When tasked with taking an online loan application to mobile, I designed for both the native mobile experience (an app) and a mobile optimized experience (running in a browser across devices).

The project started as native, but because of the business and technology constraints, native was not an option so I moved that experience to a more general experience that would run well in a mobile browser.

I led this project from wireframes and user flows to guiding design across three different brands utilizing the same information architecture.

As part of a larger brand loyalty and optimization initiative, I audited the decision pages of an online loan application for a multi-million dollar financial services client. Essentially, there was poor use of space on each of the three decision pages that a user could see upon completion of the loan application.

The goal was to utilize the space for more branding opportunity and customer service. For instance, when a user is denied and lands on the “I’m sorry” page, they should have a better experience in understanding why and what their next steps will or should be, otherwise the only thing for the user to do is read a couple lines of text and close the browser.

Instead of allowing them to walk away with nothing else to consider, the page design would need to be shifted toward a more thoughtful experience.

The FAVE TV usability audit allowed me to coordinate a user test utilizing the UserTesting.com vendor. I wanted to survey 10 users through the process of visiting the FAVE TV website, which included discovery of the FAVE product, product details, pricing, value, and purchase steps. I kept the pool of test users to a fairly small number for cost, time to review the videos, and also felt like 10 would allow for a good mix of users who would all be attempting the same list of tasks.

After starting the test, I was able to review videos and audio of users making their journey through the site in search of answers to the five tasks. From that qualitative data, I could then begin making recommendations for improved design based, attempting to solve for the barriers encountered by test users of the site.

In short, the audit resulted in a thorough investigation into why more users weren’t converting on the site and the recommendations that would improve the rate of successful purchases. Among the recommendations, better content and navigation organization. This can be achieved through mapping the flow and making sure there are as few steps as possible from beginning to end, and, that the order in which the content should be consumed is reflected in the information architecture.

UI / UX Design Case Study – Arch Advantage

Sage Resource Center was a refreshingly simple WordPress website project. More than anything, to me, this project showcases how nicely WordPress can be implemented to precisely reflect a creative delivered to a client. There was not a lot of advanced functionality, save for some minor interior navigation tweaks made. It is nice, simple, and informative, which is exactly what the client wanted.

I was responsible for building out the entire site, taking advantage of native WordPress features like page templates. There area few touches of simple jQuery that round out the experience.

One of the really fun parts about front end development, for me, is making something dynamic and interactive from a Photoshop creative that is so static and stunning. I enjoy working with WordPress, and I believe that really shows in projects such as the Sage Center website.

AREA203 Marketing in Chattanooga, TN is a full service marketing agency, specializing in interactive marketing, brand identity, website design, print advertising and more. I currently work at AREA203 as a Front End Developer, working mostly with email marketing campaigns, PHP microsites, and WordPress sites.

I was responsible to building the WordPress template structure for most of the AREA203 website. I used html, CSS, PHP and WordPress functions and tags to pull a working design together, based from a delivered creative from the designer. Cross browser testing and other troubleshooting was involved. I collaborated along side other UX developers to create a fully functional online experience for the agency, which, with their help, included jQuery sliders and portfolio navigation.

Some of the more difficult tasks that had to be overcome was trying to stick with native WordPress functions and tags while creating a fully intuitive interior navigation. The AREA203 website was fun to build.

I have gotten to work on a lot of websites in my position with AREA203 Marketing, including the redesign for ACHFederal. For this project, I took the design and beginnings of code that another team member started with and turned it all into a working WordPress theme.

A lot of WordPress customization was done to this theme, including special breadcrumb navigation for interior subpages. A lot of this project consisted of cross browser testing. A main component of this site, for the client, was the ability to edit and upload documents, both secure and non-secure.

I’ve been doing work for astrologer and counselor Lilan Laishley for quite some time. Recently, we collaborated on the redesign of her main website. This project was built from scratch using WordPress.

I chose WordPress because I enjoy it and Lilan was already familiar with it from a past project. She’s also a great learner when it comes to administering her own content. WordPress was a good fit for Lilan’s blogging goals as well.

For this redesign, Lilan wanted to clearly define her areas of expertise from the homepage, but with plenty of opportunity to click through to other areas of the website. She also wanted to list her recent blog posts on the homepage. Newsletter signup was also important for the new version of the site, since her initial pseudo-launch tied in with a global women’s launch that aimed for increased traffic and email distribution signups.

For this particular project, I was responsible for the web design as well as the web development. All photography and graphical elements were hand crafted either from scratch or photos supplied by Lilan.