Web Design

(Early design mock-up for business site)

From a design perspective the recent Cornell SC Johnson College of Business merger presented some very unique challenges. We needed to come up with a common brand/design that would both serve the new college yet maintain the strong identity of the individual schools. With limited resources and time, it also needed to be a design that was both executable and sustainable.

Here's a quick rundown of the project:

Four web sites, four different designs, four different content management systems
Three weeks of strategy, wire-frames, mock-ups and stakeholder meetings
Three weeks of design with vendor
Four weeks working with IT to build new sites

I took a lead roll in:

Competitive set analysis
Conception/strategy
Information architecture
Wireframes
Design/mockups
Stakeholder presentations

(Early design mock-up for mobile displays)

Other Redesign Projects

Lead web marketer on two previous Johnson vendor driven redesigns
Sole designer on three previous Johnson redesigns, one of which BusinessWeek ranked #7 best business school web site
Complete redesigns for:
- The Parker Center for Investment & Research
- The Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise
- Cornell Enterprise Online
- J-Connect

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Information Architecture

Johnson has five web properties with over 12,000 pages of content. In this age of digital overload and short attention spans, effective organization of that content is a critical factor in creating an effective user-centered journey.

Along with years of experience and intimate knowledge of the content I used the following tools and processes to help guide my decisions:

Analytics
Focus groups
Card sorting
User testing
Interviews
Competitive set analysis
Stakeholder input
Industry trends

(Top buisness school navigation competitive set analysis)

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Content Management Systems

Member of Marketing/IT WordPress migration team
Integral in the selection, design and rollout of the first Johnson CMS including:
- Permission hierarchy and workflow
- Template design
- Generating internal buy-in
- Training
- Hand holder and cheerleader for instilling and maintaining a vibrant web-culture amongst faculty and staff

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Analytics

Established profiles, segmenting, filters custom dashboard, automated and custom reports using the following tools:

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Accessibility

Not only is it the law, it also makes for good design.

I am currently the point person on the accessibility remediation project tackling remediation efforts for:

PDFs
Video
CSS Style
HTML
Page Structure
Tab order
Alt tags
Duplicate links/content

To better understand the challenges I became SiteImprove certified

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UX/UI/User Testing

Analytics only tells you what a user did, not why they did it. Without user testing our best decisions are only guesses. Designers, managers and stakeholders all usually have very strong opinions about design. Testing data is so good at telling the story, that very quickly everyone is on the same page.

You can pay a lot of money to have a vendor laser track eyeballs, but these are my go to tests that are equally effective and can be done on any budget

Card sorting
Video interviews/observation
Focus groups

(Card sorting exercise with current students)

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SEO

Member of the Johnson Marketing SEO committee
Use MOZ and SiteImprove analytics to help shape page content and meta data
Looking forward to partnering with a vendor to take our efforts to the next level

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Art Direction

As art director for American Demographics and Marketing Tools magazines I was responsible for every aspect of the project timeline from initial editorial meetings to press-check.

Duties included:

Hiring photographers and directing photoshoots
Hiring illustrators for cover and feature editorial content
Graphic design of both both magazines
Ad placement
Hiring and management of two production assistants

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Video

Conceived, planned, shot, edited and posted video content for marketing campaigns, speakers, interviews, testimonials and events.

Built video studio, enabling marketing to create their own video content:

Researched and purchased equipment and software
Designed studio including lighting, sound reinforcement and editing bay
Learned videography and editing skills required to produce, shoot and edit needed content
Created video production, filing, back-up storage workflow

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Played a key pioneering role in the creation, design, maintenance and tracking of our social media properties. Created and posted content/graphics for:

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