design, in designing and evaluating user interfaces, and in managing projects.
Another of my favorite projects of 2010! Congrats to CBS, Funny Garbage, and Star Trek fans everywhere, StarTrek.com has finally relaunched. Leonard Nimoy is the first quest blogger, and the fans seem to be happy with the changes. Here’s a blog post on Entertainment Weekly.
Set your faces to stunned because the new, all-encompassing re-launch of StarTrek.com is upon us.
There is some great feedback in the comments to the blog post.
Live long and prosper, StarTrek.com. Live long, and prosper.
I think this is a really clever online marketing campaign / web application from a product that would normally be perceived of as being under threat from the internet.
I, myself, miss the act of letter-writing. In fact I’m not sure I know what my handwriting even looks like, it’s been so long that I’ve written one. I haven’t played with the application yet, as I’m on the road, but I can’t wait to try it out and see how it functions.
Here’s the link to the podcast of our talk provided by SXSW. I’m too skittish to go back and listen to myself ramble, but if you’re so inclined, knock yourselves out.
The Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s Sant Ocean Hall website – The Ocean Portal just won 2 more awards – The Award of Excellence for Websites for Charitable Organizations / Non-Profit, and Websites for Cultural Institutions
The Communicator Awards is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for Communications Professionals. Founded by communication professionals over a decade ago, The Communicator Awards receives over 9,000 entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world.
As I said earlier, this was one of my favorite projects from 2009 for many reasons, not least of which is the great team at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum who I had the great pleasure of working with.
Congratulations, you guys, and to Funny Garbage. Great work all the way around. I’m psyched I got to be a part of it.
I’ve been working with the Insider team for the past 2 years providing user experience consulting and UX design. I’m excited to see that Insider has launched. It’s a really interesting product, with great content, and innovative features. Check it out.
I love the fact that kindergartners do far better at the marshmallow challenge than business school students.
I’m a true believe when it comes to prototyping, especially for expensive to build interactive experiences, especially low fi prototypes where you can test out concepts and ideas before you build or design anything. I think we designers spend far too much time trying to get things right before we present ideas to clients. We end up backed into a corner defending our ideas partially because they are good, but more often than not because we’ve spent so much time coming up with them. I’ve always believed that a flawed project that launches is far more successful than a perfect project that never leaves the design phase. Prototypes are a great way to communicate with our clients, a great way to free ourselves from the expectation of “getting it right” to enable us to explore new ideas or approaches, basically a great way to play, which is such an integral part of a successful design process.
The challenge is that in traditional interactive projects usually very little time is built into the schedule for prototyping. My approach to this is to repurpose traditional user experience documents, such as wireframes, to serve as prototypes. This obviously creates additional challenges. For example, when in the process does a wireframe stop being a prototype, and start serving the purpose of documenting detailed requirements? And, how “designed” do the wireframes have to look for the client to understand what they are looking at in order to give useful feedback? And, how do you convey the interactive flow through a wireframed prototype?
Obviously I’m not the only one who uses wireframes (and other UX documents) as prototypes. I’ve found a process that works fairly well for me:
I start with a user story based on a user persona attempting to meet a need or goal.
I share this with my client, edit until the story feels right to all involved.
I quickly bang out a rough wireframed screen-flow for each step in the story.
Then I iterate.
And iterate.
Until we’ve got a solid approach, at which point I create a locked-down, detailed, annotated wireframe deck.
This kind of approach requires a lot of context setting, and a client who is willing to work with rough drafts of final documents. But so far it’s worked for me.
I’d love to hear from other designers out there. Do you prototype? Is prototyping called out explicitly in your process? Or is it slipped in? What works? What doesn’t Do you even need to prototype? What do you think?
One of my favorite projects of 2009 was just nominated for a Webby Award. I helped the fabulous Funny Garbage team develop an online strategy and create a web-based exhibit for The Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s Sant Ocean Hall – The Ocean Portal.
It was such a fun project to be part of. The team at The Smithsonian are incredibly smart and passionate (as you would expect), and it was such a kick to have meetings in the back rooms of the Natural History Museum.
Take a look at the site, and if you like what you see, vote for it.
Natalie Merchant sings old poems to life on TED.com
I think we need better terms than mashup/remix/splice to describe some of the fascinating content experiments that are happening in the 21st century. Hiphop musicians have been playing with repurposing, remixing, and reusing music in the form of recorded loops, samples, and turntableism for decades. And now we’ve got literature doing the same thing - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for example. What I find really fascinating about Natalie Merchant’s new album is that she’s doing an odd mix of the two – she’s repurposing old poetry, and giving it new life by setting it to original music. Beautiful stuff! The first song in this video – The Sleepy Giant – is dark, and hilarious, and haunting. So what do we call this kind of art? Collage? Mashup?
I am a talented usability specialist with over 15 years of interactive design experience in software, web, mobile, and device design. I have extensive experience in all phases of user-centered design, in designing and evaluating user interfaces, and in managing projects.
The Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s Sant Ocean Hall website – 
