Creating compelling experiences requires understanding people and how they communicate. Whether they realize it or not, most people communicate primarily with their eyes. They read, they perceive patterns, they understand a gesture or body language.
That’s why design matters—good design communicates clearly. Interactions happen as expected, typography enhances readability, images convey emotion. I try to bring these elements to my work, from engaging stakeholders in the process to the delivered strategy and products.
What keeps me busy?
I've lived in Chicago since 2005, where I've run a marathon, captained an ultimate Frisbee team and met my wonderful wife. During the past three years I’ve studied at the Institute of Design (at the Illinois Institute of Technology), from which I’ll graduate with a Master of Design degree in December 2011.
My professional life has been in newspapers. I have a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri—Columbia, with an emphasis in visual journalism. After stints in Lawrence, Kan., and Munster, Ind., I had the incredible opportunity to join the Chicago Tribune, where I have worked since.
I’ve spent most of my life clarifying that, yes, the Kansas City most people know of is in Missouri not Kansas. I grew up there cheering for the Royals, to whom I’m loyal, but it has been a long suffering.
My process brings structure to data from user research, and I find the most productive methods make the information visual. This not only helps communicate with other people, but also our eyes are an amazing pattern-finding tool. Visual data maps and models make analysis more efficient.
In qualitative design research, the data patterns don’t yield numerical justification for decisions; rather, they highlight areas for further examination that might point to insights. Yet because I can see whether such data points fit into higher level themes, I can identify them as outliers or demonstrative of patterns.
Graphical frameworks provide an organizing structure around people’s experiences, and they help clarify how best to frame the challenge to solve. Insights drive synthesis of ideas and give design direction.
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Bringing expertise to the point of need
One of the world’s largest suppliers for maintenance, repair and operations asked for help deploying technical support and expertise to the point of customer need. Its customers typically ask “Can you help?” to three types of problems:
I have this part I need to replace;
I have this part but don’t know what it is;
I have a broken machine but don’t know how to fix it.
Based on our research the design team needed to support capture, communication and sharing of problems and solutions. A new mobile application could empower customers with product information, make staff knowledge and service more accessible and convert the point of need into a point of sale.
Making information sharing easier
Many of the company’s interactions with customers happen over the phone, and the design team proposed more multi-modal communications through the app. Allowing customers to share pictures and video alleviated the need to describe parts verbally.
Respect customers' time
Additionally, we gave customers the ability to text questions to service representatives. Often customers juggle multiple tasks at once, and waiting on the phone for answers wastes their time. Instead, that communication can be asynchronous. They’re receive the answer as it becomes available.
Make smarter suggestions
The client’s catalog of 900,000 parts and products often require customers to measure sizes or specs to get the right fit. Adding a “tool belt” to the app gives customers at-hand means for finding the right products. The new app also brings the catalog to the mobile device, so customers can find products in the moment, rather than having to call in or get to a computer. Shortening the distance between problem and solution improves the customer experience, and connecting customers with products drives sales.
Connecting a design team to data
Ask the team to explore
To craft customer-centered brand messages, a design team needs to understand from where insights come. Costco’s Kirkland Signature house brand stands for many positive qualities, but it fails to effectively sell these to customers. To help a design team reshape Kirkland Signature’s brand communication, I created exploratory software that connects insights with the data from a qualitative study. The figurative map explains how 21 convenience- and health-focused women research participants define “healthy” food in distinct ways. Kirkland’s message to each group should be equally unique, but to craft these, the design team needs to understand links between participants’ thinking, actions and larger themes.
Dive into the details
On one axis, the figurative streets represent drivers of purchase behaviors, while the other axis represents mindsets and modes. These are arranged purposefully to show which connect or reside near one another. Cutting across the landscape are circumstances the participants said can force them to deviate from preferences. Across the map, dots represent data points that the client team can read through to reach deeper understanding of what I mean by the street names.
Share the connections
I extended the map metaphor to include transit routes that represent actions participants described. These show further connection between individual data points and the broader themes.
Summarize findings
Finally, I brought the top-level analysis forward in the form of neighborhoods. These represent the five groups’ distinct definitions of “healthy” food. For each, I included a set of attributes the design team might use in planning branded communication aimed at the group. Present the information in a compelling way: I chose to present my findings as an exploratory map, in part, because the design brief for this ID class project asked students to break some of the conventions of business communication.
Interacting with children’s TV programs
On television programs such as Sesame Street, the characters often break the fourth wall and speak directly to their young audience. Young technologies may soon grow to allow the children a way to communicate back to the system. Their parents, too, could benefit from a way to interact.
Connecting multiple devices
A spring 2011 class took as inspiration a Motorola research group’s concepts for interactive television. Their ideas showed how people might experience television content through secondary mobile devices. For my own designs, I chose to explore how parents and children could deepen their engagements with PBS Kids programs.
Prototyping interactions
The exploration for this concept began with simple paper prototypes that let me test early ideas with professors and classmates.That critique fed the development of a scenario, wireframes and models of interaction between the users’ multiple devices.
Demonstrating the concept
Because I chose a real organization as a fictitious client, I tried to create a user interface that fit into their existing brand identity. Further “Wizard of Oz” prototyping generated more feedback and helped me share a full proof of concept in a pitch to the Motorola team sponsoring the class.
Making virtual friends real social networks
How many online “friends” ever spend time together? They should actually, ya know, go do something sometime. This concept for a redesigned Metromix mobile app helps people plan activities with their Facebook friends.
It gives businesses a platform for reaching customers. At the moment people are looking activities, businesses have an opportunity to suggest their offerings and push deals.
In addition to the core function, the app lets people suggest dream activities friends might want to join and businesses might sponsor. Perhaps someone has always wanted to go skydiving. By adding this to their Wishlist, friends can see this and say they’re in if it happens. To encourage it to actually happen, businesses can see Wishlist activities they might want to agree to sponsor through a group discount or add ons.
