I wrote a white paper for O’Reilly Media on the social reading landscape. It covered the challenges in building out a social reading system, the basic features across systems, what organizations are doing, and what’s being done best.

Read the Abstract

The Financial Tech website project (confidential – I can’t list the site by name), was the critical relaunch of a 10 year old corporate website, originally designed by the company’s lawyers (really). The company does $600M in business through its white label product, but doesn’t do a lot of business through the site itself, so employees had ignored the main corporate site for years. Increasingly customers, partners, and the press were visiting the website and hesitating, and as new products were rolled out, the old website was costing the company partnerships…and real money.

I was hired to help relaunch the site, make it more contemporary, and reflect the cutting edge technology that drives the products.

The site needed to be responsive so I designed for the the standard breakpoints (1220, 1024, 768, 320). The content strategist and I conducted stakeholder interviews to figure out ...]]>  

The Financial Tech website project (confidential – I can’t list the site by name), was the critical relaunch of a 10 year old corporate website, originally designed by the company’s lawyers (really). The company does $600M in business through its white label product, but doesn’t do a lot of business through the site itself, so employees had ignored the main corporate site for years. Increasingly customers, partners, and the press were visiting the website and hesitating, and as new products were rolled out, the old website was costing the company partnerships…and real money.

I was hired to help relaunch the site, make it more contemporary, and reflect the cutting edge technology that drives the products.

The site needed to be responsive so I designed for the the standard breakpoints (1220, 1024, 768, 320). The content strategist and I conducted stakeholder interviews to figure out what we should put on the site (no content was carrying over),  and then I built out the wires. We focused on modular content when possible; the resulting site is lightweight with a focus on media.

Homepage Wire PDF

Sitemap PDF

Sample Page (Who We Are) PDF

After two years of steady releases, Fortnight Journal transitioned to a static site. The non-profit was shutting down, and the team wanted to archive the site in a way that wouldn’t make the content seem dated. We changed the layout from a daily journal structure to a static gallery of individual contributors. This included a clear focus on the individual contributors (we added bios and large profile images) and an easy way to linearly drill down into the contributions. From a UX perspective we also added slight fades, a more touch-centric feel, and a clear association between contributors and their vocations.

Visit Fortnight Journal  »

NetGalley is a very active site – it’s the go-to place if you want a digital galley (an early copy) of a book, a common need for book reviewers. When we kicked off the project, they were working with a 7-year code base, cobbled together over a number of teams, some outsourced over the years. They needed a fresh start, a real designer, and someone to update the UX. Aaron Miller handled the massive technical overhaul (taking the database down from 312 tables (yikes!) to 22, for example), while I spent time migrating key concepts into the new version of the site. It needed to have a lot of the same functionality, but it needed to be organized into logical steps, and simplified. There are a number of sortable lists, dashboards and settings options that could have seemed overwhelming to ...]]>

NetGalley is a very active site – it’s the go-to place if you want a digital galley (an early copy) of a book, a common need for book reviewers. When we kicked off the project, they were working with a 7-year code base, cobbled together over a number of teams, some outsourced over the years. They needed a fresh start, a real designer, and someone to update the UX. Aaron Miller handled the massive technical overhaul (taking the database down from 312 tables (yikes!) to 22, for example), while I spent time migrating key concepts into the new version of the site. It needed to have a lot of the same functionality, but it needed to be organized into logical steps, and simplified. There are a number of sortable lists, dashboards and settings options that could have seemed overwhelming to users had we not spent time making the complex seem easy! It also had to highlight book covers and content, so the graphics needed to be subtle and clean.

Since the site is essentially a marketplace for requesting and delivering files (EPUB, MOBI, PDF), there are two types of users: publishers and reviewers, with a number of subtypes within those groups. It was inspired by the attention to cover images and simplicity that you see on Netflix, a highly browsable website. It was also driven by the sortability and organization I see LinkedIn members use to mange connections and permissions. I did the discovery, UX and graphic design for the site. It launched in October 2012.

Visit NetGalley.com »

See Wireframes (PDF) »

At its heart, ReadSocial is an API, tracking paragraphs of content and their attached discussions, wherever they appear. There are a few open-source clients for customers to use, for web, ipad and ibooks; users can log in via Facebook, Twitter, and Google, or via single sign-on.

Visit ReadSocial.net »

This unique comment detail page has ...]]>

Readum: Reading Google Books inside Facebook

Readum is a Firefox/Chrome extension that adds a social layer to books in the Google eBookstore. When it launched it was the only way to select text in a Google ebook. Readum lets users click on any paragraph in a Google Book and attach a note. The note is then posted to Facebook – connecting the experience across the two networks. The note can be pushed to a Facebook Group page or an Individual’s page. Beyond posting to a group or user page, Readum generates a unique page for each comment/paragraph posted to Facebook (you get there by clicking on the wall posting).  That means there are many places the conversation can take place: on Facebook Group pages, Individual walls, or on the page Readum creates to house the full discussion (with a unique URL).

This unique comment detail page has a number of features. Not only does it bring in the paragraph from the Google ebook and attach the comment and friend responses, it also offers affiliate links to purchase a paper copy, cover images and links to other Google ebooks (based on the user’s profile preferences), and, most interestingly, offers the ability to read the Google ebook inside Facebook itself (by bringing the Google Reading System into Facebook). Adding comments to Google ebooks works on both free and paid items, although formatting is more consistent on for-sale books, so we recommend those (you can try it on the free sample).

Using Readum is easy: install the extension at Readum.com, go to the Google ebook store, select a free sample, make a comment, and share it with one of your Facebook Groups.

Watch the short Readum Video

Check out the website for Readum.com (extension is no longer being updated after January 2012).

Commenting on Wikileaks in Google Books with Readum

Readum on Facebook: A Comment Detail Page

REVIEWED: NPR, TECHCRUNCH, MASHABLE, READWRITEWEB

FINALIST: WEBBY AWARDS, 2008, 2010

WON: W3 AWARD FOR COMMUNITY 2009, W3 AWARD FOR PUBLISHING 2010

Visit BookGlutton.com »

My role was to guide user experience, create sitemaps, and figure out the interface mapped across all releases. I worked with a group of programmers based overseas in an agile environment. Ultimately I guided design and development, created sets of storyboards for the site as it appears on multiple platforms, and then evaulated it with use cases. Full wires available on request.

iPhone Wires

Android Wires

Site Wires

Visit the website »

Globomaestro is a luxury travel site where users can get insider information. It is a mix of videos, reviews and blog posts that offer tips from concierges around the world.

I’m Fortnight’s Art Director. I help the team plan and integrate new kinds of media, manage our group of offsite developers, redesign the site to present a unique “journal” feel, and assist in growing our social media presence and our overall readership.

The most interesting challenges for Fortnight were: