Work

exploring, creating, and collaborating

It is difficult to encapsulate 20 years of design experience into a single web page. Shown here is a small selection of work (in loose chronological order with most recent at the top) that I have led or been significantly involved with during my professional career. These projects span physical, digital, and experiential outputs and demonstrate the wide-reaching nature of my design practice. Many of these projects are backed by substantial research efforts and strategic planning (which I also often led) aimed at delivering solutions with targeted precision against business needs and end-user delight.

UX & Content Strategy

Redesign of the online home for the Industrial Designers Society of America.

IDSA.org

Branding & Curation

Creating an engaging experience for professional designers to connect, learn, and thrive.

International Design Conference

Research & Service Design

Envisioning the future of urban aerial transportation.

EmbraerX

Facilitation

Helping groups challenge the assumptions and nurture new ideas through collaboration.

BASF

Industrial Design

Building a simple design with timeless appeal.

Plywood Table

Exhibit Design

Opening a space to highlight design being leveraged for global social impact.

Museum of Design Atlanta

UX & Industrial Design

Launching a category defining new product for sleep and wellness.

ReST Bed

Retail & Industrial Design

Maximizing the in-store footprint and delivering an all new shopping experience.

Danze SmartShelf

Industrial Design

Reconfiguring components into a new form language for high-end submersible lighting.

Ring LED Light

IDSA.org

2023

Industrial Designers Society of America

Executive Creative Direction I Content Management Strategy I Copywriting | User Research | UX & UI

Recognizing the business need for a major upgrade, I initiated an effort to gain Board of Directory buy-in and secure funding for a website redesign project in 2021. Our year-long design process included soliciting feedback from members, conducting a competitive landscape analysis of other design and membership sites, extensive wireframing and content mapping explorations, and a detailed review of usage analytics for IDSA.org.

The result is a fresh new face for IDSA.org with a substantial package of new features, security upgrades, and back-end database integrations. Additionally, we’ve improved mobile device responsiveness, created members-only content areas, and enhanced the overall layout and design. Underpinning it all is a refreshed content management strategy with a streamlined information hierarchy and new navigation system.

IDSA.org welcomes over 1.4 million visitors per year. It is responsible for housing nearly six decades of organizational history and serves as a focal point for up-to-date news and information. All this while also serving as a repository for trustworthy institutional knowledge and reference materials related to the professional practice and academic study of industrial design. We migrated, reorganized, and reskined 50+ years of organization history, stories, community events, and industry accolades … over 15,000 pages of content and images in fact.

Collaborators to thank: Jerry Layne, Johanna Colocho, Sarat Tippaluru, Allan Gordon, Sofya Howard, IDSA Staff, New Target

IDSAorg

A wireframe of the new homepage was stylized as an exploded view, typical of the industrial design process, for use in membership presentations and internal meetings to build excitement for the project.

During the early phases of the project, Miro Boards were used extensively to collaboratively map and organize information prior to beginning the code/build phase of the project. These exercises guided our content migration strategy which remapped and reorganized over 15,000 pages from the old site to the new one.

International Design Conference

2018-2023

Industrial Designers Society of America

Executive Creative Direction & Branding I Content Curation | Attendee Experience | Environmental Graphics & Wayfinding

The International Design Conference is IDSA's biggest annual event. It routinely draws 500+ attendees from around the world for multiple days of presentations, workshops, panel discussions, product demonstrations, and networking. IDC is a platform for amplifying the unique and bold voice of industrial design while celebrating the deep interconnection with other creative disciplines.

Prior to 2018, the event was given a completely new theme and brand identity each year. While that approach has the benefit of keeping things fresh, it lacked the continuity and consistency needed to build an enduring brand.

Joe Stitzlein, of Stitzlein Studio, was enlisted to create the initial logo and typographic elements of the IDC brand system. The simple, yet bold brand identity, can be revised each year while maintaining several common visual elements from one event to the next. I was responsible for overseeing the overall creative direction and content curation for each event up to 2023.

The 2018 event marked my first as Executive Director of the organization and it was the first outward manifestation of the strategy I put in place to lead IDSA into its next phase of life.

internationaldesignconference.com

Collaborators to thank: Joe Stitzlein, Carl Guo, Gabrielle Pisani, Kelsey Rerko, Carrie Green, Austin DelGallo, Dragonfly Consultants, IDSA Staff

IDC

The 'What do you design for?' question is a recurring call to action used in IDC branding. It is intended to ask the audience to look deeply inside themselves to find the purpose in their work.

This visualization is aimed at showing how the 2018 IDC branding would appear on promotional posters. A vivid color palette with intricate pattern was developed as part of that year’s visual system.

There is no substitute for being in the room where it is all happening. Hearing some of the world’s top designers share their story is a truly special experience. An overarching goal during planning and content curation is to create an experience that is not only meaningful, but also highly sharable.

Conferences are so much more than just speakers on stage. Here, audience members enjoy an after-hours party where 'the real' networking happens.

One of my proudest achievements as IDSA Executive Director is the creation and activation of IDSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council (DEIC) in 2020. This effort is built to hold IDSA, academia, and industry accountable for confronting the lack of DEI in the industrial design profession with meaningful action.

The curation of speakers for IDC, and the necessity to have radical representation on stage, is one of the most visible ways that IDSA keeps its commitment to the DEIC.

The event has its own website at www.internationaldesignconference.com

This space is a central location for all content related to upcoming and previous events. Each year, I was responsible for building out the site’s pages.

We implemented a ‘grid view’ aesthetic to IDC posts on Instagram.

At the end of the 2019 conference in Chicago, we announced that the 2020 event would take place in Seattle. Little did we know that the world would be shut down by the Covid-19 pandemic just a few months after this announcement.

Buttons, stickers, guidebooks, and babies!

EmbraerX

2017

Contract position

Research I Strategy I Foresight I Creative Direction I Service & Experience Design

EmbraerX is an incubation team inside of Embraer, a global leader in aviation and aircraft manufacturing, charged with developing future-focused ideas and emergent technologies into existence.

I helped a small, cross-functional innovation team (aviation specialists, aircraft engineers, business stakeholders, and designers) explore the future of urban aerial transportation with the goal of creating an eco-friendly, battery powered EVTOL vehicles.

I contributed to the project by leading user research efforts, turning insights into product and business strategy, envisioning future-state services, creative direction, and customer experience design.

User research included a two-week stay in Dubai, UAE to conduct interviews, perform heuristic studies, and experience the culture of this thriving city in the desert.

My contributions to the project culminated with the creation of a series of speculative renderings telling a story about the future service and vehicle which did not yet exist. These were accompanied by a robust research findings report which provided user-driven insights into how (and why) we created what we did and a detailed business case analysis.

Collaborators to thank: Paula Macedo, Flavia Dantas Silva, Rocio Reyes-Morales, Karan Chaitanya Mudgal, Jake Lussier, Noah Lehmann-Haupt, Doug Davidson, Andre Stein, Takashi Kawasaki, David Rottblatt, Gustavo Furlan, Peter Berger

Every project should start with a problem(s) to solve and clear goals in mind.

The answers to basic questions like, "Why now?", "Why are we creating this?", or "Who are we building this for?" not only provide direction for the project, but they also help galvanize team members around a central mission statement.

At this stage, very loose EVTOL aircraft configurations were being explored by the engineers who were working alongside the UX team.

These were primarily studies used to perform baseline calculations to estimate aircraft flight characteristics, electrical loads, and overall component architecture.

The proximity of our two teams greatly improved collaboration and communication.

Early in the project we employed simple 'worksheet' style methodology for describing different rider use cases.

The templatized format allowed the team to quickly create different use case examples, communicate them to other team members, and easily evaluate them against each other for viability.

The customer research phase of this project involved over 50 interview style conversations with study participants in 6 different cities and 3 countries.

During these 60-90 minute conversations we presented participants with simple visual references and diagrams to help us explain the future vehicle and transportation service. This, as it turns out, was a critical component because it can be very difficult to envision something that does not yet exist.

A primary goal of each interview was to gain feedback on different use case scenarios from participants. This helped us evaluate the practical viability of our early concepts. We also used these conversations to discuss aspects of safety, cost, experience expectation, and aircraft design.

We developed a simple zone mapping visual language to help explore how vertiport locations would be arranged.

The zones not only represented different physical spaces within the building to serve specific functions, but also points along a rider’s journey using this future service. This methodology allowed team to evaluate building architecture and customer experience at the same time.

In some cases, interviews were conducted in different languages by translators. This required that we first train the translator on our study and the type of information we were seeking.

Interviews were recorded, translated, and transcribed for later analysis.

I spent 10 days in Dubai, UAE with a colleague to conduct interviews and perform heuristic studies of various forms of transportation and tourist attractions. Yes, we got to go for a ride in a helicopter!

All of our interview materials needed to be translated into Arabic.

The early insights gleaned from interviews and other data gathering exercises led us to create more detailed customer journey maps that brought more detail and personal narrative to the use cases they were based on.

The journey maps were further enhanced with the creation of rider personas and demographic groupings. Layering this information over a journey map demonstrated to our outside project stakeholders that different people (riders) representing different backgrounds, abilities, and situations out of the future EVTOL service.

Journey maps helped us have conversations about how to handle luggage, security, differently abled bodies, and more.

"EVTOLs are the future and the future should feel like magic."

This is the first of a series of speculative experience scenario images used to create a vivid story around the future EVTOL vehicle and service.

Vertiport hubs are a portal to the sky and a critical through point of the EVTOL journey. Passengers arrive and depart on a schedule, but the experience should feel anything but regular. Safety screening and weight procedures are completed seamlessly upon check-in so riders can quickly be on their way.

It is important to note that these images are intended to inspire project stakeholders (executive leadership, board of directors, etc) to continue funding the project, which at the time was still in its infancy.

We didn’t know what the vehicle would look like or specifically how the service would work. We did however, know what we wanted the experience to feel like and what kinds of emotions we wanted to evoke (or avoid) in riders.

Walking up to an EVTOL is a moment of immense excitement.

With the assistance of on-site personnel, a clear and direct path guides passengers to an awaiting vehicle. Engines are quiet, blades are still, and anticipation builds as passengers step aboard.

Our experience scenario images were supported with a collection of 'Tenant' and 'Action' statements. These were supported and inspired by data and other insights gleaned during our research.

These attempted to simply and articulately state, from a human (rider) perspective, the fundamental core attributes of the future service.

What does safety look, feel, and act like?

How can we establish confidence, trust, and acceptance?

Staying informed and in control. Access to information is vital throughout the duration of the flight.

Smart windows can convey flight data or possibly direct attention to points of interest along the way. All of this is easily hidden for when simply looking out the window is entertainment enough.

In the unlikely event of the unexpected, the aircraft interior becomes a direct line of communication to the pilot in the event of unforeseen situations like turbulence or midair
delays.

While these instances are rare, knowing that someone is there to help is a comforting passenger assurance.

The journey continues. Touching down at a Hub signals the near completion of a trip for many passengers.

Vertiport hubs can help direct connecting passengers to awaiting cars, minimizing confusion and avoiding delays.

BASF

2013-2015

InReality

Workshop Facilitation | Activity Planning & Design | Mentoring

I worked with various business groups within the BASF organization to design and facilitate workshops with internal and external stakeholders.

Each session was unique in its mission, duration, and composition. As a result, each had to be custom built to suit the needs of our partners and to garner the best possible results.

The workshops explored a variety of topics including: how to reduce global food waste, bringing customers into the product development cycle, and building internal team alignment over shared goals.

At a high level - this was a project of evangelizing the design process (design thinking) and demonstrating to non-designers, through interactive activities and thought provoking prompts, that they had the power to be creative in their daily work.

Collaborators to thank: Florian Vollmer, Rich Goidel