The desktop version was map-centric and allowed users to browse, sort, filter, and search for incidents in their areas of interest. We also had many law enforcement agencies as partners, and we showed views by agency using shapefiles, and provided trend analysis over time. It was interesting balancing the user goals of citizens and law enforcement officials, who had very different needs. 

Because of the nature of crime data, not much of it is real-time. There is no set schedule for agencies to publish data, and the more mundane incidents can take weeks to enter the system. This meant that the usual "what's happening near me now" of mobile, which seems like a necessity for crime info, is technically not possible. Instead, we focused on allowing users to learn more about the agecies in their area, and to set incident alerts for one or more target areas. 

On all surfaces, we helped the user understand the data with incident details, a breakdown of incidents by type, and trend analysis. This is the mobile web version.

Socrata Open Expenditures provides checkbook–level insight into organizational spending, down to the actual invoice detail. This means treating the UI like a Swiss Army knife that can be opened one point of information at a time. 

Socrata Open Budget answers key financial questions about operating and capital budget revenue streams and allocations. A very important dimension was spending over time, as displayed on this map of expenditures by loaction, year over year. 

The best way to understand these complex economic problems is a whiteboard session.

Researcher’s Library: An ever-growing, searchable database of ecosystem service values collected from carefully vetted sources and managed by expert ecological economists.

SERVES (Simple, Effective Resource for Valuing Ecosystem Services): A web-based tool for calculating ecosystem service values and performing natural capital appraisal.

We worked to allow the researchers and analysts to customize EVERYTHING while still keeping the product consistent.

We also worked to allow the researchers and analysts to import any study, any format, any values in a consistent way. This is also a good example of the common controls... before it was a dog's breakfast of native and custom HTML. 

I was the creative director and UX lead for the redesign of the organization's website. The old site was text heavy with convoluted navigation. We worked to update the site to be scannable and task-centric. 

http://www.eartheconomics.org

Full digital reading experience, including dictionary, annotating, X-Ray, and Audible intregration. 

Full digital magazine and newspaper reading experience based on Books, featuring both text and replica views. 

All the redlines. 

I prepared for and participated in user research sessions in the state-of-the-art lab. This was user research for manga readers in Tokyo, Japan. 

So much whiteboarding, especially for the new Fire Phone expericne. 

This was a storyboard for the 3D Fire Phone reading experience. Because of the added interaction complexity of 3D, storyboards and prototypes were necessary to communicate with the software development team. 

The Kindle reading experience translated to a smaller screen. 

I was the lead UX designer for Fire Tablet and Phone. In this video clip, ol' Jeff says "Brilliant designers..." at 0:45 and also right at the end. So I got THAT goin' for me. 

A lot of work at ZAAZ was improving existing customer experiences on existing sites. We would do a content inventory of the existing site, usually by printing out all the site pages, and then do affinity exercises and information streamlining and restructuring to help the user to better access the content. We would also identify and fix information gaps and areas that needed paring down, and plan for the inclusion of new content.

We would then identify user types and goals, and compare those with the existing site content, which would then inform our new information architecture and page types. A lot of this work would require us to work with the client to more closely align their expectations with those of their users, and how they could better communicate with their customers.

Finally, we would build out fairly detailed wireframes of the new site or app. A lot of times, we would be working with clients who were unfamiliar with reviewing wireframes, so there would be some education as well in which we helped them understand that clear client-approved wireframes saves a lot of time down the road in the design and development process.

It looks like this section of the Bing app hasn't been released yet, but I worked on this very exciting real-time transit app for iPhone. My favorite way to describe the problem space was to reenact that sort of head-bobbing, weaving-in-your-seat thing you have to do on a bus or subway to try to see out the window if you've reached or missed your stop (I can act it out for you when we meet in person).

The answer? Riders can watch stops pass in real time, at ease in their seat (or crammed in between tall people with no hope of seeing out the window). We partnered with the UW student who designed and built the impressive One Bus Away app to also design quick-access "where's my bus" features, as well as route and stop information. I REALLY, REALLY hope they add this to the app, or release it as a stand-alone app soon.

Side note: As I worked at Bing mobile, I noticed that they had a lot of great verticals in their apps, but it was hard for users to find them. Also, it was hard for Bing to compete with dedicated competitors in each vertical space. Case in point: no one will be able to effectively use the "where's my bus" feature unless they can get to it with one (maybe two) clicks. I did an exercise in which I analyzed all of the verticals, then grouped them and provided app shortcuts, or back doors, to some of the deeper features, such as Real-Time Transit, Turn-by-Turn Navigation, and third-party partnerships like Open Table. Hopefully, they implement that as well.

I worked on an improved Maps and Directions experience for iPhone, using the then-brand-new Metro style. We took the existing experience, improved the colors (for instance, the route now looks like a blue highlighter instead of a fat, opaque map-obscuring purple line), and used the Metro window-shade interaction model to allow users to slide between map and list view. Also, we improved the destination experience by adding a streetside view of the destination address.

I designed the Maps and Directions experience for the first release of the Bing client for Android 2x phones.

I designed the search results and parts of the home screen and images experience for the first release of the iBing client. A lot of people said that they really liked it... 4+ stars in the App Store.

Literally the Dark Ages of mobile maps. This code base was so primitive and old that it couldn't even programmatically draw a polygon. But hey... limitations are what makes design fun!

It was fascinating to work on the early days of computerized map voices and to determine all the rules of speech patterns. For instance: freeway names. The computer-voice would say "Merge onto I-Four Hundred and Five" and I'd say "No, no, no, lady... that's 'I-Four Oh Five'." 

Most of my work at the T-Mobile Creation Center was thinking and creating with people from as many different disciplines as we could get together. We did lots of different brainstorming exercises, diagrams, whiteboarding, flows, and other creation exercises. We filled whole rooms!

I did a lot of this sort of documentation for the product and engineering teams to help them concretely understand my thinking. 

I built many, many wireframes, which mapped out the functionality for a project examining the future of mobile communication. This set describes RebelVox, an existing (non-T-Mobile) service. Some of our concepts were based on this, and I wireframed it as a spec project so as not to violate my NDA with T-Mobile. I can get really, really geeked out on wireframes. I love mapping out the strategy and scenario flows.

This concept is directed at a younger, hipper age group who are used to interacting on multiple levels in multiple formats all at once. Square tiles suggest a game-like structure, ready to be explored, and information unfolds in a fractal way. You can zoom in and around multiple layers of information about someone. I would have loved to have taken this to a finished interface!

This is a Venn diagram I did to map out the proposed features for a project examining the future of mobile communication and how to make it more humanized. The Principles were from the project charter, and the Features were culled from hundreds of one-sheets from brainstorms we taped up all over the walls--this is my way of collecting them into a structure and identifying the major concept areas, and seeing where they fit with the overall project goals.

Sorry I can't make all the text readable--some of it is confidential.

Creative Director, 2002

Creative Director for packaging, brochures, trade show booths, and a website. I like the grids, and the big color fields mixed with minimalist photos. The network diagrams were also fun to do as we got to spend a lot of time with the engineers, proving designers weren't all a pack of ditzes.

How do playing cards lie? A two of hearts actually has four hearts, including the index hearts. These cards have the correct number of pips, and have the added bonus of narrower bottom edges to form a more compact hand.

Freelance Art Director for Sony Music, New York City, 2005

I designed CD and video packaging for a variety of Sony artists. I also got to spend a lot of time in the very stellar Sony Music photo archives. I did the CD packaging for Thelionius Monk's "Straight, No Chaser"... my name is in the liner notes <swoon>. And George Avakian very carefully made notes on my layouts for "Birth Of the Third Stream" and Scotch-taped in photos appropriate to the recording sessions in question. Then faxed them to me at my house! George Avakian!

Creative Director, 1994

 This was a 4.2 million circulation teen magazine. Remeber when we used to mess with type? I still like the way we broke the grid and generally hacked about.

Creative Director, 1996

e-postcards. They were just kind of fun to do. I am SO not showing ANYTHING else from that time period! Suffice to say, I was learning how to design good websites alongside everyone else. Most of them were still in the future. I also got to design custom AOL sites with their weird proprietary setup. Whee!

Art Director, Young & Rubicam, 1998

These are WAY past the expiration date but they still crack me up. I was GIF'ing back in the day! They were page headers for the Dr Pepper Rec Room, a Flash-based college football promotion. I did these as animated GIFs, with one of those crappy free programs.

Our 10,000 mile route. Many people ask why we did the Russian detour that is basically the equivalent of driving from Texas to North Dakota to get to Boston... it's because a) you can't get from Mongolia to Kazakhstan, b) China was EXPENSIVE to get visas and carnets for, and c) we wanted to skip not only the atrocious moonscape roads of NE Kazakhstan but also to avoid one of the worst radioactive zones on the planet, Semey, where the Soviet Union tested their nuclear weapons at ground level. Yikes.  

This is our 5-woman team, from left: Alice, professional travel blogger; Bri, sociolinguist; Megan, photographer and videographer; me, Team Captain; Tabitha, team editor and social media wrangler.  

Fordnando, a 1.2-liter 2001 Ford Fiesta
Babs, a 1-liter 2001 Toyota Yaris. 

This was my nefarious master plan. It had every date, location, mileage and time to next stop, the fuel prices automatically calculated off a world fuel prices database, accommodations, people we were planning to interview, borders, and more. I <3 spreadsheets!!!

This was my financial tracking system. All the subtabs totaled up via formulas to the master sheet. 

This is a natural gas field in Derweze, Turkmenistan, that collapsed into an underground cavern in 1971, becoming a natural gas crater, and has been on fire ever since. It's a staple stopover on the Mongol Rally route, and we were there with about a dozen teams. 

So in Uzbekistan they only have six kinds of cars: three kinds of Chevy (small, medium, and large), the awesome Damas microbus (I got a little obsessed with those... they go offroad!), the Lada sedan, and the Lada 4x4. So if you have a Ford, they jam in whatever part is the closest fit. Here they are forcing Chevy Spark shock absorbers into my Fiesta. The threads were about half the depth as the stock threads, so a lot of compression (read: body weight) was needed to get enough clearance for the nut. It's best not to dwell on the details of repair jobs here, because... yikes. 

This is an enterprising business in Mongolia that knows a whole bunch of freaks in hatchbacks are going to blaze through every August with beat-down little cars. Mongolia is mostly off-road driving, so by the end of the rally they are literally held together with baling wire and epoxy. And incorrect parts. We stopped here with our convoy as half the cars needed fixing... which is literally an everyday reality in Mongolia. 

The Mongol Rally is ALL about the people. You can't do it alone, and teamwork is the most enjoyable way to get hard things done anyway. This is Team #WeLive with our convoy that also included Team Keystone (Pittsburgh, PA) and 101-Damn-Nations (Essex, UK). We were joined shortly after this by So Good It Yurts (Kent, UK). I LOVE THESE PEOPLE. 

Judith, the tiny Vauxhall Corsa belonging to So Good It Yurts, cracked her sump many times on the Mongol Rally. By the time they entered Mongolia her sump was held together with cold weld and Gorilla tape. On day 2 in the outback roadless wilds of Western Mongolia, she cracked it again. My car, Fordnando, towed her 63 offroad miles into town, where it was repaired. Fornando cracked his sump on day 4, necessitating a 50-odd-mile dirt-track tow by me with Keystone's underpowered Atos, and underwent subsequent repairs. On day 6, Judith fatally cracked her sump and Fordnando towed her and the boys 800 miles to the finish line. All of this was done on Tentsile treehouse tent straps. Major props to them, our sponsor. This is the condition of the straps at the finish line. STRONG. 

The finish line is just north of Mongolia, in Ulan Ude, Siberia, close to Lake Baikal. WE DID IT!