Beginning in 2014, I took on the full-time role of Director of Design at a young startup called Kitchensurfing. The company uses technology, a cadre of culinary talent and a powerful operations model to provide affordable home-cooked meals, prepared in-home by a chef for as few as two people.

My role at Kitchensurfing is to evolve both our product design practices (UX and visual design) as well as look for opportunities to evolve both our understanding of our customer and our brand, in particular our visual identity. 

My areas of responsibility include: 

> Executive stakeholder for UX, visual design and brand identity, and customer insight; 

> Growing and mentoring the design team responsible for our first native iOS app, holistic cross-platform and responsive web product framework, several significant product pivots and customer acquisition initiatives; 

> Ethnographic research, persona and customer development (read an article I wrote about the process here); 

> Service design for the in-home dining experience; 

> Spearheading marketing initiatives including creative brief writing, planning, art direction and execution for brand videos, lifestyle and food photography and marketing collateral; 

> Brand evolution for digital and print including visual style guide, logo redesign and messaging and tone ideation;

> Fostering a creative company culture through cross-disciplinary workshops and event direction connecting the creative community and our chef network (ex. Creative Mornings, Artifacts "Eat").

Agency Founder & Creative Director   2010 

http://akko.co

I formed a new design studio focusing on customer-centered user experience design, strategy and visual design, recruiting both contract and full time talent to work with both Fortune 500's and bleeding-edge start ups. Our main differentiator lies in new processes optimized for moving with the speed of nimble startup and the efficiency of a well-oiled corporation.

Unlike more traditional agencies or specialty production studios, Akko uniquely mixed Lean UX methodologies, design thinking, agile development and traditional graphic design, placing equal emphasis on the craft of intuitive products and behaviors, customer-driven value, aesthetics and the relationship between brand and product.

As the sole founder, I build the company from the ground up with nothing more than a laptop, overseeing legal, sales, human resources, marketing and branding, and operations, in addition to my main role as creative director, and hiring full time staff as the company scaled. 

As a boutique studio, Akko employs a creative director, art director / graphic designer, UX / UI designer, strategist / project management, and a CFO for financials, with a network of specialists such as development shops, motion graphics and illustration, research specialists and more, allowing us to service over 2 dozen clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies such as American Express and Motorola to cutting edge startups such as Uber.

For a number of startups, I developed a long term relationship with the companies,  helping them to define and refine their early product offering, iterative test multiple major releases, and even help them to hire their first designers.

I also used the company as a vehicle for launching experimental and award-winning products such as BKIN and an event series called Artifacts.

The name "Akko" was born on a trip to the Mediterranean, upon the discovery of a coastal city built on layers of past cities. The city formed its unique character and aesthetic derived from the dynamic cultural exchanges that happened by it's ever-evolving inhabitants. I wanted to emphasize the user experience process as ever-evolving and always focused on the complex people that it serves, rather than coming from a single perspective or opinion.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Creative Direction

// Art Direction

// Project Management

// Business Development

// Operations

// Marketing

// Human Resources 

EVENT SERIES  2013

Artifacts Website

I conceived and produced Artifacts, a quarterly event series designed to disrupt industry silos and build a cross-disciplinary community of innovators and diverse audiences in a format that deviates from a traditional meet up or formal slideshow presentation.

Each event features well-known and emerging artists, designers, technologists who fall outside of conventional categorization and a targeted audience, aiming for diversity and interest along a specific theme. The event takes place in exclusive and intimate venues such as historic speakeasies and member's only arts clubs.

Past presenters have included Warby Parker, Google Creative Labs, Bloomberg Labs, The New York Times, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Etsy, FiftyThree, and more. 

Since its inception, all Artifacts events have sold out to audiences across the New York arts, design, tech and entrepreneur communities, and many have had financial sponsorships, enabling us to do more experimental and experiential activities to move beyond your standard presentation format, such as hands-on workshops, on-site art projects, live music and more.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Creative Direction

// Art Direction

// Event Curation, Planning & Management

// Marketing & Sponsorships

// Branding & Identity

// Presentations

Brand Strategy & Integrated Campaign 2010

Photo credit for "I Uber Texas": Maya Baratz

Uber was one of my first clients under my own studio, Akko. Over the course of a year, I helped one of the world’s most successful startups get its legs and acquire early devotees across the country.

Uber, now a massively successful company operating in dozens of cities across world, needed a good deal of brand equity and education to help people realize the full potential and value of the product. People had negative misconceptions about car services and in some cities, needed some convincing as to why they should use the service. At first glance it seemed cost-prohibitive, even though users of the service became quickly addicted to it.

My first campaign with them had the goal of making a splash at SXSW, a difficult event to capture attention when there is so much already going on. We connected the Uber app to summon pedicabs - a popular form of transportation in Austin during the overpopulated mega-festival - and branded the pedicabs and drivers with Austin-specific references and a consistent brand overarching brand message of "Everyone's Private Driver". The campaign was extremely successful and brought infamy to the young company, and was repeated every year since our initial pilot. 

Our next effort was to help expand Uber into new markets, starting with New York City. Uber was founded in San Francisco, where taxis are notoriously hard to find and public transportation leaves much to be desired. However in other cities, like NYC, taxis and public transportation are ubiquitous and efficient. We worked with Uber to identify customers and scenarios where there’s a strong case to lean on the app’s reliability, user experience and speed, whether to impress a date, a client, or differentiate yourself from the crowd of tourists.

Our team and the Uber community managers pitched concepts for promotional discount cards to major boutique hotels in New York. The cards were meant to convey the elegance of the hotel along with nodding to the functionality of the Uber service. They were slipped into the keycard sheath that guests would get upon check-in.

To further expand Uber beyond SF and New York, I created a series of online digital campaigns helped grow awareness of the brand online by messaging local neighborhoods, reaffirming the idea that Uber knows each city intimately. These ads were sold to popular websites representing their ever-expanding demographics beyond their early adopters. 

Uber, now a household name, has grown virally by taking bold steps in communicating their brand values in creative ways.  As a brand that knows how to push the boundaries to capture the hearts of potential customers, the partnership was one in which I constantly got to experiment and learn what turns on their customers and was a great example of how even grassroots efforts with a clever approach can make a huge splash.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Creative Direction

// Art Direction

// Graphic Design

// Environmental Design

// Brand Strategy

// Copywriting

iPad + iPhone App Concepts 2013

My design studio Akko helped the world’s most elite credit card company cater to a new crowd - the 99% - through a pilot product for both customers and merchants. 

While AmEx customers have always happily paid membership fees for the great perks of membership, merchants find the fees stifling. Rather than change the cost structure, I suggested an application platform that could bring more value to merchants to make those fees worth every penny. I planned and led a series of workshops with VPs, GMs, PMs, engineers, and designers and honed in on a concept for both customers (iPhone) and merchants (iPad) that create a direct line of communication between the two, helping small businesses better understand and answer the needs of their most valued customers through a dashboard visualization of purchase behaviors and trends. 

Our team worked with AmEx to help refine user stories based on the features that satisfied customer and business requirements and were technically feasible given AmEx’s scope of data and influence. The result were several succinct product goals and requirements for a single leading concept.

We mocked up several different concepts that satisfied the product requirements we had laid out in the previous phase. The mockups followed the user stories, clearly showing in customer terms what the values and opportunities were at each step of the interface.

In the end, we helped the AmEx team move from having lots of potentially good ideas to a single focused product concept that had strong potential to break through to new markets, and helped them to message the product in a way that gained internal traction within their organization. The product proceeded through an agile development process with our input and was piloted with actual customers and merchants to test its viability in the market. 

Detailed designs not shown due to confidentiality.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Innovation Workshops

// Persona Development

// Scenario Development & User Stories

// Feature Prioritization

// UX & Information Architecture

// Interaction Design

Integrated Campaign 2011

VIDEO

"Akko's work strikes just the right note of friendliness and approachability, helping visitors overcome barriers to entry. The great part is the tone — this can be a fun, simple thing."

Erin Coburn, Head of Department of Digital Media, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

I helped the city’s biggest museum feel smaller, telling a celebrity-backed story that the museum is what *you* think is cool. I led a team to conduct research, conduct a deep investigation of the museum's rich, complex and diverse visitor segments, and existing and aspiration brand attributes to create a campaign that brought sign ups to their new "MyMet" service which provided personalized curation and more. 

The campaign spanned video and print, and included celebrities such as Alicia Keyes and Seth Meyers identifying works at the museum that they found compelling - a nod to the Met's original mission statement from the 1800's that it is the one museum in New York whose mission is to "bring art to the masses". 

I assembled a team of graphic designers, illustrators, and motion graphics artists, and worked with the museum stakeholders on several rounds of storyboards and style studies for keyframes to help give direction to the team.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Creative Direction (Motion Graphics, Art Direction)

// Graphic Design

// Copywriting

// Storyboarding

// Stakeholder Interviews

Hardware and Software Concept 2012

PROJECT WEBSITE

Appeared in Print Magazine's Innovation Issue (June 2014)

Awards: IXDA Award (2012), UX Award (2012)

BKIN came out of a near-death experience on a backcountry snowboarding outing. The experience of getting lost without reception inspired the concept of a digital wayfinding system that is entirely solar powered and uses a mesh network, such that it can allow for communication and dissemination of information even where there is no cell reception.

The key elements of the product involve:

DISCOVERY - Finding new places and interests 

INFORMATION - Getting timely information 

COMMUNICATION - Getting help when you need it 

The project has received attention from urban planners, museums and more, who are interested in discovering how the solution can help others discover attractions and hazards without having to look down at their phones, especially appropriate for people traveling in groups and international travelers. 

For details, visit the project website.

ACTIVITIES:

// Creative Direction (Video, Industrial Design, Graphic Design)

// Ethnography

// Concept Validation

// UX & Information Architecture

// Interaction Design

// Visual Design

// Branding

Future of TV Concepts 2008

VIDEO

LG looked to better understand the North American audience by having a design agency create scenarios and design concepts for a 3 year out television platform that leverages connectivity and social networks.

I led a team of designers to create a series of product concepts and an experience video, ultimately presenting the work to an R&D team of 200+ directors, designers, and technologists at the company's headquarters in Seoul. 

The concepts focused on creating a better TV watching experience by focusing on: 

// Making television a less isolating experience by opening up social networks and allowing discovery amongst friends and family easier. 

// Creating a liquid interface that changes depending on what’s happening in the room and what you’re trying to do on TV. 

// Creating a more seamless experience between multiple in-home TVs and multiple family members, couples, and roommates to make management of consumption smarter. 

// Exploring Smart Home scenarios by looking to make home entertainment more than just about the screen, but audio, lighting and more.

I presented the final concept in a solo presentation at LG's R&D facility in Seoul, Korea, in front of approximate 200 employees ranging from leadership to product managers, designers and developers. 

ACTIVITIES: 

// Market Research

// Ethnography

// UX & Interaction Design

// Visual Design

// Creative Direction (Video, Graphic Design, Industrial Design)

// Storyboarding

// Hardware Concepting

Mobile App Design, Strategy & Advising 2013

I helped a very early stage startup turn their early business model into a viable product, helping them to design and refine their first release, helping them to scale their team and ultimately get acquired by Yahoo.

Donna is a mobile personal assistant that helps you with your daily activities, including prepping for meetings, getting around town, and anticipating what you might need as support. 

When the Incredible Labs team approached me, they had a functional prototype of a product that landed them a first round of funding. I initially flew to San Francisco to lead an intensive two day workshop to layout the framework and assumptions that needed to tested for the initial minimum viable product. In 6 weeks, we created wireframes and visual designs for a first testable product and created a research plan to vet the product with real users, including executives, managers and personal assistants.

Over the course of a year, we continued to iterate on the product based on real data. In that time, a number of major competitors came into play, and we helped the company to pivot the new product while staying true to the original vision of a personal assistant that truly knows you. 

The product and the team that built it was acquired by Yahoo in Q1 of 2014.

ACTIVITIES:

// Ethnography

// Prototyping

// UX & Information Architecture

// Interaction Design

// Art Direction & Moodboarding

// Visual Design

// Usability Research

// UI Writing

// Brand Strategy & Identity

// Promotional Work

Rebrand, Web Design, Strategy & Promotion 2013

I led my studio to help an early stage startup help small farms reach big buyers. FarmersWeb helps restaurants connect with the finest produce from local farms, attempting to replicate the "farmer's market" experience on a mass scale. They also manage logistics and shipping and save money for their customers by consolidating orders along common routes and schedules, a significant UX challenge on the product side for a customer base that is used to clipboards and phone calls to conduct day-to-day business.

When we engaged with FarmersWeb, they had an MVP with a modest but loyal customer base and some well known customers, including Mario Batalli and the Mets.

We re-architected and redesigned the entire product, leveraging consumer eCommerce design patterns and a unique visual solution that made a complex workflow feel simple and intuitive.

Following the product work, we did a full brand strategy effort which culminated in a revamp of their microsite, core messaging and logo to give them a more polished presence against emerging competitors.

ACTIVITIES: 

// UX & Information Architecture

// Interaction Design

// Visual Design

// Branding & Identity

// Content Strategy

// Copywriting

// Marketing & Promotional

Mobile Design “MVP” 2013 

I took a company from napkin sketch to polished product in weeks, earning them a round of fresh funding and becoming a viable player in a lucrative new market. 

FitBark is a physical dog collar with a mobile app that allows owners to track their dog's physical activity and sleep and compare it to its own. With a strong correlation between obese dogs and their owners, the app would benefit owner health by encouraging them to stay fit. Journals and photos are shared among families while reports could be generated and sent to veterinarians, creating user-generated stories that are both great for making memories and also to help health professionals understand the canine's lifestyle.

When I first met FitBark, they had exceed their $35,000 Kickstarter goal to create a “FitBit for Dogs” by $50,000, and the pressure was on to create a beta product based on a few rough sketches and a physical prototype. We helped the company hash our and prioritize product requirements, detail a framework, and create a pixel-perfect specification that left them with a product on par with bigger competitors, in a space where they were second to market.

Rather than create a “Me Too” application, our competitive reviews unveiled exactly how they could be both unique and innovate beyond their predecessors in terms of features as well as a unique target audience. 

ACTIVITIES: 

// Personas

// UX & Information Architecture

// Interaction Design

// Competitive Review 

// Visual Design

Rebrand, Strategy & Web Design 2011

I helped an innovative thought leader dodge bigger competitors and land Fortune 500 clientele by leading a complete overhaul of both the brand strategy, design and messaging of their outbound communication. 

Samasource provides high quality Microwork, or small, human-powered tasks, to companies like Google and Intuit, while empowering employees and work centers in developing countries with skilled employment and income. Under the threat of over a dozen competitors, I led a complete branding, messaging and design overhaul to more accurately message why they were better - and more ethical - than their competition. The outcome was over 200% increase in lead generation, bringing them better business from bigger brands. 

When my studio first engaged with Samasource, they had two websites - a .COM and a .ORG. The former was meant to cater to Silicon Valley companies that were potential partners and clients, the latter a call-to-action for donors to communicate their non-profit mission. The problem: the .ORG messaging made them seem less professional than their competitors, and the .COM messaging made them see like a for-profit company to potential donors. Through iterative design and workshopping, I set out to combine the two sites into a holistic message that supported the idea that a non-profit can have a non-profit mission (building individual-owned service centers) while offering a high-quality service to clients.

Non-profits are notorious for passionate, intelligent people with strong opinions. I let innovation workshops with stakeholders from the CEO to the sales team to prioritize features and ideas to help better communicate what Samasource does best. We did a deep dive on the two sites to look for inefficiencies, as well as opportunities to combine navigation and simplify the architecture. 

We had an honest conversation about whether Samasource excelled against their competitors and where they felt short, to truly celebrate their strengths and address their shortcomings. We also reviewed their entire sales to fulfillment process to better understand what they do vs. what they said they did and produced service design documentation to feed our content strategy and copywriting efforts.

We tackled the messaging and how it might manifest itself in rough wireframes to find the right balance of copy and image. We looked for opportunities for bold, simple statements that clearly conveyed what they do, with prominent call to actions to maximize leads. We moved towards a friendlier brand and messaging that celebrated that Samasource, unlike its anonymous competitors, was comprised of real people, highly educated and competent.

I worked with Samasource on realigning their brand and having a more holistic approach to being a non-profit that's *also* good for business. I also managed the development process to ensure that the final output was pixel-perfect.

As a result of the rebrand and redesign, Samasource has gone on to see substantial growth, doubling their leads after launch. They continue to evolve their site as their business grows using our style guide for messaging, tone and visual design and adding services and content as their organization grows.

ACTIVITIES:

// Stakeholder Interviews & Workshops

// Service Design Audit

// Competitive Analysis

// UX & Information Architecture

// Interaction Design

// Brand Strategy 

// Visual Design

// Content Strategy & Copywriting

// Development Oversight

Customer Personas & Brand Strategy 2010

In partnership with Bolt | Peters, a user research boutique acquired by Facebook in 2013, I helped a historic brand reach new customers by catching them in the act and, well... asking them. 

What does Dolby do? If you said: “noise reduction in my 1997 Ford Taurus”, you’re like a number of customers that are out of touch with where Dolby’s business lies today. I helped Dolby figure out its new generation of customers – the segments that don’t quite get how Dolby products and services can make their lives better in the home entertainment space. 

My studio set out to better understand who the current customers were that were visiting dolby.com and what their perceptions of the brand were in terms of what it stood for and offered, what they were hoping to find on the site, what they found that was valuable, and when and why they left feeling disappointed.

The team used Ethnio, a web-based remote research service, to intercept actual users in various segments throughout North America, ask them why they were going to the Dolby.com website, what they were trying to do, and how the site was and wasn’t addressing their needs.

We used research synthesis techniques to understand what these users had in common, what truly made them unique, and worked with the client to prioritize and align them with business goals.

We created the skeleton for the 6 users types, identifying their needs, wants, and barriers. We looked at the discrepancy between what Dolby messaged to the customers today versus what Dolby should message to the customers.

The end result was a three part system — a book, one-pager and detailed PDF — describing the customer market segments for a redesign of the Dolby.com website. Our approach was rich storytelling combined with clean, easy to digest actionable words and imagery to describe the needs and barriers of each of the 6 identified user types.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Ethnography

// Personas

// Creative Direction 

// Art Direction (Graphic Design, Photography)

// Storyboarding

// Brand Strategy

// Copywriting

Broadband TV Set Top Box

While at Microsoft, I was involved in a number of initiatives, starting from new product incubation with the Social Media Group at Microsoft Research to TV platforms to ethnography and design across all Microsoft cloud services, as competition heated up with Google, who had a more consistent and cleaner design across services.

My first project for for the Microsoft TV group. When Microsoft purchased WebTV, they rebranded the new box MSNTV 2, an early platform for broadband TV which allow users to stream media, browse web content, communicate and more. 

The complete overhaul of the design for a then 4:3 resolution TV was ground-breaking in terms of its simplicity in navigating non-linear grids with no pointing device, as well as a custom keyboard for more involved tasks like composing emails. 

The work was designed, tested, and refined for millions of users. The success of this product led Akko’s current principal designer to be moved to an Innovation Team to create a convergent experience for the new Windows Live, connecting web, mobile and television across MSFT services into a holistic experience.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Ethnography

// UX & Information Architecture

// Interaction Design

// Visual Design

// Prototyping

// Usability

Computing Platform for Developing Markets  2008

Hewlett-Packard asked us to help them pilot a new computing system for developing markets, answering the unique challenges of specific target markets in Asia in a variety of economic settings as well as urban vs. rural areas. We were tasked with interpreting ethnographic findings and determining their effects on the product requirements and helping to iteratively design a framework, working with their developers to create a prototype to test in the various target markets.

Detailed designs not shown due to confidentiality.

ACTIVITIES:

// Market Research

// UX & Information Architecture

// Interaction Design

// Visual Design

Automobile Display for Smart Devices 2007 

Before the Tesla, when most dashboards were a series of knobs and small LCD displays, one luxury automobile maker was interested in trying to understand how our cars could integrate with devices to allow everything from phone calls and messages to music be easily and seamlessly. 

I led a multidisciplinary team of 6 designers (industrial, graphic, interaction) to create an innovative solution for a premium physical and screen interface for a unique class of vehicle.

Through research, iterations and refinement, we helped define and refine a set of features and create rough sketches of the core workflows, from the iPhone (or primary device target) to the auto display. As car interfaces have strict safety requirements in design, usability and simplicity played a key role as well.

Due to confidentiality, detailed designs of this project are not shown.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Market Research

// Customer Research

// UX & Interaction Design

// Visual Design

// Hardware Concepting

// Prototyping

// 

// 

TV Remote & UI Concept 2011

Award: ID Magazine (2011)

The SoftRemote was a product concept I conceived as a reaction to two observations:

1) Remote control UX was horrific and hasn't changed in decades, with a hundred buttons that turn a relaxed activity into one of anxiety and work.

2) TV is isolating and turns a social environment - the living room - into one of anti-social silence and inertia.

The SoftRemote system brings elegance and a social atmosphere to the living room. It consists of four remote controls and a “dish” which transmits to the television and stores the remotes when not in use.

It's simple UX and interaction design allows users to do quite a bit with a minimum selection of gestures:

1) Squeezing the SoftRemote makes the remote widget appear on the screen.

2) Rotating the SoftRemote allows users to select between a variety of actions, such as recording, taking a snapshot, or even basic TV controls like volume and channel selection. 

3) Squeezing again makes a selection.

4) Pulling away goes back up a level. Once at the top, it also makes your widget disappear (or just wait 3 seconds).

Up to 4 people can use the SoftRemote on-screen at once. Each remote has a unique color and corresponds to its on-screen menu. The project was meant as an exploration of how to evolve TV beyond a purely passive experience, and has inspired innovations for both startups and corporations in the television space.

ACTIVITIES:

// Interaction Design

// Visual Design

// Creative Direction (Industrial Design)

// Research

// Storyboarding

// Motion Graphics & Video 

Electric Vehicle UX, UI & Prototyping 2008

VIDEO

Aerovironment, a tech-forward company that was looking to lead the North American market in electric vehicle (EV) systems, looked to my team to help potential customers at a major trade show in Norway envision what that experience might look like a few years out. Our approach was to create a design language for a product line of electric vehicle chargers, including interaction and visual design for web, mobile and embedded UI and collateral. 

I looked at different contexts where people might need (or want) to give their cars a charge, and what the challenges and opportunities were, from supermarket parking lots to gas stations. 

Sketches led to rough physical mockups of the chargers such as the Level 3 (high speed) charger. I worked side-by-side with industrial designers to fine tune the interaction points as I was sketching the software behaviors.

With the commercial units, I looked at how both customer and service can use the same simple interface for a quick and easy workflow.

For the at-home charger, I created mobile concepts which offered monitoring to motivate and educate drivers about EV benefits.

I created the layout and visual design for marketing collateral showing the digital touchpoints to the client’s EV solutions, from customer-facing websites to an iPhone application that monitor energy savings.

I created a functional prototype of the 8’ tall prototype with the ID team, using Flash and the Arduino platform to let people try a fast-charge on a mock car. The half-ton prototype was shipped to Stavanger, Norway, for a major electric vehicle tradeshow, where I was the main point of contact to ensure the prototype was representing the best face of the client and produced the video (shown here) of the final outcome.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Market Research

// UX & Information Architecture

// Interaction Design

// Visual Design 

// Hardware Concepts

// Prototyping

Life Sciences Touch UI 2007

Illumina, a leader in genetic sequencing systems, wanted to modernize their products and give the interface a simplicity and intuitiveness of a consumer product.

Our team conducted extensive research with scientists and lab technicians and created service design illustrations outlining the 3 day processes of some of the more complex systems as they prepare chemistry and analyze samples. We observed users of the company's previous system to observe pain points, drill down on every day workflow to reveal opportunities, and studied where the competitors were heading to understand what made our client's technology unique so we could specifically make those features discoverable and easy to use.

Shown here are a sample of some of the outcomes of the product, with visual cues, rich and meaningful iconography, and notifications that can be seen at a glance from across a large laboratory. One of our main goals was to give software in a domain as complex as genetic sequencing a simplicity and elegance one would expect to find in consumer electronics, using gesture to make repetitive tasks quicker and clean visuals to reduce clutter and prioritize the most important pieces of information.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Ethnography

// Service Design

// Competitive Review

// UX & Information Architecture

// Persona Development & Requirements

// Concept Validation

// Visual Design

Cataract Surgery Multi-Screen Touch UI 2008

Optimedica, a leader in technologies that help doctors perform high-risk, high-cost procedures with greater accuracy and ease, wanted to create a brand new system for clinical trials in the Dominican Republic.

Our team conducted research and devised the software and hardware concepts for a system with two screens, joystick and foot pedals, operated by 2 or 3 people simultaneously. The product was fully prototyped at scale with working software (minus the laser, of course) and stealthily sent to a trade show in Boston, where we recruited doctors to come test out the new system and give us their feedback.

The final product, shown here, uses the joystick and a large multitouch screen to allow the doctor - positioned at the patient's head - to collaborate with a lab technician to refine incision patterns on the eye with the simplicity of a game controller but the safety mechanisms in place to ensure that procedure is performed safely, quickly and accurately.

ACTIVITIES: 

// Ethnography

// Service Design

// Competitive Review

// UX & Information Architecture

// Persona Development & Requirements

// Concept Validation

// Visual Design

// Hardware Concepting

// Usability Testing

// Detailed Specifications

Branding & Identity

Brand identity and logo design for a startup that focused on voice communication paired with real-time sharing (video, photos, search information). Not to be confused with this other Sidecar app that came along shortly after.

Shown: Competitive / Comparative review, moodboards, early hand-drawn sketches, mid-fidelity concepts and polished final concepts.

ACTIVITIES:

// Brand Strategy

// Art Direction

// Logo Design

Branding & Identity 

Brand identity and logo design for a New Orleans based startup that focused on social gifting.

ACTIVITIES:

// Brand Strategy

// Art Direction

// Logo Design