I design products for people

Designing great User Experiences for over 19 years...
Mobile, Web, Desktop and TV.

About

know your user, understand their needs and goals. make their lives better through design

Sometime in the early 90s, after twelve floppy disks scrounged from some obscure building on the edge of campus, I found it. Just as the bubble was forming... double click the big N… the internet… in all of its blue text, Gaudy, Las Vegas-like flashing gifs glory… will there ever be another Star Wars, when will the next Indiana Jones get made… I needed to know, let’s find out… YAHOO! I was hooked.

Ever since the first time I got mail, I knew I wanted to do something on the net. Unfortunlatey, I had no idea what that was at the time, but it was something to strive for...

A few years after graduating I was lucky enough to find myself working at small e-commerce shop where I seized an opportunity to teach myself Flash, HTML and CSS, designing a few small-features for the e-commerce site.

Even then, before any formal education, I had an inklinig that if users couldn't figure out how to use it, it was useless. A few years later I received a post card in the real mail from DePaul University outlining their Human-Computer Interaction masters program. Psychology + Design!? Sign me up!

In school I learned about User-Centered Design. Fundamentally, the key was to understand the people that are going to be using whatever it is you're designing through empathy...

Design your products by talking with users, gather information about their needs, build personas, map their journeys, test out ideas and translate what you've learned into the product.

Over the years I’ve had the great opportunity to work on mobile devices (feature phones and of the smart persuasion) before that was cool, desktop applications for Windows and Mac and even a brief foray with some large screen TV UI Design work. I’ve had the privilege of working with some excellent designers and developers.

I’m currently spending my day time managing and leading a team of excellent UX Designers building web applications for network device and security testing. In my off hours I dabble in some app designs of my own mind where I’m attempting to concept, design and develop the apps using Apple’s Swift development language via Xcode.

So far I couldn’t have asked for a better career choice. I can’t wait to see what’s next around the corner!

Skills

UCD
11.99/12
Wires/Protos
11.99/12
Leadership
10/12
HTML/CSS
8/12

Process

I follow a User-Centered Design process that strives, first and foremost, to understand who the product is for and what they'll need to do with it.

Discovery

The primary function of this phase is to gain understanding about who we’re designing for, and what their goals & needs are.

[Interviews, Surveys, Personas, Scenarios, Requirements]

Design

All that we’ve learned in Discovery is utilized to generate appropriate workflows, interactions, information architecture and layouts.

[Sketch Concepts, Wireframes, Prototypes, User Testing, Card Sorting, Visual Designs]

Build It

A design has been settled on… now it’s time to put it all together and build it. Either UX will generate HTML/CSS via a digital Pattern Library or we’ll work closely with engineering.

[Style Guide/Pattern Library, Prototypes]

Optimize

Once launched usage data is gathered to learn how people are really using the product. It’s similar to the Discovery phase where we try to understand how users are using the app and what we can make better.

[Analytics Analysis, User Testing, Interviews, Surveys]

Design Samples

For over 19 years I've had the pleasure of designing user interfaces for the web, mobile, desktop and TV's (includes remote control input and NUI concepts).

What others say about me

Let's Work Together

If you like what you've seen, please let me know... I love getting helpful feedback!