Smithsonian Anacostia Museum

Revealing the past through AR and storytelling

Before the Bulldozers - Smithsonian Anacostia Museum

Before the Bulldozers is an audio and augmented reality journey exploring the history of the redevelopment of the Southwest neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Using GPS, this Walking Cinema app guides you from site to site through D.C.’s Southwest Neighborhood, telling the story of the country’s first large-scale urban renewal project—a project that uprooted 23,000 people and knocked down nearly 5,000 buildings to create an entirely new neighborhood.

https://www.beforethebulldozers.com/

Related Projects

Dear SF

DearSF is a multimedia love letter to San Francisco.

San Francisco’s small businesses and entertainment venues are going through a dramatic, disorienting, and painful transition during this unprecedented pandemic. 

#DearSF is a campaign, an open letter to San Francisco.
From workers in the industry to their beloved supporters, we welcome your expressions of survival, resilience, support, pride, and love.

This project was initiated by the Entertainment Commission and my role was social media strategy and creative direction.

This project began on June 6th and is part of the cities reopening process.

https://www.dearsf.org/

https://www.instagram.com/dear_sf/

Related Projects

Stay in place shelter

The stay-in-place shelter is for people in at-risk situations and families experiencing homelessness during the coronavirus crisis.
The first location was at Bayview pier.  I worked with several departments at the City and County of San Francisco to pull together experience design, signage, and materials.

This was used for postcard outreach and main signage at the entry to the shelters

Some considerations for the design approach. 

Informal
Should not feel like a government institution.  Many people experiencing homelessness have had negative interactions in the past and we want them to feel safe. 

Open 
While folks are expected to stay in place there, we don't want them to feel trapped

Warm 
Through colors, giving the temporary rows of trailers street names, and trailers addresses the intent is to create a sense of dignity and normalness.

Temporary

Use of the word Guest, Staff will be hosts.  Implying a relationship that is akin to a hotel or any temporary stay. 

Signage

Signage in place prior to opening day

Related Projects

Designing Interfaces 3

This is the first published book I have worked on. We got the book done in a record 2 months.

It was an honor to have my first book be on such an iconic book with co-author Charlie Brewer and help from Jennifer Tidwell and the team at O’Reilly.

I have another technical book I am writing now which is about designing for entirely new interactions when there are no prototyping tools to design for them. This has been a repeated pattern in my long career in hardware/software and breaking new ground in ways of interacting with products and services.

Designing Interfaces 3

Food for the Hungry

Team communications and response deployment for humanitarian crisis situations

About the Product & Service

Emene is a system designed for FH (Food for the Hungry).  Emene is an ecosystem that allows FH to conduct client relationship management, service and supply deployment to regions in crisis, and overall measurement, evaluation.  

Emene aka; Xindicate is the white label version of this measurement & evaluation system for Global Aid providers.  This service and digital system enables NGO field staff to enroll aid participants, distribute goods, money and services, track where aid is most needed, record activity, send metrics and evaluate program metrics. 

This product launched in 2017 for use in Central Africa (Tanzania, Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of Congo as a beta pilot for Food for the Hungry in cooperation with USAID global NGOs.

Role:  Service design, visual design, interaction design

The entire system is comprised of a desktop web service that shows program analytics, an android tablet application experience used for large scale client registration and crisis deployment and an android mobile application that allows for remote, ongoing client data collection and supply distribution.

Team leader using the cards to take attendance in Tanzania

Create new client record flow (online and offline)

Search for client flow

How the system works

Users and touchpoints

ixd@cca

During the last five years, I was Chair of the Interaction Design Program at CCA.

During my tenure, I developed a strategy for CCA’s Interaction Design Undergraduate Program, this is some of the plan I put together and what I set out to do.

An opportunity I couldn’t possibly pass up happened with the City and County of San Francisco so I left my Chairship just as some of the changes I was making have started to come to fruition. However, the program is in the safe and capable hands of my mentor and friend, Erin Malone. And I will continue to be involved at CCA.

ixd@cca

Our program is committed to designing a better future. 

We believe we can shape a future that is inclusive, diverse, vibrant and just.

We believe tech done ethically and responsibly can be a force for empowering and enabling human connection.

We are creating complex systems today that will determine what the world tomorrow will look like. And we need change who has a seat at the table when these ideas, products, and services are being created and elevate the voices of the people who these systems will harm or help. 

Emphasize exploring emerging technologies

Continually engage with the industry and keep current with cultural and technology trends that will affect our students. This will involve:

• Forward-thinking projects for our students in the framework of longer-term, deeper project work that is tied to specific subject matter contexts.  This will result in projects that will attract more industry and place CCA as a thought leader in design for the future

• An emphasis on partnerships and long-term “labs” that are centered on looking at broad questions facing the design and tech industries. 

Focus on professional skills

We want the students to have early exposure to studio culture and the opportunity to work with industry partners and in focused, rigorous projects. We are working to integrate our courses so they are closer to the way Design is practiced in industry. We believe this will give our students an edge in an ever crowded and unpredictable job market.

Give students the skills for entering the professional workforce. Possessing the appropriate technical skills, and feeling prepared with high-quality portfolios and sufficient confidence during interviews.

Time management, including letting go of following a process or ideas (protracted user research, lengthy ideation) when time is too short

Dealing with ambiguity — of a design brief, project goals, user needs, priorities of needs or features, etc.

Collaborating effectively - will be part of Junior review evaluations 

Projects that lead to portfolio - Practical examples of digital design assets such as traditional wireframes or other artifacts that relate to contemporary digital platforms.

Seek Socioeconomic Diversity

We attract some of the top talent in Silicon Valley to teach at CCA. 

We are proud that our program is one of the only tech design programs that have a majority of female faculty. This is unique and rare among Interaction design programs. We also have the only women of color in the leadership of a tech/design program in the country. 

We want students to see that despite what representations they see in the media that people of color, women and those of socioeconomic diversity are currently working in this industry and making an impact and we are need of more in this industry. 

2+2 with one or more community colleges. 

It is a goal of the program to actively seek to increase our domestic student population, second-degree seekers, and provide an on-ramp to students of socioeconomic and racial diversity into careers in tech and design and this is a part of that goal. 

Flexibility to accommodate inbound transfers

We are considering offering our core classes in fall and spring and de sequencing the programs so we can successfully accommodate inbound Spring transfers from other programs and other colleges.

I hope to see the efforts continue. In the meantime, the video below shows the results of the second and third Design for____ Series from the program.

Design for trust Studio with Oracle Design - Fall 2019

Future of work studio + SwissNex

CCA iXD + Oracle

Mentions

I am honored and humbled to have been featured by the IxDA.

Identity - Design Is series CCA

The Design Division of California College of the Arts started a design series and newsletter titled Design Is. I created a flexible design system based on a dynamic logo for the print, digital and in person presentation channels.

Glam Studio

GLAM STUDIO

Glam Studio was the output of a digital strategy pitch for Sephora. 

The Brief
Sephora wanted to explore how to use the iPad as a potential eCommerce Platform.

My Role
Design Strategy

Approach

Conducted design research
Spoke to 35 female Sephora customers in the target age group. I asked a series of questions centered on what brands they enjoyed using, what devices they frequently used, that apps they used most and what activities they tended to use their iPad for.

Competitive Analysis
Looked at a range of other cosmetic retailers, department stores and makeup related games. I did an analysis of what the range of offerings were, what was getting the most downloads and usage and what the nature of the features on these applications.

Organizational Research
Since this product would ideal go to market within a year, I spoke with the e commerce, point of Sale group and other people in the organization to analyze what a realistic scope for how robust the eCommerce experience could be based on the current or easily repurposed SKU features they already had. I also looked at what capabilities, bandwidth the organization could support in the timeframe allowed.

Metrics of success
Worked with the team to identify what metrics we would use to determine usage and success of the product as well as what the company hoped to get out of the investment in this channel.

Deliverables
A comprehensive presentation of findings, a persona of the specific customer archetype for this product channel and a series of recommendations for product, services and their rollout strategy.

The samples show a small part of the market research, customer personas from segmentation and a few of the concepts that came out of the retail digital product and service strategy. 

MBA in a Box

Features

“Classroom” screen

Online education platform tool for Apollo Group
Fjord
Role: Creative Direction, Service Design, Client Lead 

The Brief:
Apollo group was seeking a tablet based solution for online learning for student and teachers.
This touchpoint needed to easily port over content from their existing web platform and needed to keep the existing user interface conventions and metaphors and the architecture needed to adapt to the existing system as much as possible.

Process
This project was a year long engagement. My role was leading the concept and design process and transitioning work to the IOS development team. We had 6 weeks for information gathering, user interviews and identifying business rules and workflow, 6 weeks of rapid prototyping and design validation/co design sessions with users. 4 weeks of application architecture and template design, 2 weeks of visual system design and documentation and 3 weeks of design validation. We then went to development and continued to do user validation and QA.

JCP Digital eCommerce Strategy

Web experience

JCP

e.commerce platform
R/GA 2013
Role: Design Direction

The Brief: 
Develop the e.commerce strategy for the proposed rebrand of JCP.  
JCP wanted to identify a new breed of customer the new brands will attract.  

 Approach:

This engagement included:
Identifying the new JCP customer and creating personas for this new customer

Developing an information architecture that supports the planned launch of 80+ new brands in 2013

Designing a series of experiences designed to increase conversion 

The Challenge: 
New brands were coming onboard but the site platform cannot handle a significant visual or navigation overhaul. 

The site and organization did not support editorial or curated content

Providing strategically placed vehicles for building richer customer profiles

Browse category template

Product detail template

early mock-ups

Visa - Go Campaign Digital Strategy

Campaign Landing Experience

Bank cards co-branded for Visa Go

Point of Sale Branding

The Brief:
Make Visa the preferred payment method over others at the point of sale. 

I was digital product design director on the team that created a series of strategic programs to make Visa the preferred payment method over cash at the point of sale. 

This project included looking at how Visa can provide compelling online, point of sale and socially oriented
services and experiences that would make the consumer choose Visa. 

The example is below is one of the programs. 

Research Insight: 
Selecting your payment option at point-of-sale is more habit than conscious choice, making it very difficult to change. in Visa World of Change I considered how we might we turn everyday transactions into socially rewarding actions.

Visa World of Change

With every transaction, cardholders donate one penny to a cause they care about. As people around the world join in, pennies add up to big changes, giving cardholders a real reason to use Visa over cash.

Purchase Funnel: Focus on point of transaction
Channels: Targeted point of sale placements and social networks
MCC’s: Inclusive of all categories •Global: Identify charity with global appeal and tailor executions and communication channels based on countries digital lifestyle
POS Considerations: Core to the idea, advertising will focus on POP placements to drive Visa preference at the final step of the transaction

Details:
1. Visa kicks off World of Change by contributing $1 million (in line with FY09 levels) to five charities it already supports.
2. Initially, Visa partners with it’s the top issuer in each of the five markets.
3. Visa/AKQA promotes the program through PR and recruits cardholders with advertising and direct mail.
4. Cardholders join the program by registering their Visa card with the issuer and choosing a favorite cause.
5. POS signage reminds cardholders to use the card over cash and competitors. Each month the issuer adds a penny per transaction to the cardholder’s bill and forwards the total to the designated charity.
6. Issuers forward contribution data to Visa for display on the World of Change site.
7. Cardholders recruit friends through social networks and track progress online.
8. As the program grows, Visa partners with other issuers.