My Resume

Interaction Designer / Technology Manager

Objective

Drive interaction design strategy for a small or medium consultancy, software or environmental organization. Improve the way people work, live or grow through effective project management or by directing a team of passionate, experienced professionals through cutting-edge projects.

Professional Summary

  • Broad business experience across a variety of industries, enterprises and cultures, including pharmaceutical, technology, consulting, retail, eCommerce start-ups, large corporations and the military.
  • Deep technical design and development skill-set that ensures highly successful, technically proven, usable design solutions that meet user, business and architecture needs.
  • Proven ability to quickly distill business problems into core elements, thoroughly map several innovative solutions beyond execution, and effectively communicate visual concepts to users, developers, managers and executives.

Keywords

Management:
Team Leadership, Mentoring, Public Speaking, Executive Proposals, Business Process Improvement, Design Standards, Six Sigma, ITIL, Project Documentation
Interaction Design:
Functional Prototyping, DHTML, XHTML, CSS-based design, Ruby on Rails, Haml, Prototype, Scriptaculous, JQuery, Streaming Video, Flash Development, Actionscript 3.0, W3C Compliance, Section 508 Accessibility Compliance, Information Workplace & Portal Design, eCommerce Design, Web Site Design, Logo, Banner Ad & Direct Mail Design, Vector Illustration, Graphic Design. Heuristic & Expert Reviews, Usability Studies, User Surveys, Wire frames, Card Sorts, Information Architecture (IA)
Web Environments:
Ruby on Rails, PHP, Java, C# .NET, Perl, XML, BEA Aqualogic, WordPress, CMS, SEO, Omniture & Google Web Analytics, MS SQL, Oracle, MySQL, Lotus Notes & QuickPlace

Work Experience

Chief Technology Officer, PrepChamps, Inc., Durham NC – 2007-2009

Directed all technical operations and web development efforts, including full site design, prototyping, usability testing, site launch and project improvement efforts.  Managed intranet and Internet hosting, web analytics, partner vendor contracts and implementation.

Accomplishments:

  • Designed and directed implementation of the entire Internet social networking, athletic recruiting and event management web site, PrepChamps.com.
  • Developed wireframes, site maps, and functional prototypes for initial and continuous feature releases following user centered design techniques.
  • Led a six member development team of full-time employees, contractors and guest developers through initial site construction and launch.
  • Designed, developed and delivered all front-end graphic, HTML, CSS, Haml, and JavaScript View components, allowing development team to focus on backend Controller and Model architecture.
  • Developed and presented weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual progress and pipeline reports; delivered to executive team, current and potential investors, including Fortune 100 business executives.

Usability & Web Analytics Director, GlaxoSmithKline, RTP NC – 2003-2007

Defined the user experience strategy for senior executives, global architecture and governance teams. Improved the total user experience for 110K GSK employees by leading several offshore resources and 8 expert usability practitioners through dozens of global projects. Proposed and implemented extensive usability changes to the global intranet and extranet portals, self-service web applications and content-delivery web sites through dedicated design, usability and process improvements.

Accomplishments:

  • Designed a fully-functional role-based, user-centered prototype of an Information Workplace portal that united IT and business leaders and provided a clear, simple demonstration of future portal strategy. Illustrated a corporate portal from the user’s perspective, integrating role-based navigation, one-click customization, Web 2.0 social networking features, and enhanced presence-awareness.
  • Drove sweeping usability changes to the company intranet portal that decreased the time to find 8 key self-service applications by 65%, cut load time from 4 to 1.2 seconds and increased Nielsen Norman Usability Intranet Design Annual ranking from 27th to 11th place. Integrated the 8 most common employee activities into a single menu filtered for over 200 roles, designed icons and color themes to highlight common tasks and provide a visual roadmap to end users, and clearly separated navigation from content on every page to embed visual consistency without impeding business creativity.
  • Authored and drove adoption of global usability and web design standards, style sheets and assessment tools that defined the benchmark against which all web applications are measured.
  • Directed technical and process improvements that reduced the web analytics budget 22% and corrected a 50% over-reporting of web-traffic statistics.
  • Embedded user centered design methods into the application lifecycle and tied user objectives directly to business benefits, which increased benefits reporting by 45%.
  • Designed custom graphic assets, JavaScript and DHTML prototypes for dozens of self-service applications, content and collaboration web sites, including the global phonebook, search engine, intranet portal, HR applications, department home pages, communities and gadgets.

President & CEO, Binary Press, Inc., Cary NC 2002-2003

Consulted with and delivered professional-grade web sites, marketing collateral and business applications to Dot Com and Fortune 500 clients quickly, flexibly and with a friendly touch.

Accomplishments:

  • Designed and delivered a useful, friendly, innovative web collaboration portal for Intuit’s Waltham, Massachusetts office, following weeks of interviews, prototyping, architecture and usability guidance from business users. Demonstrated an innovative use for Intuit’s QuickBase online database system.
  • Designed and delivered a full online presence for AutumnRiders.com, including eCommerce web application, search optimization, advertising and management tools which consistently receives positive feedback for its usability.
  • Designed and delivered interactive knowledgebase web site for outsourcing company. Increased target audience visits 50% with interactive features and small business resources.

Chief Technology Officer, SpeedGreetings, Inc., Bethesda MD 2000-2002

Directed team of 5 graphic artists, computer programmers and analysts through building a company from the ground-up, including network infrastructure, complete web site implementation, product design and production management.

Accomplishments:

  • Proposed and implemented an alternate web strategy after months of delays and escalating costs made the vendor solution unfeasible. Successfully delivered full online presence in three months that exceeded the requirements and cost 90% less, saving $300K.
  • Designed innovative, interactive greeting-card customization and order features into eCommerce web site. Enabled enterprise clients with co-branding, product templates and account management. Integrated online site management and offline print-production systems to streamline business processes.
  • Designed a holiday product line of 30 cards with 2 designers in 10 days to meet tight production and client deadlines.
  • Designed and built custom data-entry tools for offline processing, which reduced data errors 95%.

Technology Manager, Accenture, Inc., Reston VA 1996-2000

Trusted expert consultant and reference for many technical fields within the support organization: Y2K readiness, Access, VBA and Lotus development, network infrastructure and computer troubleshooting.

Accomplishments:

  • Acquired group of dispirited network engineers 4 weeks before a major network migration project. Fostered team cohesion and confidence through cross-training and 1 on 1 feedback. Newly energized team successfully migrated network of 50 servers, dozens of mission critical projects and 3000 users in one weekend with no data loss, despite a 12 hour Internet blackout.
  • Designed a modular software development process for U.S. development team that was used to manage several global development projects, including Y2K and office automation systems.
  • Designed and developed MS Access event manager system that standardized conference registration and allowed analysts to efficiently schedule resources anywhere in the company.
  • Designed and developed team communication portal for southern California offices by consolidating 5 Lotus Notes Databases into a single collaboration database.

Education / Affiliation / Recognition

  • Awarded GSK & Accenture’s highest IT recognition award ten times
  • ITIL Foundations Certified
  • Member, Usability Professionals Association and TriUPA
  • Completing Computer Science/Information Technology Degree, Capella University

Case Studies:

Contact me for information on case studies and other recent work examples.