Prototyping Skills

I have spent much of my career developing fast, interactive ways to experiment with, collaborate on, and update designs, while shedding as much formal documentation as possible. I like process and sound methodologies, but it is no substitute for clarity of purpose, creativity, and collaboration. I use Axure for UI design and interactive prototyping, customized with my own plugins. This is infinitely better than wireframes created in a static design application such as InDesign or Visio, which I have also worked with for years before I found Axure. I prototype as much or as little of the application as needed, based on analyzing the complexity of its features and comfort-level of the project-team. I break down the prototype into the Three Factors of Prototyping:

1. Breadth (how many features or sub-features to be shown)
2. Depth (granularity of functional design of feature or sub-feature)
3. Fidelity (realism of UI behavior and look & feel).

If I need to convey a highly rich experience or test a new UI paradigm, I supplement the prototype with functional code and AJAX widgets, which I write myself using LAMP. At the same time, I am a scrupulous, formal specifier where the situation requires it. I can also layer on to the prototype as much visual design as is needed to demonstrate the application to audiences that need to see more than the wireframe shell, as well as make elements of the prototype WYSIWYG-editable for basic, database-backed content-management tasks prior to launch. I can also enable the prototype with user-behavior tracking code to allow data-gathering and usability analysis of user behavior prior to development, and turn on on-screen annotation and collaboration tools to facilitate online review, revision, and collaboration. I have always wowed clients, visual designers, and developers alike with my prototype-based UX designs and specifications.

Please also see Resume Revisited for an overview of my wider skill-set; and see  Skills & Methods and Case Studies for details of the full repertoire of knowledge and skill that a bring to any work engagement.

UX Samples

Here are some recent examples of my information architecture, UX, and UI work, in the form of interactive, click-able prototypes.

1. iPhone prototypes of virtual makeover tools, virtual travel assistant, virtual personal trainer, brand-monitor dashboard, and happy hour finder (Mary Kay, Utah Transit Authority, Coors)
2. Transit portal bristling with state-of-the-art functionality to allow the city of Austin to be “easier to use”, encourage ridership, minimize pollution, improve quality of life, and facilitate community online and offline (Capital Metro) with Haley Nemann
3. A la carte eCommerce functionality for ski resort site, allowing a single, coherent shopping experience of over a dozen radically different product types (lodging, restaurant booking, ski lessons, ski rental, season passes, charge cards, etc.) (Mammoth Mountain Ski Area)
4. Taxonomic and navigation schemes that combined 9 original websites and a half-dozen content-types into a unified structure that reaped the benefits of the unification while allowing pre-existing users and advertisers to transition seamlessly to the new design (Energy Central) with Haley Nemann
5. LCD-based in-home display device which functioned intuitively as part of a family of inter-related products spanning physical units, appliances, web applications, and mobile applications (Trendril Networks for Reliant Energy)
6. SaaS micropayments and analytics platform with seamless user-experience across subscriber sites and parent site (currently in private beta) (iPD Partners)
7. White-label, highly customizable, website designs that provided embedded job-board functionality in customer sites (Dice and Dow Jones)
8. Many 1,000 – 5,000 page sites elegantly reduced to a fraction of their size and orders of magnitude greater usability (Financial Planning Association, Denver Water) with Courtney Perkins
9. Brand naming and online start-up site launches (ask for details)
10. An animated, visual relationship-browser-based social networking prototype for a prominent media company (ask for details)
11. Reporting and administration functionality and UI for Internet payment gateways, POS systems, and related services (ask for details)
12. Redesign of corporate intranet and collaboration portal with 100,000 users (GE)
13. Online hedge-fund management service (HedgeMark)
14. Internet Payment Gateway (First Data) with Dean Rizzuto