Synopsis: Worked alongside one of our principal researchers, a senior designer and a fellow designer 2 in the study of a nice for a ‘Silence mode’ for the office suite. 8 clients between London and Paris were visited with designs changing over the course of the trip. A final proposal was made which has morphed over time into current focus time concepts.
Role: User Experience Designer/Researcher
Entity: Microsoft
Location: London and Paris, alongside Redmond, WA
Skills Used: In person interviews, quick design conception and prototyping, and then trying to wrangle stakeholders once returning to the states.
Team: Three more UX focused designers and one more Research focused designer, working with multiple PM’s and Engineers after the initial study
Synopsis: Many of the projects I worked on for Workplace Analytics were long-reaching and didn’t have a set beginning for end. In this one for example, I started my connection to the project as a design lead trying to guide a contractor in the right direction, taking up redesigns of the application as parameters changed, and then providing overall visual designs that another designer used to finalize the project.
Role: User Experience Designer/Researcher, Visual design guidance, mentoring
Entity: Microsoft
Location: Redmond, Wa
Skills Used: Background in analytics and prior tool creation
Team: PM and Engineering were consistent (1 PM, 1 primary Eng) throughout the project. My connection changed from Initialization as a consultant to the primary contracting designer, Primary designer, to consultant again for visual design tweaks
Synopsis: Alongside other IC work I pushed for, designed and implemented an improved design system that has gone on to be used by the sister products of MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics.
Role: Primary designer for both Interaction and Visuals
Entity: Microsoft
Location: Redmond, MyAnalytics – Workplace Analytics team
Skills Used: Stakeholder interviews and internal research, Visual design work, and days of conversations with PM and Engineerings to convince them of the importance of this process
Team: Design side I started this when it was me, my lead and another FTE designer, continued it into the period where I was the only FTE designer in the US and acted as design lead for 4 contractors in the US and some FTE remote designers in India, and operated the steps to get my new manager and his FTE designers convinced and set up with my system and organized with all the prior existing design files.
Synopsis: This one started during a period that I was the de-facto Design Lead for the group in Seattle as my main design lead quit and it was just myself, a set of contractors, and remote FTE designers who had to be spun up on our groups work.
Role: Product Designer, Prototyper
Entity: Microsoft
Location: 2019
Skills Used: Comparison analysis, UX wireframing design and layout, code prototypes
Team: Sole designer for this piece, working with one primary Project Manager and multiple Developers.
Prototypes: Prototype 1: Specifics of Card Design,
Synopsis: This was a fairly fast hackathon project as part of Microsoft’s FHL events. I worked as only designer for the project.
Role: User Experience Designer/Researcher
Entity: Microsoft
Location: 2019 hackathon
Skills Used: Quick visual experimentation, Front-end coding, UX and Visual Design
Team: Sole designer, working with multiple data-scientists, PMs and Engineers
Prototypes: Final set of design and front-end code
Synopsis: This one of two sister programs that were my primary product group for 2.5 years at Microsoft. In this example I’m focusing on the story of how the bridging component of programs tied the two products (Workplace Analytics and MyAnalytics) together, but there are …. just a mountain of other design changes I was in charge of, ranging from focusing on improving data-viz in specific areas, fleshing out navigation systems, overall pushing for a visual design refresh, being in charge of contractors who were doing other work but still had be tied into the greater design system….
Role: Product Designer, Researcher (at times Content writer, visual designer, data-viz and statistics consultant, front-end programmer….basically anything and everything the team needed design wise) and defacto design lead for a period
Entity: Microsoft
Location: Redmond (working with remote designers, developers and PM’s in India, Wisconsin, and California)
Skills Used: Wireframing, research, coding, etc.
Team: Started with a manager and one other FTE designer alongside multiple PM’s and Engineers, changed to being the sole FTE designer working with multiple contractors and remote designers, culminated in onboarding and helping a new manager set up multiple FTE designers who joined the team
Links: Prototype 1: Showing a specific motion for a table Prototype 2: Explorations with selection during the Program wizard process Prototype 3: Card flip concept
Role: Designer 2, primarily User Experience design with prototyping and work with Front-End Devs coming into play.
Company: Microsoft
Years: Early 2017 – Present
Marketing site to have a better understanding of the Product intent.
MyAnalytics opens up the analytics of the Office365 to a user. It lets them see how much time they're spending between meetings, email and their focus time, with the goal being to enable a user to better navigate and order their time. A big part of my role here since starting has been pushing the product from just a analytics tool and into more of a self-help tool.
I've worked on a myriad of experiences across the product, starting with an initial sharing experience, a redesign of the top four metrics, and most recently an onboarding experience to better inform users about where their numbers are coming from.
One of the largest learning experiences has simply been the difference in the design process at Microsoft over prior companies. Working between Product Mangers and Engineering on very tight deadlines requires quite a bit of diplomacy as I alter designs to connect with initial specs, fit in with the amount of time allotted to engineering, while still not losing my initial design goals.
Coding samples of my final intent sometimes comes into play, with this sample on codepen showing off a set of animations I designed for the top four to better push the user down the page.
The following screens show a small sampling of some of the work, specifically showing the most recent onboardig experience, with the initial design, an altered version that went through Product Management, and the final coded design which I'm still working with engineering on to get closer to my original intent.
A good portion of the job has also been pushing to improve the process of the team. Creating tools to help development connect with design work, pushing for files to be shared online and team members to collaborate more on group chat rather than just email, and generally pull design and development closer together.
Codepen Prototype One – Top Four Redesign and Animations
Codepen Prototype Two - Email Usage Redesign and Animations
Codepen Prototype Three - Sharing button concept
Codepen Prototype Four - Motion Concept
Synopsis: This was one of my favorite projects at IBM. It was a redesign of SPSS modeler (with marketing work towards renaming the new product that I wasn't part of). But the general steps were looking at a number of unique data-visualization pieces of SPSS and and working hand in hand with both the engineers creating the new product and the data-scientists at IBM who were using it to create a modern and more intuitive product.
Role: Product Designer, primarily User Experience design with prototyping and work with Front-End Devs coming into play. This role was unique in that my background in engineering and information science really came into play across the data-visualization work.
Entity: IBM Design
Location: Austin, TX
Years: 2016 – 2017
Skills used: UX and Visual Design, Prototyping, and the normal interviews with stakeholders, users and PM’s / engineering
Links: Prototype 1: tooltip-exploration, Prototype 2: Display of specifics in motion
Role: UX Designer / Design Developer
Company: IBM Design, Watson Data Platform (was Analytics Platform)
Years: 2014 – 2017
Live Version of the Guide to Peruse
This was my last main group at IBM and was incredibly hard to leave. My role mixed Design, Dev, and simply asset and product management together in the creation of a guide used across multiple products. It was a team project of course but we all worked very collaboratively with each other.
Everything you see in the guide was built coded between me and my dev lead, alongside me doing UX work with our visual designers and Design Lead.
It was incredibly gratifying to see the final guide get implemented into products and then be able to take feedback on components as they were used.
Role: Designer/Design Dev
Company: IBM Design, Watson Analytics (was Business Analytics)
Years: 2013 – 2015
The final project Watson Analytics was the only one to live on.
Role: Designer/Design Dev
Company: IBM Design, Watson Analytics (was Business Analytics)
Years: 2013 – 2015
Social Media Analytics and Analytics Zone were both smaller projects that got eaten by the larger Watson Analytics final application. Both involved similar sets of research alongside concept layout. I keep them here because the work that went into them informed what finally became Watson Analytics.
Role: Designer/Design Dev
Company: IBM Design, Watson Analytics (was Business Analytics)
Years: 2013 – 2015
Gemini was another favorite project at IBM, culminating in a final prototype with our team in Canada. The project died but the work that went into it informed what later became Watson Analytics.
Role: UX Designer, Motion Design, Focus on Accessibility both in Design and Programming
Company: Apple
Years: Summer 2012
Video of Final Music Prototype for Login System
Apple was my first truly professional step into UX, working on the UX group within IS&T which creates many of the intenrnal software for Apple. There were a few mini-internship projects but the main focus was diving into Accessibility, something I still care deeply about within the design realm.
I worked within a User Experience group at Apple, Cupertino in the Summer of 2012. It was a wonderful experience, showing me how User Experience works in the professional environment. Additionally I was able to take part in a marketing team marketing challenge in which my group came in as part of the top 3 teams.
Synopsis: Designed as part of the Glow Workshop led by Cathlyn Newell the workshop took a a shop space in downtown Flint and designed projects based upon the concept of 'Glow'. I worked alongside Beatrice Lau and William Liow and created the final project you can see below. This was one of my first projects that started to toe the line of physical interaction design, looking into how objects can directly shape users connection to a space.
Role: Machining, Electrical work, Product Conception (Design)
Entity: Glow Workshop, installation in an open storefront
Location: Flint, MI
Skills Used: 3D modeling, LED wiring, cnc machining, thermoforming, dry-ice
Synopsis: My earliest portfolio-kept work on data-visualization projects. Experimental classwork but one of the early reasons I was interested in the field.
Role: User Experience Designer/Visual Designer/Programmer
Entity: University of Michigan Graduate School
Location: Ann Arbor, Mi
Skills Used: Information Visualization, Graphic Design, Processing Programming, D3js, scripting
Team: Three UX graduate students, work shared equally
Links: First project Video , Second project live site
Synopsis: A mobile app that gives users an accurate understanding of the size of the solar system, in relation to the planetarium. This was a quick volunteer project done in two days.
Role: User Experience Designer/Researcher
Entity: Adler Spatial Visualization Lab
Location: Chicago, IL
Skills Used: Graphic Design, Processing, Android Application, UX Research, Interaction Design
Team: Primary designer, reported to Design Lead
In grad school I took part in a volunteer program through the school of Information at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. I worked on an Android Application that let users 'walk' through the solar system, placing a visual of the system over the Adler's site.
Synopsis: Off and on in 2011 and 2012 I aided Joshua Bard, a professor within the University of Michigan's Architecture school, currently a professor at Carnegie Mellon. The Morphfaux titled project was meant to explore methods in which plaster could be enhanced through modern fabrication techniques. My primary input was through attempted scripting and then machine control of a moving head for the KUKA robot, for laying plaster, alongside creating presentation (see the 3D models and 2D illustrations) for this work.
Role: Design Research Assistant
Entity: Taubman Architecture
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
Skills Used: Design Research, Rhinoscripting, Grasshopper (3D modeling Software), Arduino Control of Stepper Motors
Links: His research site
Synopsis: Generally lumping a number of architecture course projects here.
Entity: Taubman Architecture
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
Skills Used: Advanced graphic design, 3D modeling, rendering, various modeling work
Links: —-