Jam & Honey Design, Interaction & Development

Description

One Stop Blogs is a new blogging aggregation site from MacMillan Publishing for people working with in the language teaching profession.

Armed simply with existing branding of One Stop English I created a totally new site site, developing a unique look and feel. The site is built on an existing code structure which I was constrained to but then given the freedom to stretch it as far as I could to come up with something fresh and exciting.

The design I produced brought life to a previously dull uninspiring content model. Once I had the design in place I kicked of the css work which I then passed on to the in-house development team.

Description

Nature.com supports a large amount of blogs within its network. Each one is on a different specialist subject, with it’s own identity, will fitting within the styling and structure of the nature.com site.

I was asked to design a generic template for this array of blogs which could be adapted simply using the css so that each blog could use it’s own signature colour and place a unique image in the header to identify it from the others.

In the day I had to work on this I produced a couple of variations. The result being that the final template is based on the second but pulling a couple of elements from the first.

Description

University Presbyterian Church approached my partner looking to breathe life in to their website - a flash based, unintuitive and unengaging experience.

Our brief was to produce a user-friendly, visually engaging interface which presented the human side to their organisation.

My partner handled IA and development, with my consultation, while I handled the visual design.

The result is a clean, modern and friendly site which is easy to use for their diverse demographic, supporting the congregation and drawing in new members.

Description

Following on from the success of the previous designs I produced for FPU, they commissioned me to mock up a stand alone news and events site for the university. The client put together a general brief relating to content types. They requested that it should be clear to the user that the site was independent but at the same time linked to their main site.

My approach was to use the same template but to change the colour palette, within their guidelines, and give the site a more serious, informative feel.

I also expanded the number pages designed to cover content level and an events calendar. This gave me the chance to document the consistency of the design and spend more time analysis the interaction process for users accessing the calendar.

With the visual design done, the in-house technical team are currently working on the build, with the site due to go live later in 2009.

Description

Smarta is a social networking site for entrepreneurs and business people. It was the brain child of Sháá Wasmund of Bright Station Ventures who saw the need for a well built, easy to use and engaging resource for forward thinking business people. Whether just starting out or in need of fresh inspiration.

The brief was to create site that combined quality editorial with a networking structure that would enable its users to make a difference to their business.

Along side another senior interaction designer, I was tasked with taking the project from the very beginning and see it through to launch. We started by research the market, and the users, and also interviewing the stakeholders and other business people. With this information we created a broad spectrum of personas and built up the functional requirements and a site map of the site.

From here we wireframed the scenarios and tested them. With the the testing done we moved on to visual design and went through an iterative process bringing together the best of our ideas to produce the final look and feel.

Once the look and feel was signed off we created all the templates and handed over the artwork and documentation to Public Zone to handle the development.

Description

Microsoft wanted to showcase Silverlight on a mobile platform. The solution was to create an animated, interactive character which could interpret the operation system functions of the Samsung Omnia.

I worked on this as a solo project, for Splendid, over two weeks, working with a developer from Samsung, plus technical support from the in-house Microsoft Silverlight team.

I spent the first few days brainstorming and storyboarding the project, and brought in some illustrators to create the character. I then spent a week in Seattle at Microsoft taking part in a workshop with other small Silverlight teams where I finished the storyboarding and investigated technical solutions to our requirements. The final week was spent producing the visual interface which I created using Microsoft Expression.

The final interface was produced as a demo for PDC2008 in LA.

Description

Having designed the main site for FPU they returned with a request to create the visuals for an undergraduate site. The brief was to follow the information architecture of the main site but change the visual design so that it directly appealed to the younger undergrad audience, with a specific request that I use the grunge style. Initially I produced a design following their standard brand guide lines. However, the marketing department then request the use of a brighter, more vibrant colour palette, plus the use of a new logo created for their new marketing campaign.

I successfully blended the new visual direction with the existing template and created a design that was bright and engaging while maintaining a clear link to the main site.

Description

I was hired by Sapient to join their team redesigning www.vodafone.co.uk and the then separate online shop offering.

Although given the choice to come in as an IA I opted to work on the visual design team, supporting both the shop side and the main co.uk side. As well as being able to contribute as a design for both areas, this gave me the responsibility of being a sanity check between the two streams, keeping them on track with all visual design developments.

It was a chance for me to learn a different technical approach as all the wireframing and visual design was done in Illustrator. The greatest benefit to this method is that each ‘module’ can be created independently then inserted in to templates in the same way websites do. This was also useful in terms of time saving, because the wireframe files were the same format as the visual design, so assets could transfer across to save reproduction.

Another role I took on was to build a prototype of the new IA for testing purposes. The primary purpose of this was to test the new site hierarchy so I had to make sure the user was able to navigate around the site (built from sliced screen shots). I built it using php includes which meant we were able to change the structure and content quickly on the fly when needed.

Description

FPU hired me to freshen up and revitalise their cold looking site.

I worked through the requirements with the client from which I wireframed the homepage and a content page. I then produced the look and feel, using their branding guidelines. The finished visuals were then handed over to their in-house team and the site is due for launch later in 2009.

Description

Bright Station Ventures, a regular project partner with Splendid, developed the idea for a new social networking site for women, fronted by Trinny and Suzannah.

My job was to kick off the project working closely with Bright Station and liaise with Trinny, Suzannah, and their agent. I started by researching all aspects of the project, from demographic to competition. I was responsible for documenting the requirements and use cases for the site, developing personas and scenarios, brainstorming the functional areas and site map, and finally wireframing the core structure of the site.

Once the wireframing had reached an advanced stage we moved on to initial look and feel concepts. These were worked up to high level visuals based on the wireframes from the scenarios.

Unfortunately the project hit some stumbling blocks due to financings. So for now the project is on hold.