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  BOEING CONTINENTAL DATA GRAPHICS
  
  CHALLENGE: Move Boeing's hard-copy paper documentation process for its massive 747 aircraft manuals entirely online.
  
  APPROACH: Interview numerous key users to understand work process and document depth. Develop scaleable workflows and information architecture to suit a broad range of user skills, based on personas and detailed requirements. Validate IA/UX and turn over to devteam.
  
  RESULT: System based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server now supports complex workflows for thorough and accurate creation and publication of manuals reaching up to a million pages each.

  
  
  
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  University of California at Santa Barbara
  
  CHALLENGE: Shift a large housing department's documentation practices from the willy-nilly, disorganized use of a shared network drive to a scaleable and highly formalized process and taxonomy.
  
  APPROACH: Interview department leads, document business processes, map the informal folksonomy to a more-formal taxonomy for use with Microsoft SharePoint. Develop a process, documentation and governance plan for maintaining the new taxonomy and supporting multiple overlapping business processes.
  
  RESULT: The migrated system now supports more than half a million documents behind complex, interlocking permissions for the department's business, residential, culinary and events staffs.

  
  
  

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  National Science Foundation Digital Government Research
  
  CHALLENGE: Develop a communications program for a fledgling NSF grant program. Tie together IT researchers from across the country. Keep them informed, help them network, and let them share their published research.
  
  APPROACH: Design and develop a site for networking colleagues and research communities, publishing news, viewing system demos and downloading research papers. Develop a monthly email newsletter for the community. Partner with related research programs. Organize an annual conference and cross-publish proceedings in print/CD-ROM/online format, augmented with video and online demos.
  
  RESULT: Steady 10% annual growth in conference participation during years the program was NSF-funded, resulting in spinoff of a fully self-sustaining research community that exists to this day.

  
  
  
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  White Paper: (DOWNLOAD - 5MB)
  "TOO DAMN FAST - How to match the blistering evolution of social media with effective internal and external social technology
  
  EXCERPT: "While progressive companies are tying themselves in million-dollar knots just building Facebook apps or chasing the latest Twitter-marketing strategy, [we] propose that firms take a more holistic view:
  
  The most popular social technologies did not even exist eight years ago, so the trick is not in deciding which ones deserve your money or man-hours . The trick is learning how to anticipate and leverage trends in human interaction in ways that will keep your business responsive, agile and synched with the ever-shifting DNA of social media evolution.
  
  The trick to mastering social media is this: It's not the software. It's the culture."

  
  
  
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  Global Consumer Electronics Manufacturer (undisclosed)
  
  CHALLENGE: Assess and prioritize ten vaguely-defined social-media initiatives for development. Identify commonalities in approach, taxonomy, audience and technology to maximize impact of the development effort. Beat out significant competition to win the contract.
  
  APPROACH: Interview high-level stakeholders in five distinct (and somewhat stovepiped) business groups. Tease out each of their longterm business goals and the context in which the social efforts will be developed, launched and measured. Hold a summary workshop to validate findings and prioritize the projects.
  
  RESULT: Several of the projects stemming from this initiative, under development since 2010, are nearing a planned high-profile, public launch. Stay tuned.

  
  
  

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  Fox Sports Networks
  
  CHALLENGE: Design a database-driven system to replace a collection of spreadsheets curently serving as the ad-bookkeeping system for a nationwide network of team- and sport-centric television networks.
  
  APPROACH: Interview key stakeholders. Define user classes, business processes, roles, permissions, channels, data types and workflows. Develop information architecture to support all roles and tasks for inputting, managing and running reports on complex ad-sales data. Create a user expeirience that is clean and usable, yet allows for deep visibility into any and all levels of data.
  
  RESULT: Fox Sports Network can now log, manage and track performance of its ad-sales forecasting across 43 network entities.

  
  
  
  
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  Grubb-Ellis Spotlight
  
  CHALLENGE: Unite a diverse suite of geospatial data services into a single, easy-to-use tool to support Grubb-Ellis' commercial real-estate agents in the field.
  
  APPROACH: Interview key stakeholders at the executive and account-manager levels. Develop use cases and requirements to validate user roles, permissions and activities. Collaborate with developer to explore all formats for data overlays. Design a user flow and lightweight interface that enables swift execution of core use cases, yet allows users to customize and mark up maps for later review with clients.
  
  RESULT: Project was not deployed due to lack of funding, but the application remains a clean, easy-to-use and powerful tool for showing clients the demographics, utilities, amenities, risks and benefits of locating in any given neighborhood in the U.S.

  
  
  

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  Cox Interactive Media - LAInsider.com
  
  CHALLENGE: Build an urban web portal for Los Angeles. Develop content, community and functionality to attract and retain audience for the banner-driven business model.
  
  APPROACH Hire a staff of talented content producers. Recruit sharp writers. Create utilities: live traffic maps and smog report; an events calendar and venue guide; guides to L.A.'s restaurants, pro sports, outdoor recreation and neighborhood-resource guides for its 160 cities and communities. Develop live news and entertainment products, opened to user-generated content
  
  RESULT: In one year, we grew the Los Angeles County audience to 200,000 uniques and 2.3 million pageviews/month. Screenshot archive

  
  
  
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  Personal project - LAVoice.org
  
  CHALLENGE: It's 2003. Blogs are a new, powerful medium for news and self-expression. Los Angeles, one of the world's great cities, needs a user-driven content community. Build it.
  
  APPROACH: Set up an open-source CMS (pre-WordPress). Establish core content categories: Culture, Drive, Environment, Media, Neighborhoods, Power. Recruit friends to help blog in each category, set the tone and populate the site. Open it to the city, and cultivate relationships with users as they join in creating fresh content daily.
  
  RESULT: LAVoice.org operated for six years as one of the two or three most-followed all-city blogs in Los Angeles. It won 2nd Place - "Best Weblog," in the 2005 L.A. Press Club's 47th So. California Journalism Awards - and 1st Place in the 2006 competition. Named one of Los Angeles Magazine's "Sites to Bookmark."

  
  
  

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  MySpace / American Idol - "Idol Gives Back"
  
  CHALLENGE: Design a shareable MySpace app allowing members to donate to and collect donations for American Idol's hugely successful annual charity campaign, "Idol Gives Back." Launch it just 5 weeks after project kickoff.
  
  APPROACH: Using OpenSocial API and architecture, develop user experience that capitalizes on MySpace members' pride, content-sharing habits and competitive spirit. Design a portable, viral widget that can be copied from one MySpace profile to another, granting credit to the first user AND the second for any donations collected. Design a leaderboard to spur competition in fundraising. Work with a third-party vendor for a secure transaction engine.
  
  RESULT: The app was launched too close to the IGB telethon and was inadequately marketed, so that approximately 45,000 users installed the widget. However, the client was extremely pleased with the final product.

  
  
  
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  Various Clients - Social Consulting
  
  CHALLENGE: The clients' needs ranged from general social-media strategy to a desire to empower their employees or their customers with specific social technology.
  
  APPROACH: Interview key stakeholders to understand current process flows, future business goals and desired social interactions. Develop social taxonomies and user personas to map the target community and desired interaction model. Develop user experience where desired.
  
  RESULTS: a variety of projects, all of which are protected by non-disclosure agreements, including:

  • A SharePoint-embeddable microblogging client for groups and individuals at a major U.S. insurance and financial services company.
  • Internal social-collaboration strategy and audience model for peer support and ad-hoc mentoring at a global media conglomerate.
  • Complete social strategy, community/audience model and information architecture for a startup offering real-time P2P decision support.
  • Complete social strategy, community/audience model, information architecture and user-experience design for an eBay-scale marketplace
•     

  White Paper: (DOWNLOAD - 5MB)
  "TOO DAMN FAST - How to match the blistering evolution of social media with effective internal and external social technology"
  
  EXCERPT: "While progressive companies are tying themselves in million-dollar knots just building Facebook apps or chasing the latest Twitter-marketing strategy, [we] propose that firms take a more holistic view:
  
  The most popular social technologies did not even exist eight years ago, so the trick is not in deciding which ones deserve your money or man-hours. The trick is learning how to anticipate and leverage trends in human interaction in ways that will keep your business responsive, agile and synched with the ever-shifting DNA of social media evolution.
  
  The trick to mastering social media is this: It's not the software. It's the culture."

  
  
  

•     

  Intel MeeGo Social Applications
  
  CHALLENGE: Design lightweight social-media applications to augment free applications distributed with MeeGo, the open-source mobile operating system being developed for the next generation of Intel-powered tablets and mobile phones.
  
  APPROACH: Work closely with Intel to develop specs and requirements for Facebook and Twitter applications, based on an embryonic, fast-evolving touch-based OS for hardware still under development. Design information architecture and user experience that scale gracefully across multiple screen resolutions and form-factors. Work directly with Facebook to meet strict branding rules.
  
  RESULT: MeeGo Facebook application and TweeGo client are now available on the MeeGo AppUp Store.

  
  
  
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  F.8 Interactive (Personal Project)
  
  CHALLENGE: Design and launch a community centered around a massive social game for iPhone/iPad and Web.
  
  APPROACH: Create the game mechanic, complete information architecture, visual design and business plan. Plan launch on iPhone/iPad to beta the game and establish the community/game culture, then port game to the Web, Android and other mobile platforms.
  
  RESULT: Currently under development
  
  
  

  
  
  

National Conference on Digital Government Research

CHALLENGE: Create visual branding for an academic research community's annual conference. Reflect the community's diversity and future-oriented philosophy. Do it on a tight budget.

APPROACH: Develop core visual branding and brand-application strategy based on the community's multi-disciplinary and collaborative nature. Apply it as appropriate to web sites, publications, interactive CD-ROMs and ephemera.

RESULT: A unified look and feel for the entire event and all of its publications.