My passion is for creating highly connective, innovative and usable physical, mobile, tablet and x-platform experiences. I accomplish this in collaboration with you by talking and workshopping with customized process that establishes where your business plans, requirements, products and experiences are connecting with your people, and where they are not. Together, we research, design and iterate to new experiences to get out into the world.

I'm looking for contract and full-time positions in creative, collaborative cultures developing user-tuned products and services. My current specialty is custom UX design strategy process consulting, along with technical UI, interaction design and product development for native touch-based mobile, tablet, hardware/software interfaces and x-platform environments. Case studies and resume PDFs provided by request 

CONSULTING SERVICES

Interaction Design
Technical UI designer with a keen interest in systems and how people respond to them. Fit well into agile and other development driven environments. Wireframing, flowcharts, scenario planning to determine design directions with engineering and design teams, feature labeling, display and organization, user flows, written use cases, interaction storyboards, animations, Flash/Fireworks/video blue sky and prototyping.

Relevant posts: 

• Technical UI: co-designing database connections
• Interaction outlines
• Flowframes
• Interaction storyboards
• Interaction animations
• Touch UI and gestural prototyping

Design Strategy
Formulating and running process to determine high-level product strategy, translation of business goals into engineering realities, competitive/background research, stakeholder interviews, team dynamics, communication strategy reviews, planning and collaboration for conforming and porting across different views and modalities. Design testing with users and internal teams including field studies (ethnography) and various qualitative methodologies. Usually initiated with “state of the company/product/service” reviews to determine where I would be most useful.

Relevant posts:

• state of the product/service/company
• goal-centric-ux-design
• measurable goals in design iteration
• scalability as critical UX design criteria
• shapes of interaction in your company
• stepping out of arrogance - asking why? 

BIO
When I began my career with computers, I could never have predicted the trajectory I've taken. From writing, data entry and base programming of the late 80's to CGI, graphic design and interactive multimedia development of the early 90's and then on into teaching and consulting in IA, UI, user-centric and interaction design from 1993 on.

For a few years, I evolved again, adding strategic and process emphasis to my interface work. Meetings, whiteboards, percolation and collaboration became familiar process in order to make implementation, iteration and engineering more integrated. These projects have included mobile, device, touchscreen and x-platform products and services in a wide variety of corporate and startup environments.

Currently, I'm moving back toward my love of implementation, devices and DIY. I enjoy incorporating product development and technical UI skills in working toward iterations with a close-knit team of people. I love working project-based environments that allow me to get involved with sprints and then during other phases step out or move to another project. I'm not deeply attached to my position, although I enjoy mentoring and directing as needed, I fit in well into lean and interchangeable team dynamics. I've done both pair development and design across mobile and x-platform environments for several years.

Over the years I've discovered that I fit in very well with both engineering and visual/product design teams. If I'm functioning as a UX design team of one then I perform best when we develop in a lean manner that allows me to collaborate closely with the other parts of the team, including stakeholders, marketing, sales, engineering and visual design as needed.

My typical contract gigs tend toward:

1) High-level product design consulting to provide teams with feedback and/or process that helps hone and develop ideas for iterative design variations
2) Hands-on product design for creating interactive prototypes, UX upgrades to current offerings and/or the structures for fully functional systems

Find me on Twitter (@quietaction), email me (md@) or send me a message via LinkedIn.