T-MOBILE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE APP
Design + Implementation
2016-2020
I was brought onboard by T-Mobile in 2016 as a Senior UX Software Engineer to work on their internal sales applications, used by thousands of management and executive level users for business intelligence. I determined with leadership the user needs on all levels of access, designing a UI that made the app serve both current and predicted forms of data. Then my team and I implemented an MVC UI using Angular. I conceptualized a scalable platform to by reused every time a new internal app was needed.
Our team was the first to adopt Agile Scrum methodology, which became the template for the entire department. I assisted data analysts in maintaining and upgrading the application until we sunsetted it in 2020.
(Screenshots used with permission)
T-MOBILE
COACHING & PERFORMANCE APPLICATION
Design + prototype
2017
The Care team asked me to redesign the application that call center staff used to track their progress, in order to give them the best chance at a high monthly bonus. Management and leadership were able to see aggregated statistics about the employees organized by location. As dry as that might sound, the Care leaders wanted the app to maintain the same level of enthusiasm and fun that they (quite successfully) cultivate in the call centers. Working with a java developer to realize the dynamic tile function possibilities (the gauge on the left side of iOCR for instance), we were able to give employees a way to assess their current stats, and predict what they needed to do in order to get the best monthly bonus.
(Screenshots used with permission)
T-MOBILE
INTERNAL SCRUM TEAM LOGOS
GRAPHIC DESIGN
2018
T-Mobile cultivates a fun, energetic company culture, fully willing to embrace nerddom as the circumstances demand. My Web and Mobile team was the guinea pig for Agile Scrum methodology; taking our lead, the department reorganized on a lean agile framework. The new teams were allowed to name themselves anything they wanted. Somehow, Voltron was the predominant theme of the day. I was asked if I’d be willing to block out time to design some scrum team logos, which is exactly the kind of enjoyable break from coding that I relish. These designs were built in Photoshop and Illustrator at high resolution for signage and apparel. I also told them they were a bunch of nerds. Team Q-Bert’s logo is my favorite.
(Screenshots used with permission)
NORAD TRACKS SANTA
HOLIDAY MULTIMEDIA SITE
UI/UX/ development
2014
Who is Santa? Is he a foreign agent or merely a friendly ally who comes bearing gifts once a year while violating US airspace? Well, NORAD needs to know, so they instituted a Santa Tracker in the 50s to provide realtime updates to kids everywhere about Santa’s flight path. This project was a collaboration between NORAD and Microsoft, so I worked on it twice (2013 and 2014) as part of iLink Systems. We were responsible for the buildout of the site, using illustrations, music and games from other contributing partners.
In 2013 I worked on the content pages while the lead programmer wrote deliberately indecipherable javascript to power the rest of the site; no one could read his code, so the site went live with bugs. He was subsequently fired, leaving the company in the lurch for next year’s deployment.
Late in the game in 2014, they brought me on to finish the job. I threw out last year’s code and rebuilt the site from scratch using well-supported and reliable libraries like Bootstrap, Jquery, and Greensock JS (for animation). The result was an optimized, smoothly running site with full responsive capabilities (because who knows what hand-me-down device a kid will be using). They were able to use the codebase for future versions, saving weeks of development time.
Fun story: NORAD Tracks Santa was born in 1953 when a newspaper ad was published urging kids to call Sears to talk to Santa… but the number was misprinted, instead connecting them to NORAD’s monitoring center, where a kindly Colonel realized the mistake and pretended to be tracking Santa. Thus a tradition was born. In NPR’s reporting for 2014, their article about the site launch ran the headline “NORAD Tracks Santa Begins with a Typo.” I nearly had a heart attack.
NOAA PCSRF
PACIFIC COASTAL SALMON CONSERVATION PROJECT TRACKER
Design + templates
2012
This government app provided tracking information for salmon recovery projects conducted by NOAA in cooperation with scientists, conservation organizations, rangers, and native tribal councils.
Written in HTML/CSS, it tied into an Oracle database using APEX. The output of database queries arrived as a massive table of scientific data. I designed the app to resemble a familiar looking, intuitive webpage that nevertheless gave access to all the scientific data for those users who wanted to see it (scientists), but otherwise summarized the information in graphics and charts for less sophisticated users (students and policymakers).
Many salmon were saved (only to be eaten later).
I also designed an app for assisting commercial fisherman with trading their hauls while adhering to fishing regulations. Very interesting to learn how difficult that business can be.
STANDARD TV & APPLIANCE
ENTERPRISE ECOMMERCE & PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
Product Management & Design
2009
Portland’s oldest appliance retail chain, Standard wanted to get the edge on their big box competition. Their business model retained the best qualities of old fashioned, customer oriented retailing: highly trained salespeople who could help the buyer navigate the myriad options and considerations involved in an expensive home appliance purchase. They didn’t want to lose that focus when they took their products online. I was contracted to spend a year overseeing the construction of an eCommerce shop on par with Home Depot and Sears.
After weeks of research, I generated a detailed RFP and vetted the vendors who responded with proposals. The vendor who won my heart, Copious Creative, built a Ruby on Rails eCommerce app to my specifications, with particular emphasis on reining in a scattered inventory stored in an ancient legacy management system. In addition to managing the product data, I provided design elements, concepts and branding. Several features, such as the wish list, filtered search, enhanced product details, and hand-picked product experts, brought the customer and sales staff together in an online exchange even before meeting in the brick and mortar store.
The store launched in June 2009 and immediately made an impact on sales and customer traffic.
