Director, User Experience
PURPOSE
CollegeBlender.com is a social media platform for college students, alumni, and faculty. CollegeBlender aims to put a spotlight on all the cool stuff coming out of college. From blogs to videos, music, and news – CollegeBlender seeks to provide a stage for college media.
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
As a founding member of CollegeBlender, and as the Director of User Experience, I currently serve as the sole visual and interface designer, as well as the primary front-end developer. I was responsible for designing the front-end of the site – from Photoshop to XHTML/CSS.
Co-Founder
PURPOSE
InvestInMyEducation.com is a peer-to-peer student lending network designed to connect determined students in need of money for college with creative investors looking for a way to lend a helping hand in our ever-changing academic landscape.
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
As the co-founder of InvestInMyEducation, my task was to act as the liaison between the founder of the company and the firm contracted to design and develop the site. The main purpose of this position was to ensure that the founder's vision made it through into the final web site.
CollegeBlender is the largest single project I have ever worked on and it is also the project I am most proud of. I worked on a team of only three people (including myself) to create a groundbreaking new social media platform for college students, alumni and faculty. My task was designing and developing the front-end. My teammates, Dan and Ryan, created the awesomely powerful and flexible back-end that powers the site.The design was based off an original homepage concept done by Kevin John Gomez. The goal of the design was to create something fun and visually engaging while maintaining a primary focus on our users’ content. I first designed all of the main pages in Photoshop and then used the finished designs to create standards compliant XHTML/CSS pages. Close attention was also paid to interactive elements, which I designed in Photoshop and then coded in XHTML and jQuery.
InvestInMyEducation is a side project that I started working on during my time at Dumbwaiter Design. The site's founder, James Worboys, approached me to partner with him on the project. James had the vision for the site, applying the concept of peer-to-peer lending to the student loan market, and needed someone with my skill set to help manage the firm contracted to design and develop the site. James and I selected the company Lounge Lizard because of their impressive portfolio including large-scale sites for Canon and Nikon. Throughout the process I worked closely between James and Lounge Lizard to ensure that his vision made it through into the final site. The project was completed successfully, on time, and within budget. While the site is fully operational, we are currently working to make additional improvements before proceeding with a public marketing effort.
DigitalCigs
digitalcigs.com
DigitalCigs was a small freelance project that I did for a friend of mine who wanted to start marketing electronic cigarettes. The idea behind electronic cigarettes appealed to me because their intended use was to deter smokers from smoking tobacco cigarettes. Electronic cigarettes have since been banned by the FDA. Before this happened I designed and developed a mini-store for the product using Paypal for payment handling. I also designed a concept for the full-size store, which, due to the circumstances, never went into development.
The GW Alumni Association web site is a project that I completed during my time at Dumbwaiter Design. The site was designed by DWD’s very talented Ali Ali. My task for this project was the front-end development. I developed the entire shell in standards compliant XHTML/CSS with Javascript drop-down menus for primary navigation and Javascript accordion menus for sub-navigation. The client took the shell and hooked it up to their own back-end system.
The Geva Theatre web site is a project that I completed during my time at Dumbwaiter Design. The site was designed by DWD’s very talented Miguel Cardona. As the primary front-end developer I developed the entire shell for the site in standards compliant XHTML/CSS.
Company Time Tracking System
Internal employee/project time tracking system
This project was created both as a contract project for Dumbwaiter Design and as an independent study for course credit at RIT. Dumbwaiter Design needed an easy way to track hours for client projects and a way for employees to log and track their own hours worked on company projects. I designed and developed the entire system, including an XHMTL/CSS front-end and a PHP back-end. Dumbwaiter Design has been using the application for three years now to log and track employee and project hours.
The New York Wine and Culinary Center web site was the first project I completed while working at Dumbwaiter Design – during my internship with them as a student at RIT. The site was designed by DWD’s Ali Ali. As the developer on the project, I took Ali’s Photoshop files and turned them into standards compliant XHMTL/CSS. The Flash drop-down menus used for primary navigation were designed and developed by DWD’s Miguel Cardona. We worked together to integrate the menus into the site. I wrote a Javascript function to adjust the parameters of the embed, which Miguel then called from within the Flash movie when users opened or closed the menus.
