Yellow Breeze

• Client:Weber Innovations
• Project Team:SI 682 Team Good Measure
• Skills:contextual inquiry, software design, prototyping

Currently, bench level researchers do not have access to a well-implemented set of software tools to aid them in the nitty-gritty details of their most repetitive and accuracy-dependent tasks. No one has tackled the challenge of laboratory research knowledge management and experiment development... until now. For this project, I dug deep into the culture of academic research labs and worked with my 4-student team to create several lo-fi prototypes that address the common issues facing researchers today.

(Left) Walking through lo-fi design prototypes with our client.

• Client:NOAA Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Team
• Project Team:SI 501 Team Brass Tacks
• Skills:contextual inquiry, modeling

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been making considerable efforts to increase collaboration amongst line offices that span multiple regions and fields of research. Part of this effort has included establishing regional collaboration teams. The Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Team approached my SI 501 team to evaluate their methods of collaboration: since forming in 2006, the team has had no guidance in how it should approach collaboration. My 501 team undertook an in-depth contextual inquiry process to analyze how successful their collaboration methods have been and to make suggestions for future endeavors. We interviewed thirteen individuals from different regions and fields of interest and then organized our findings into an affinity diagram. Organizing our findings in this way allowed us to identify problem areas within the organization and make recommendations for positive change.

• Client:University of Michigan
• Project Team:Rackham Graduate School Web Team
• Skills:interaction design

Several schools at the University of Michigan are coordinating a new wayfinding system to be integrated throughout the university's facilities. This system consists of both static digital signs and interactive touch screen kiosks that will display maps, event information, facility information and more. As a member of one of the stakeholder's design teams, I was asked to create interface designs for the touch screen kiosks. Taking into consideration accessibility, interaction best practices, hardware variability, and content variability, I collaborated with the members of my design team to create several iterations of possible designs. After presenting these designs to all of the stakeholders, I revised our concepts into one design that will serve as the mainframe of the future wayfinding system at the University of Michigan.

• Client:P.M. Bedroom Gallery
• Project Team:Starkmedia Interactive
• Skills:information architecture, design, consulting, e-mail marketing

P.M. Bedroom Gallery is a retailer of high quality hand-crafted furniture. A visit to any showroom is an experience exhibiting the stellar engineering, quality craftmanship and pride that goes into every custom-made piece. To translate this experience onto the web, I worked with my colleagues at Starkmedia to restructure the online furniture gallery. I designed a new layout for product pages, and enhanced SEO efforts by creating clear, audience specific landing pages. Visitors to the website now have a better browsing experience, enhanced by dynamic product views, video, and a clearer view of what quality is according to P.M. Bedroom Gallery standards.

• Client:Briggs & Stratton
• Project Team:Starkmedia Interactive
• Skills:consulting, design, CMS development, Flash, e-mail marketing & analytics

Briggs & Stratton's consumer marketing department was looking for a face-lift to their online home, Yard Smarts. I worked with them to give a new face to their already extensive library of lawncare articles and videos. Yard Smarts editors are now able to upload new articles and photos to their ever-growing collection, sorted by topic and growing region.

In conjuction with the site redesign, Yard Smarts was looking for a new approach to their e-mail marketing. I developed a plan for increasing consistancy across e-mail newsletters and measuring their success through the use of analytics.

• Client:Artistorm
• Project Team:Artistorm Design Team
• Skills:CMS development, usability testing, programming, business development
• Awards:Burton D. Morgan Entrepreneurial Competition 2nd Place Winner, 2006

Artistorm is an innovative online art gallery that allows artists to upload and annotate their own artwork for sale. A student project at Purdue University, the e-commerce website was taken from business concept to final implementation in just one semester. As part of the development team, I led business research and development, explored implementation options, contributed to the content management system design and conducted user testing. When the site concept was completed, I led the development of a business plan and presented the concept to a panel of venture capitalists in the Burton D. Morgan Entrepreneurial Competition.

• Client:The Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary
• Project Team:Terra Incognita Productions
• Skills:quality assurance testing, content management

For the 300th anniversary of Ben Franklin's birth, museum professionals worldwide joined together to create a traveling exhibition of Franklin's life work. To commemorate the anniversary, an online archive was needed to house all of the historical artifacts. I worked with the team at Terra Incognita to develop and refine the CMS for the Frankliniana database. The CMS required ease of use for museum professionals to upload artifacts and to make them available for the public display online. Challenges included establishing a unified categorization system for items with varying levels of records and types of information. The database represents over 90 public and private collections from around the world and is searchable by themes, artifact types and keyword.

• Client:In Formed
• Project Team:Starkmedia Interactive
• Skills:design, development, Flash animation, information architecture

In Formed is a non-profit organization that educates youth about self-esttem, body image, eating disorders and self-inflicted violence. They needed an online presence that would get the word out about their availablilty for speaking engagements, educate both youth and adults, and provide valuable resources. I designed and produced a website that allows the organization to update those resources, from website links to articles and even a podcast, through an easy-to-use CMS. A flash animation on the homepage gets visitors' attention by providing statistics about eating disorders.

• Client:Putzmeister America
• Project Team:Starkmedia Interactive
• Skills:production, project management

Acting as project manager for Putzmeister Water Technology, I directly worked with the client to gather and organize content, produce the website and maintain the website. The final website includes information about the company, content management tools for updating an event calendar and press releases and extensive product information.

• Client:Jewish Women's Archive
• Project Team:Terra Incognita Productions
• Skills:content management, taxonomy, production

Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution is an online exhibition that explores how the feminist movement changed Judaism in America and how Jewish women played a role in the Feminist movement as a whole. The online exhibit brought together documentation that had never before been recorded in a single collection. One particular challenge in this project was how to categorize assets - whether by individual, topic or time period. In the final exhibition, visitors can explore all three, with every asset - whether photographic, video or audio - being attributed to a single woman.