The Archive

February 2011 - December 2018

 
 
 

Some call me sentimental, others, a hoarder. When it comes to my portfolio, I hate not showing some of my early work. It’s fun to look back and see my process and work output early on and compare it to where I am now.

 
 

Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America

March 2014 - August 2014

Seeking to grow the number of members of their community, the client was looking for an updated website that prioritized community sign ups, donations, easier access for the press and more visibility for their programs and campaigns. We focused on Join and Donation templates, the Press section and Programs and Campaigns.

This was my first decent sized project as a UX designer. I worked closely with the Director of UX who led the project and mentored me. It was a great opportunity to begin learning and building on my abilities as a UX designer.

 
 
 

Various lists, sketches and marked up templates created over the course of the project.

 
 
 

Boosting membership was one of the top priorities for our client. Our top priority in design was their Sign Up flow. I started by documenting all the information they needed to collect from users. From there I mapped out how best to distribute the necessary information across the sign up steps. I used post-its as a gut check and to organize my thoughts and get a better sense of the flow and what information we’d be asking for on each step.

 
 
 
 

Before beginning true wireframing, I quickly sketched out what I had in my head following the post-its exercise. It was mostly a matter of identifying the right patterns to use as well as the layout of the module. Should it be small, should it be larger and take up the user’s screen? Ultimately the UX Director and I decided to go with a more immersive experience to focus the user on completing the task. A large experience so highly prioritized in the UI also offered a subtle message to users that this organization cares about membership and its members.

 
 
 
 

By the time I got into digital wireframing the UI was largely figured out. It became mostly a matter of the details. We already had decided on the overall structure after sketching. We knew what needed to go on each step thanks to the post-its exercise. With the right process, sometimes an experience feels like it’s designing itself.

 
 
 
 

TomKat Charitable Trust

June 2014 - August 2014

A Bay Area foundation, TomKat Charitable Trust was looking for a simple, brochure website to communicate to the world their mission, their areas of focus and their partners. They wanted the site to be easy to maintain, immersive and unique.

As a creative it’s important to take risks on occasion and push boundaries. And that’s what I wanted to do with this site. The client was stern in their assignment of creating a simple brochure website with minimal content. And what better opportunity to try something different.

 
 
 

I organized thoughts for content in various lists based on the few pages that would be on the site. At launch we planned on having five pages on the site. It has been reduced over the years to three. I sketched some ideas trying to come up with creative page layouts.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Masters Capstone Data Visualizations

February 2011 - May 2011

At the end of my masters program instead of a thesis, we had to create a capstone project. I discovered a love of data visualization during school (and have been in love since). For my capstone project I wanted to do something fun and that I’d enjoy because I knew I’d spend months on my project.

I created around a dozen interactive data visualizations or infographics looking at issues around how the state of North Carolina developed in the years after World War II. I created the infographics in Flash and presented them all on a dedicated website.

 
 
 

Hovering over the years along the bottom would let users see the shape of city boundaries.

Hovering over individual city names to the right displays a graph to the left showing population growth over the years. Hovering over the lines in the graph displays population information for that year.

 
 
 

Hovering over the years in the column on the left changes the graphic on the right to display the corresponding representation of population density.

This visualizes how many commuters there are between the counties making up Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. Hovering over one of the gray bars in the middle, representing an individual county, would show all commuters leaving and entering that county daily with an animation.

 
 
 

I wanted to visualize my (presumed) correlation between interstate development and population growth in the cities they serve. Hovering over a year in the column along the left would visualize the interstate at that time and population growth since the previous census.

I spent a day going around different big box stores near my college town to get an average footprint size of the big box stores in this visualization. Then I multiplied that number by the number of locations across the state to determine the total store footprint in North Carolina.

 
 

Logo Design

I’m no logo designer but I’ve made a few over the past few years, mostly for friends. One of these can even be seen embroidered on the occasional backpack in San Francisco.

 
 
 

Tutoring App Logo

A friend was working on a tutoring app and they needed a logo and styleguide. I had a fun time playing with academic themes in all the variations I presented. It was a fairly informal process and I wanted to offer the client a fairly wide range to react to and feedback on. A main objective of this branding exercise was to create a logomark that would work well as a native app icon.

 
 
 
 

The Final Logo

 
 
 
 
 

In addition to the logo, I wanted to provide some direction for color palette as well as typography in a very simple styleguide.

 
 
 

 

Home Office Logo

 
 
 
 

A local family needed branding for their home office. They wanted something simple that indicates movement and progress.

 
 

Personal Design Projects

Whenever friends and I do any kind of event or activity that requires design work, I’m always the first (and usually only) to raise my hand and offer my design services for the group. Designing when you’re your own client is the best. And when friends are involved and you can make them happy with your design work, it’s such a great feeling.

 
 
 

AIDS Lifecycle Team

 
 
 

Friends and I formed a small team to ride the AIDS Lifecycle, a supported, multi-day bike ride from San Francisco to LA. After we gave ourselves a name, we discussed making jerseys. We had no idea what we would put on it until a friend said “How about Holly Golightly on a bike with an AK-47?” And then we had our logo.

 
 

 
 

Burning Man Camp

 
 
 

After the first time a couple friends and I went to Burning Man, we decided we wanted to make our own camp and invite all our friends the next year. Once we finally settled on a name one of the first things I did was start to design our identity. We always called ourselves space cadets and that’s where I started.