November 22, 20133 Comments

A Thought on Chairs and Software Development

From Daniel Jalkut excellent post on Stagnation Or Stability? He applauds the app for allowing him to do his work “frictionlessly.” How does a software developer achieve this level of performance? By first building a quality product and then working deliberately over months and years to address the minor issues that remain. Woodworking makes a […]

Read more

March 14, 2011No Comments

Recent Design Work – Wikia Labs

Wikia Labs, a new feature introduced by Wikia last week, was one of the most exciting features I designed during my time with the company. If you’re familiar with Gmail Labs you’ll understand how it works. Users (specifically admins) on Wikia can turn features on and off - the set consists of Top Ten Lists, Gallery Exhibitions, and Article Comments. This new ability gives administrators a greater level of control over their own wiki. Additional it provides a limited environment for Wikia to launch new features and gather feedback from users. For Wikia’s devoted user base, change can often be scary and invoke a backlash from the most passionate users comfortable with infrastructure currently in place. Wikia Labs serves as a bridge to acclimate users to new tools and gather feedback to ensure the the company is delivering features that are needed and wanted by the community.

Read more

December 31, 2010No Comments

Mule Design On Giving Feedback

Well worth the read whether your a designer or in a position where your providing the feedback. It just might save your next project from looking like a mullet.

“John in marketing wants to be able to log in directly on the home page, but Tim in Engineering would prefer it on its own page. Can we compromise?”

No. We cannot compromise.

If you tell your barber that you like it short, but your significant other likes it long, you’re gonna get a mullet.

Read more

November 13, 2010No Comments

Wikia Redesign

Earlier this year the team at Wikia started down the path to redesign their product - a popular wiki hosting platform. Over the summer they brought me on the project as an interaction and visual designer. And just last month we let the redesign loose to a passionate community of select users. Our redesign effort concentrated on making the experience of using a wiki, where a community of users contribute the content, easier. It’s still too early to judge if we accomplished our goal of attracting a larger audience, helping them discover content, and engaging them as editors. However, after a couple weeks, the reactions that we are getting from users are encouraging and we’re excited to continue improving the site.

Read more

October 12, 2010No Comments

Food & Tech: Designs In The Wild

This bit of work began as a postcard and made its way into a banner hanging from the San Francisco Ferry Building on the occasion of Wikia’s Food & Tech event. The logo was a piece of work we put together for the Healthy Recipes team at Wikia a few weeks ago. The event, which took place on Sunday October 10th, saw a handful of local chefs serving up their culinary delights and an esteemed panel discussing technology’s role in shaping the food we eat. It always puts a smile on my face to see my work placed in the context of tangible moments like these.

Read more

April 3, 2007No Comments

UI Design for The Godfather

When I was a teenager I had a beautiful Italian language movie poster of The Godfather in my room. It was jet black with a red silhouette of Marlin Brando and text that read "Il Padrino". Little did I know that years later I would have the opportunity to design and develop for The Godfather […]

Read more

October 10, 2006No Comments

UI Design Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’07

For years Tiger Woods Golf has been the measuring stick to which all sports video games are compared. For 2007 we gave the user interface a new look and feel and enhanced a number of features. A highlight for me in working on Tiger Woods 2007 was the chance to design the gameface user interface […]

Read more

December 1, 2005No Comments

UI Design for 007: From Russia with Love

There are very few projects with the history and pedigree of James Bond – and this was Sean Connery's James Bond. Artistically the User Interface From Russia with Love had to look like it was from the early 60's but still have the high production values and modern look of a twenty first century video […]

Read more