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Be conventional

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:21:05 +1100

Reading an excerpt of Discourse Analysis by Barbara Johnstone in my writing course made me connect writing to design in a way that I hadn’t thought about before.

Johnstone’s argument was essentially that “a person whose discourse was completely creative—completely unlike anything previously tried—would, after all, be impossible to understand.” Using thank-you notes as an example, she showed that these thank-you notes from a person at different ages changed as his command of language grew, but that they consistently followed a specific structure (a convention), making them easily recognizable as thank-you notes.

How does this apply to design? →

Registration forms are unnecessary obstacles

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 11:21:05 +1000

There’s a better way to introduce new users to your service or application than imposing account creation on them before they can get to the main features.

Think about it this way. The average user who comes to try your service will probably not spend more than a few minutes. When you get them hooked, they might spend a little more time. But if there were a registration process, even one that takes a minute (and often times account creation comes with email confirmations, requiring yet more time) or even one that takes just 30 seconds, it could well have taken away about one-fifth of the time new users would’ve spent in understanding your product—the time you could’ve spent getting them to like your product.

Find out more →

A website rethinking inspired by magazines

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 11:21:05 +1100

Smashing Magazine’s article on the death of the boring blog post only confirmed my growing belief that I needed a different kind of website.

Invariably, one was born. No sooner had I launched it, however, than I became weary of it. The new “no two pages are the same” concept had not only failed to solve my problems, but also became a burden to maintain. For the next few months, I sought a solution.

See my solution →

The illogic of the American date format

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 11:21:05 +1000

It was one of those few classes where I actually paid attention and took notes (during the rest I just doodle or stare off in space). I took out my notebook and began taking down some important dates on the powerpoint. But the problem was, the dates were not all uniform.

Background

My notes actually have two extremes: either messy and full of shorthand notations, or neat and well-designed. In this particular class, I chose the latter, and therefore had some problems lining the dates up in a nice, border-less table.

Find out what happened →

PrepMD

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:21:05 +1100

PrepMD, an organization providing medical device training, began to take their curriculum online. I was responsible for designing the user interface for their CourseBuilder app, which allowed students to “shop” for courses, watch presentations, and take quizzes.

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Discussion platform

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:21:05 +1100

Most discussion boards involve a threads-and-replies model, where topics are well-defined and digressions are often unwelcomed. While this type of forum works well for questions and answers and limited discussions, it fails when the digressions are the driving force of a continuous conversation, such as one that may take place within a group of Transcendentalist thinkers.

This project is still in development.

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Atlantis Technology

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:21:05 +1100

For Atlantis Technology, their identity in both print and web was as old as their history, which dates back to 1997. That’s a history to be proud of; their identity, though, did not grow when they did, and was no longer sufficient.

I worked with them and overhauled the way they presented themselves on paper and on the screen. They are a small team of friendly and competent people in suits and ties—and thus needed an identity that would tell their unique story.

Learn about the process →

ChoiceResponse

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:21:05 +1000

ChoiceResponse is a web service that allows users to send multiple-choice emails. Because many users may come from mobile devices and not their computers, the website is built to scale gracefully across all browser sizes, even mobile screens.

Learn more about the design →

Fusogen Pharmaceuticals

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 11:21:05 +1100

Fusogen Pharmaceuticals, inc. is a leading biotech company based in China. They wanted to improve their website to be more in line with their competitors, without making drastic changes to the underlying structure.

See more screenshots →

The Lion’s Roar

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:21:05 +1000

The Lion’s Roar is a student-run newspaper. I worked for them as a Web Manager, heading all web design and development and managing the newspaper’s information organization on the web. The Lion’s Roar website had had little activity and improvement since it was built years earlier, and I transformed it from a mess of articles into a flexible and structured website that incorporated multimedia and emphasized content.

mirRor Placement Logo

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:21:05 +1100

mirRoR Placement is a recruiter for Ruby on Rails developers. Using the symmetrical nature of “RoR,” the mirRoR logo communicates ruby, recruiting, and the mirRoR name itself.

Visit mirRoR placement.

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