My current project involves allowing users to search Bing using their camera as an input device - essentially replacing the search bar with the camera on their phone.
There are many challenges involved, first being that this is a relatively unexplored space. We don’t yet know what is possible. This is both exciting and frustrating. Also, users generally don’t know what to expect. The type-and-search model has been well established for many years. Trusting a search engine to analyze your personal pictures is something else. It takes trust. It takes reassurance. It takes patience.
In an ideal world, a user could take a picture of anything, Bing would return the appropriate results, the intended task could then be completed. However, the technology is not there… yet. We are working hard to account for this gap and to provide relevant answers to our users as we invent new wheels.
Our main goal at Bing is to provide our user with relevant information in a timely manner. A logical evolution of our search platform was a notifications system.
As an extension of my personalization and engagement work, I was responsible for creating the first Bing Notification Center. Users can follow interests and receive global notifications about those topics.
Our first round (and MVP) started with sports entities. We plan to expand to additional segments in the future.
A large focus of my last year has been maintaining the Bing Action Framework and creating Bing Personalization. While a member of the Bing Engagement Team, I explored the world of saving and sharing. Our goal was to allow users to find media in the Bing ecosystem and save those items to collections they’ve created.
The differentiator for Bing is the vast amount media available to the user: images, videos, recipes, real estate, coupons, maps, celebrities, locations, and on and on. All of this had to be able to come together in collection and update real-time.
This is just one segment of Bing Personalization, but definitely the most rewarding.
Who’s in is an iMessage extension that allows users to create a plan (or plans) and have their friends vote on the best option. For example - I want to go to dinner and a movie with a few people. I open Who’s In in iMessage, search Bing, check out reviews, decide on some options, and push a few to my friends. They can vote on all aspects and we communally decide the details of the evening.
I was the lead designer on this project with a small feature team.
During my early time at Bing I was responsible for helping with the overhaul of the Bing iOS app. We wanted to approach mobile search differently and make it as seamless as possible. The new app's functionality includes camera search, price comparison, and search by scope. We try to reach the user where they need us most.
The number of travel deals increased dramatically during my time at Amazon Local. At the same time, the number of options we needed to display expanded. We identified that booking functionality was necessary to remain relevant in this vertical and to provide a more satisfying experience for our customers. The ability to choose the dates you want to travel seems obvious, but it was a major step forward for our business.
See Mobile Flow (PDF)
To attract the best merchants we needed a site that outlined everything we had to offer. We created a shell with the capability to expand as we added features and products. The 'For Businesses' page displays the basic information about Amazon Local and allows prospective merchants to dive deeper into testimonials and products. The final goal is to convert browsers into Amazon Local merchants and get them started creating offers.
Onboarding Form Wireframes (PDF)
With the release of the Kindle Fire, Amazon Local wanted to have a position on the front of these devices. We were responsible for guiding the visual direction of how our screensavers would appear on these new color tablets. I was also called into create assets for special promotions from various teams throughout Amazon.
Amazon Local deals were delivered directly to Kindle devices and appeared as screensavers on the lock screen. Beautiful imagery and simple text were used to entice Kindle users to click through and purchase the deals. I was highly involved in raising the visual standard for both imagery and typography. I created unique imagery for our higher profile, national deals that went out to devices throughout the country, as well as for special promotions for Amazon.com. I also conducted experiments in branding and created assets for our sales team to pitch to large potential merchants, including Coca-Cola, Burger King, and Starbucks.
The process for Kindle Offers involved scouring multiple stock photo sites to find just the right image to convey our message. These images would then have to be altered in various ways to make room for text, touch-up some rough spots, and then be converted to black/white for the Kindle e-ink devices.
At Amazon Local I have designed many themes to take the place of the normals site skin. These design elements unfold into full campaigns involving assets that stretch across many forms of media. These themes are to highlight certain occasions that may inspire gifting or to call attention to an offer of a higher caliber.
With the visual team, I helped to create a new logo and update the brand for Amazon Local. We needed a cleaner, more sophisticated look. This video, created by Sara Thompson and Chrissy Wiley, demonstrates the evolution and our thought processes.
Throughout nearly every Amazon Local campaign I have been involved with creating assets to build awareness of our brand. Whether it has been to announce Valentine's Day offers, say hello on Facebook, or to simply tell a potential customer about our services I have attempted to maintain the visual standard of Amazon Local in creative ways.
One of Garrigan Lyman Group's main clients is T-Mobile. During my stay I was responsible for creating marketing assets and microsites for the launches of many T-Mobile products.
My main project for Education dynamics was to create an interactive, expandable banner that connected to a web service and returned results based on user selection. As the customer chose refined their desired area of study the Flash banner would return the number of available programs open for registration. After the user clicked through they would be taken to a pre-populated registration form and could easily proceed with enrollment.
I was also responsible for designing and coding HTML email campaigns for various subsidiaries.
Education Dynamics finds innovative ways to connect prospective college students to over 1000 educational institutions.
I was brought in to Sur La Table as a Production Artist to help with the digitizing of hundreds of recipes from their numerous print cookbooks. My job was to turn the text into templatized HTML and to source appropriate imagery to accompany these recipes. The result is an online representation of their entire catalog of cookbooks.
While I was at the Garrigan Lyman Group I was tasked with designing a poster and a field portal to promote Windows Intune, Microsoft's cloud-based management service.
Windows Intune provides secure management of networks of up to 500 computers and devices.
In my typography class during my 2nd year of design school (2009) I was tasked with creating my own alphabet. Those were the only instructions. I was also taking a Flash class at the same time so I decided to tackle two finals with one project. Well, that turned out to be over 80 hours of concepting, storyboarding, animation, and coding. Of all of the projects I have ever worked on, this was the most rewarding.
The concept is simple: two objects beginning with the same letter interact to form that letter.
I spent nine summers as a staff member at YMCA Camp Orkila, a residential camp in the San Juan Islands. As I grew older I began to realize that I would not be able to continue working at this beautiful place and that I had to find a real job.
One of the ways I maintain my relationship with Orkila is through fundraising. Partners With Youth is an organization that raises money to help less fortunate kids spend a week in the San Juans.
For the past three years I have helped to organize the Lion Hunt, an annual gathering of Orkila alumni, to raise money for Partners With Youth. I have designed the the identity of the event and created assets for every aspect of our promotional campaigns, including a simple website.