No one wants to think about their student debt – and it's big a problem. But what if people had the chance to win $ just by facing the issue and learning how to make better financial choices? As part of the Face The Red campaign for SALTMoney.org, we rethought the traditional sweepstakes model to do just that. The more participants consumed SALT content, used tools, discussed the issues and recruited their friends to do the same, the more chances they earned to win $10k for college.
The Results? 79% of sweeps entrants opted-in to become SALT members, a 60% increase of their member base in 60 days. Facebook "fans" increased by 2,761% and Twitter followers doubled.
Role: Creative Director and UX Lead
The wireless industry had changed dramatically since we first designed the mother ship. Androids and iPhones had entered the scene. More customers were switching away from contracts. And Virgin was getting back to its rock n’ roll roots. It was time to redo the site from the ground up.
The Results? In the first month, online sales jumped 18% – accounting for more than 20% of the business (that’s double its usual contribution).
Role: Creative Director and UX Lead
With the re-launch of the brand and the .Com it was now time to totally rethink the digital DR campaign. As always, the core had to be a crystal clear, sales’ driving message. But we were also challenged with bringing an edgy, retro Rock n’ Roll headliner to the stage.
Suffice it to say the client was very pleased with their electrifying performance.
Role: Creative Director
Sometimes the simplest stories still need to be told in no uncertain terms. Especially when the deal seems to good to be true. So, we created a section on the site dedicated to proving that Virgin Mobile is the real deal.
virginmobileusa.com/why-choose-us
Role: Creative Director
Aesthetics are important, but experience is king. Here are a few examples of the UX artifacts I've had a direct, hands-on part in making over the years.
Each holiday season, bad gifts hurt good people. The severe trauma of receiving bad gifts can wreak havoc on the holidays and is a leading cause of BGD – Bad Gift Disorder. By giving BGD sufferers the tools to Be Heard about what they really want we can stop the cycle.
For Holiday 2011 Boost and Rampage Jackson helped raise awareness of BGD victims with a heartfelt PSA and and a microsite where they could get help or send an intervention.
Role: Creative Director
Is seems unbelievable but its true, the longer you stay with Boost Mobile the less you’ll pay for your wireless.
To show appreciation for all our customers’ loyalty (and create some word-of-mouth buzz), we thanked a few dozen of these people in an extra-personal, shareable and funny-as-hell way. We surveyed 300 hundred shrinkers-to-be, took the funniest responses and made their wishes come true with actual gag gifts and of course, these sincere(ly bizarre) Thank You videos from real Boost employees.
Role: Creative Director and Writer
We get to do a lot of fun things for Boost. At the top of that list is improving the user experience of key conversion points on their .Com. And sure, the results look great – but they work too.
Role: Creative Director
Did you know that your #1 cost in retirement will be Healthcare? And that if you pay for those expenses from your 401k savings you’ll get taxed on that income. That’s why consumers need to take full advantage of their Health Savings Accounts. Trouble is, not many people understand what an HSA is let alone know how to prioritize contributions between that and their other retirement accounts.
As part of a larger HSA educational push, I designed the Savings Optimizer tool for Fidelity. It helps users see how their per-paycheck contributions impact their short and long-term financial needs and ensure they’re fully maximizing their employer’s match incentives.
-- Federal Patent Pending --
Role: Creative Director and UX Lead
Think of it as the HULU for everything African
Entertainment. For me, this was a great opportunity to flex my design paws and
design a tablet friendly website for a cool start-up. Yes, I still open
Photoshop.
Role: Creative Director
From time to time the opportunity arises for me to use my skills to do some good in the world. I take it. The Go Campaign is an incredible organization devoted to improving the lives of children globally by enabling grassroots funding to hyper-local programs. And it works.
Role: Art Director
It sounds strange, but I love creating online ads. Especially direct response ads. Pure brand ads are fun, but the limitations of DR force you to solve very specific problems. Done right, that can lead to 15 seconds of clutter-busting greatness that really amps up the click-through rates – like these bad boys.
All play off Virgin’s Unlimited Crazy Campaign and are 40k or less.
Role: Creative Director
The wireless market is saturated with Android commercials. On one hand, you’ve got the glitzy spots that don’t actually tell you anything. On the other, the painfully boring, clunky “demos” that feel more like technical user-manuals or cures for insomnia.
That frank insight drove this project from day one. This interactive, day-in-the-life demo helped the Optimus V become the hottest selling Virgin Android for a solid year. And visitors shared it on social media over 30k times.
Role: Creative Director
CommonCents Mobile started with the idea that your minute usage should round down, ya know... instead of the way it works with every other pay-per-minute provider. Turns out, that can save customers a lot of money. Even I was shocked at the savings when I did the math. So, I figured maybe we should do the math for everyone.
Role: Creative Director and UX Lead
Virgin Mobile was in a state of complete rebirth. They had just merged with Helio then got acquired by Sprint. All this meant better phones and a much, much better network. So we needed to prove it to consumers with a totally revamped, premium online shopping experience.
From then on, we evolved the site as needed for new product launches, prospect education, plan changes and robust customer support. Not to mention, driving sales and awareness through targeted online advertising and triggered CRM streams.
Role: Creative Director and UX Lead
Clink-Clink might be the world’s first toasting app built specifically for New Year’s Eve. We built it to help Waterford raise brand awareness among a younger audience on New Year’s 2010. When you toast a friend, the app can share contact info between you and record the cheers on your Facebook wall.
The app was downloaded over 30,000 times by the time the
ball dropped - and is still getting downloaded about 30 times a day without any
marketing behind it. Not to mention a half a million earned media impressions for
the brand.
Role: Creative Director and UX Lead
The challenges of introducing a globally-leading provider of mutual funds to the US are seemingly incalculable. The results were not. After launch, unique site visits increased by 25%, homepage attrition decreased by 44% and the industry took notice:
“The new DWS Investments website displays innovative and groundbreaking functionality. DWS Investments is a real pioneer in the art of client experience.” – Dalbar
“Pushes the envelope on existing standards… The industry’s most advanced site.” – Kasina
Role: Creative Director and UX Lead
Why sleep when you can create? A friend and I had this idea and decided to build a game in our spare time. I’m responsible for everything except the programming.
Sonic Speed Ball is a Wii-like, gesture-controlled, ping pong game based on sound instead of sight – with no ball. Using your iPhone or iPod Touch as your paddle, you swing when the “ball” sounds closest to you. First player to 7 wins.
The app has been downloaded over 60,000 times with no advertising and maintains
a 4-star user rating.
Role: Crazy Person
Puma celebrated their 60th birthday by re-releasing styles from the past 60 years. What if people could not only try on Puma’s retro threads – they could see themselves wearing the originals? Thus, the Past Masher was born.
Turns out, mixing and matching wacky hairdos, shirts, hats and accessories from the last six decades is pretty fun. And easily sharing those photos on Facebook was a hit - creating tons of earned mentions that lead directly to increased sales for the online store.
Role: Creative Director and UX Lead
When MSNBC.com fell to 2nd place (behind CNN) they worked with SS+K to launch Fuller Spectrum Of News, and I led the digital arm of that campaign for BEAM.
The idea was simple: Why advertise the news when you can just deliver it? With that in mind we created an RSS-powered desktop screensaver and online display ads that served up-to-the minute headlines – a pretty cutting-edge idea for the time. It seemed like a no-brainer, but it took some very talented brains to make it work. And when we got it to work, it worked like crazy.
Role: Associate Creative Director and UX Lead
When YouTube was still in diapers, we saw the future of “viral” – CATS. Of course, it was serendipitous because the project was for IAMs cat food. Essentially, we created the Olympics of cat staring and challenged cat lovers everywhere to do what they’ve always dreamed of: best a feline foe at their own game.
Honestly, this might be the most fun I ever had on a project.
Role: Associate Creative Director
Before HD TV and DVRs were the norm in most households I led the charge helping Comcast prove the value of such luxuries by redesigning their entire .com
The driving insight for the project was to accommodate two diametrically opposed user-mindsets. “Excite me” and let me explore the features. And “Assure me” that your company is the easiest and most reliable to deal with.
The product sections would be heavy on vivid demos and edutainment content – flashy even. And the rest of the site would be an exercise in hyper-efficient brass-tax usability (seen on the right).
Role: Associate Creative Director and UX Lead
Between HD, DVR, On Demand, Digital Phone and High Speed Internet what could be piped into your home was changing fast. The goal was to create comfort with all these new technologies and bring to vivid life the superior entertainment qualities that each service could provide.
Role: Associate Creative Director
Nevertheless, I had a brilliant time working with the integrated team at Mullen and won a bunch of awards for the site design and OLA units.
Role: Art Director (and fulltime Grad Student)
My thesis, Interactive Narrative - An Alternative Approach, is a combination of theoretical research and practical case studies created to explore my point of view. Each project seeks to uncover algorithmic approaches to telling and experiencing different types of “story” paradigms in the digital realm.
They say it’s required reading for all first year students. Recently, an MFA candidate called to ask why I didn’t delve into the topics of social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. My response was simple – those things didn’t exist way back in 2004.
Role: Dreamer
As part of my MFA Thesis, this prototype aimed to demonstrate that personalized, incalculable variation could be created within a tightly controlled system. Or, when it comes to interactive narrative - the author is not dead.
Why couldn’t the future of storytelling be analogous to this plant? It cannot exist without the participant’s presence (mirroring her silhouette) and in need of interaction (repeated watering), never existing as the same “thing” more than once. Yet, it will always be a specific type of plant with certain attributes… a DNA if you will. Like a good book you read more than once.
Role: Dreamer
It may have been a 100 digital years ago, but for me it was 1997. I started out coding what I designed, graduated to craving Adobe Flash Site of the Day awards and eventually matured enough to lead teams of 12 or more at Ogilvy for IBM and started winning some real awards. Everything has changed since then – except for my love of learning, the craft and the industry.
Now break out your magnifying glasses and check out this 640x480 stuff.
Role: From Painter of Pixels to ACD