by maureenm5@me.com | Jan 29, 2018 | icons
a CD design item domethign something else and something else Home Praise Portfolio Resume Process Toolbox...“You will be missed. You’ve set a high bar. People have asked more than once if we could hire you outright.”
“…Thanks, our IA, Maureen, put a lot of thought into them.”
Site design for a new product launch including product information, purchase, and spanish language version.
Well-received by entire account team and the client.
Design for a portal which would aggregate, and give visitors easy access to, a large volume of site content.
My boss called my solution brilliant.
We were made aware, however, that the project brief given to us had been incorrect. Therefore, we had built something different than what was needed for this project.
So, my boss tacked up a page or two from my solution on his bulletin board as a reminder, in case we could use it on another project.
No significant challenges.
Create a “first blush” design for an improved self check-in kiosk interface.
My boss was happy with the work but the ultimate success is unknown since the agency was forced to release freelancers (of which I was one) and re-assign permanent staff when a different account was lost.
Create a mobile app that enables asthma sufferers to track their asthma attacks (thus enabling them to more accurately report their “flare up” history to their doctors).
The work did not require traditional wireframes but rather, a more high level and conceptual document for the client to understand the general features of the proposed app.
Client was very happy with the idea and design, touted it as “coming soon” on the home page of the website, and sought funding to develop it.
Guidance and Functional Specification
“You’re tenacious. You will do whatever it takes.”
Create an improved, interactive “chat” interface for an event to be held on the web site at various times during the year by the client’s engineers.
Overwhelming positive feedback from the client.
“Maureen nailed it. The client told the creative team, “This is pretty but you don’t understand our audience.”
Everything in Maureen’s document was spot on to the audience.”
Content assessment and point of view to inform and advise the creative team on appropriate site content to be up-leveled into a microsite for a specific audience segment (effectively, a social forum for IT professionals).
(While the deliverable is merely a Word document, the impact and result is significant.)
My assessment and recommendations were proven to be spot on.
The creative team had maintained its belief that this should be brochureware and paid a Flash developer to have that experience built.
The client’s response to the that implementation was, “Well, it’s pretty but…you don’t understand our audience.”
Additionally, the account team shared with me that the client made several statements as to what the experience should be like and each of the comments mimicked a point I had made in my recommendations. The account team told my boss “She nailed it!” and “The creative team screwed up”.
Create a design structure that enabled the client’s multi-national divisions to have flexibility to make the site more locally appropriate in terms of marketing messages, calls to action, content, and available products in the market.
The solution set was very well-received by the internal team and the client.
It included static areas, customizable areas, and areas that could accommodate both global and local content (mixed bag).
Additionally, sections were designated as persistent or contextual, offering even more flexibility in the design.
Since the local divisions would not have full editing power, it was important for me to identify areas in which they’d likely need to express local content.
“(I was) Happy to tell her how awesome you are.”
Improve various transactional aspects of a local community news web platform.
This 65-page deliverable included process flows, dynamic messaging recommendations, wireframes covering every state of being and all possible “next step” actions.
Well-received by all project teams and implemented.
“This puts us in very good shape to describe and defend our vision of the site structure.”
“Awesome meeting today guys. Rich P very impressed. Thanks to all for the long weekend work.”
A former client called me in a panic one Friday evening, needing me to be on-site with their client first thing Monday morning, regarding a project with which I had NOT been involved.
Another agency had been brought on to the project for a specific purpose but was imposing an information architecture of their liking.
My client agency said it needed my expertise to refine “our IA” and defend it to the client.
The end client is located in NJ and I live on Long Island. Commuting Monday morning would not have enabled me to be there on time. My agency client said it would do anything to facilitate my “critical” presence in the meeting. As such, it paid for a hotel for me on Sunday night.
I worked late into the night on the site map and related guidance, presented it in the meeting, and explained why it was the better approach.
Design a site for showcasing entertainment properties and connecting enthusiasts to each other.
Additionally, the design needed to be scalable since the volume and categorizations of videos were expected to grow. And it needed to accommodate future state e-commerce and “social chatter” aspects.
Client was extremely happy with the design and during our worksession, came to understand information architecture, as well as, the rationale for things I recommended…or recommended against.
Design a tool that can help patients find their co-pay amount for a prescription drug.
Client was very pleased with the design and implemented the tool into several of its brands’ sites.
The client had an inordinate number of intranets, sister sites, departmental repositories, and frequently used external resources. As such, it was very difficult for everyone in the organization to find the information they needed.
The goal of the project was to create a single “hallway” for accessing all possible intranets, cross-department repositories, and resources sites.
An additional goal was to provide a designation for items that are of particular importance to newcomers to the company.
Deliverable was well received as “a good start”. The client, however, had an idea of their own in mind….utilizing a “cards” approach. While I did not recommend that type of presentation because this UI was essentially a directory of links, I did render a version presented as cards.
Although I cautioned the primary stakeholder that some users were predisposed to not want the feature, did not want to represent their department in the interface, and considered it “just more work” s/he thought that because it was going to be created, management would force the users to use it.
Before my engagement was over (while we were still collecting user needs via email) one of the key departments expressly stated that they would not use the interface themselves and would not maintain a destination for visitation by other departments.
While I wasn’t able to see the final version of the interface, nor the reaction to the final version by the user base, the fact that a primary department decided not participate likely caused the project to either be scrapped, or not be useful to the other departments.
from Terry: gotta go, but this is exactly inline with our thinking
from Kim: My thought is WOW, I want this all now!”
The client’s individual departments had separate ownership of web site sectors and organized their product information in different hierarchies, and with different labels.
Recognizing that this created very confusing experiences for site visitors, the client wanted to harmonize these hierarchies into a unified one, and create a unified taxonomy.
Overwhelming positive feedback from the stakeholders. Even though the realization of what lay ahead for them to do was overwhelming, they conceptually understood the issues I’d uncovered and what I proposed to rectify it. And they were eager to jump in and get started overhauling things on their end.
“I think your ‘through the eyes of ___’ idea is actually great — shows real world context.”
Create the information architecture and design options for a pitch to a newly formed institute.
The Creative Director led the project and was thrilled with my deliverable. A while later, he recommended me to another agency.
Audit and send feedback to the Interaction Design Association regarding its redesign wireframes.
Many members in this large professional association responded with feedback but only I, and one other member, were mentioned by name in the Thank You message sent to the community.
Critiquing the valiant efforts of the members who worked on the redesign required a delicate balance.
Being too soft would result in a site that did not meet the needs of the members.
Being too strong would insult the skills of colleagues in the community.
I also made the deliverables fully interactive using advanced Omnigraffle and Acrobat features. Both the client and development team were ecstatic about this aspect the deliverables.
The team was embarking on three separate marketing communication process timelines for a product that had three different audiences. The client was having difficulty absorbing all the details, as well as, the big picture of the communications plan.
So, the Account Manager asked me to craft something that visually represented the big picture, the individual plans, and the timelines in a simplified, consistent, and more intuitive manner.
The Account Manager was extremely pleased with the document, feeling that it intuitively conveyed the various marketing tracks.
“I thought the report was great by the way. Nice job!
Audit the existing interfaces for a marketing asset management platform.
All stakeholders were extremely pleased with the deliverable. For some it was eye-opening regarding the many aspects of the platform that were impeding users.
For their in-house UX Designers, however, it was invaluable. It vetted everything they had been vying for internally. Their recommendations hadn’t been being heard but now had a voice.
Approximately 1 year later they hired me as the UX Architect.
Each of the platform’s clients have slightly different instances of the software. So the audit required looking at multiple instances and pulling the findings together into a single cohesive evaluation.
It has significantly reduced the time I spend checking out customers, and I have also seen my tips increase to approx. 20%” – Bartender
“Customers have been actively engaging with other users on the network and sending drinks to one another.
At the end of the day, it means that HouseTab is increasing my sales and driving new customers in the door.” – Merchant
Design an app, and tablet experiences for “social gifting” and payments.
The App: Order, send drinks (“Goodies”) and pay the tab.
The Service Interfaces: See who’s ordered what, who’s sent Goodies to whom, serve the drinks. Payments are automated through the app.
The Merchant Interfaces: Send promos to loyal customers, direct messaging to customers about special events, analyze sales.
Provide high level wireframes of creative presentation options for videos testimonials.
Creative Director and team were extremely pleased with the solution. Ultimate success unknown as client tabled the project.
Redesign a product site to showcase new packaging. Content included product information, supporting content with tools, and purchase options.
Well-received by entire account team.
Design a simple mobile app to facilitate collaboration on projects, including task status and completion, and centered around a calendar framework.
I landed the gig!
“You’ve added tremendous value to our team and I really appreciate your efforts. I look forward to seeing your concepts become reality.”
“Maureen’s ability to facilitate meetings is exceptional.”
“Maureen is one of the best Usability people that I have worked with in a long time…I highly recommend her for any UI redesign effort”
This is an oldie but goodie.
The 2-phased, 6-month consultancy encompassed a variety of deliverables for a large, complex web application in the recruiting industry that serviced hiring managers, recruiters, and contractors alike, in a single digital marketplace.
Analyze user testing videos and report the findings.
Client has been very thankful for the insights conveyed in my reports.
Additionally, I have found flaws in the execution of some of the tests, causing users to be unable to complete the tests or some of the tasks. The research company was very happy with my ability to pinpoint the issues so that the tests could be re-run.
Generally, these analyses don’t carry challenges but the ones with executional issues were initially difficult to analyze and took some time to figure out what was going wrong.
Design a mobile app that enables users to refer and rate professionals, and earn social clout for valuable referrals.
The level of detail and the level of effort for development was more complex than than client imagined. So while my design was successful, the client has not yet been able to launch.
While the app was intended to scale to any type of professional, the client wanted to hone in one one industry for launch.
I needed to explain that while we can limited the launch to the one industry, the thinking behind the process flows and design needed to take the scale into consideration.
Design a site “refresh”, to modernize it.
Well-received by entire account team and client.
“Maureen is incredible.”
Design a website that connects all players in the theatrical community and facilitates the collaborations that typically take place between them.
Client was extremely happy with all aspects of the work.
Provide an audit of UX issues on a university website, for the purposes of including it in a pitch.
Client was extremely happy with the deliverable and was anxious to incorporate it into the pitch presentation.
Create widgets that can facilitate a visitor’s access to large volumes of content from the client’s site, distributed to social media and other off-site locations.
Design the space for a new set of content (videos) to be incorporated into an existing site.
Provide the ability to rate videos & download transcripts. Provide recommendations for scalability for future years of videos.
Account Executive was extremely pleased with the solution and the recommendations for scaling to include future years.
“This is a quote from the praise library if one exists for the project or client/acency. even if just a piece?”
“This is a second quote from the praise library if one exists for the project or client/acency. even if just a piece?”
Map the existing web site experience.
Deliverable name
Deliverable name
Deliverable name
“Thank you so much for such a thorough review”
Audit / evaluation of a dashboard task interface
Client was very appreciative of the insights and set off to employ the improvements recommended in the evaluation.
None – audits do not generally carry challenges.
Design for a portal which would aggregate, and give visitors easy access to, a large volume of site content.
My boss called my solution brilliant.
We were made aware, however, that the project brief given to us had been incorrect. Therefore, we had built something different than what was needed for this project.
So, my boss tacked up a page or two from my solution on his bulletin board as a reminder, in case we could use it on another project.
No significant challenges.
"No one else has put this much effort into this exercise."
Design a simple mobile app to facilitate collaboration on projects, including task status and completion, and centered around a calendar framework.
I landed the gig!
Design for a portal which would aggregate, and give visitors easy access to, a large volume of site content.
My boss called my solution brilliant.
We were made aware, however, that the project brief given to us had been incorrect. Therefore, we had built something different than what was needed for this project.
So, my boss tacked up a page or two from my solution on his bulletin board as a reminder, in case we could use it on another project.
No significant challenges.
"This puts us in very good shape to describe and defend our vision of the site structure."
"Awesome meeting today guys. Rich P very impressed. Thanks to all for the long weekend work."
A former client called me in a panic one Friday evening, needing me to be on-site with their client first thing Monday morning, regarding a project with which I had NOT been involved.
Another agency had been brought on to the project for a specific purpose but was imposing an information architecture of their liking.
My client agency said it needed my expertise to refine "our IA" and defend it to the client.
The end client is located in NJ and I live on Long Island. Commuting Monday morning would not have enabled me to be there on time. My agency client said it would do anything to facilitate my "critical" presence in the meeting. As such, it paid for a hotel for me on Sunday night.
I worked late into the night on the site map and related guidance, presented it in the meeting, and explained why it was the better approach.
It has significantly reduced the time I spend checking out customers, and I have also seen my tips increase to approx. 20%” – Bartender
“Customers have been actively engaging with other users on the network and sending drinks to one another.
At the end of the day, it means that HouseTab is increasing my sales and driving new customers in the door.” – Merchant
Design an app, and tablet experiences for “social gifting” and payments.
The App: Order, send drinks (“Goodies”) and pay the tab.
The Service Interfaces: See who’s ordered what, who’s sent Goodies to whom, serve the drinks. Payments are automated through the app.
The Merchant Interfaces: Send promos to loyal customers, direct messaging to customers about special events, analyze sales.
