semioticpixels

IDEO is a world-class design and ideas company. If you're familiar with Don Norman's writings about affordance and "Things that Make Us Smart" then you'll understand what I mean when I say, "IDEO is what makes companies smart."

I had the opportunity to work on the original development team for The Tube, IDEO's intranet, accessed in IDEO offices around the world. The Tube is a productivity and communication tool that fosters creativity within the company—essentially an internal social media platform.

I was responsible for the UI engineering of this custom Ruby on Rails application. As a design company, IDEO is extraordinarily commited to every detail; the interface was pixel-perfect across browsers and platforms while also adhering to web standards. Every screen view was highly contextual, which meant that the views had to be abstracted to a fairly low level in order to reuse components.

The end product is in use by all IDEO employees and is an advertised benefit of working with IDEO.

• Ruby on Rails
• CSS/xhtml/Javascript
• mySQL
• git
• Linux/bash/shell

Babeland is a mission-driven retailer that promotes a healthy sexual lifestyle.

As a Babeland partner since 2004, I have:

• Re-engineered all Plone and Miva templates
• Developed new web properties in Plone, Ruby on Rails, and Wordpress
• Provided ongoing support for online marketing initiatives

In 2007, Babeland migrated to a new fulfillment system and it became clear that a custom ecommerce solution would be more flexible for marketing initiatives and more cost effective to integrate with the backend fulfillment system. Semioticpixels was contracted to drive UI engineering and development. As an ongoing partner of Babeland, I acted as a leading member of a cross-functional team, collaborating with colleagues to build an innovative cart using Ruby on Rails

One interesting requirement for the cart project was that the code base was to be used for multiple shopping carts on different websites, so I developed a set of templates that were structured for use on any site, leaving the look and feel entirely customizable in CSS only.

• Ruby on Rails
• Plone/Zope/python
• CSS/xhtml
• Javascript
• PHP
• Wordpress
• mySQL
• ZODB
• Linux/bash/shell
• git
• Subversion
• Website Design

live site

Cheryl Mazak is a well-known Canadian photographer and artist, whose work is shows regularly throughout the US. She needed a website to showcase her work as a destination for her marketing efforts.

I chose to use Wordpress because it is easy to maintain and has a great support community with user-friendly documentation. This means that Cheryl will be able to make changes independently if she chooses, and will have no problem finding answers to even complex questions on her own. The minimalist design showcases the dynamic color palette across Cheryl's body of work and was built into a custom WordPress theme.

• PHP/Wordpress
• Javascript
• Flash
• Linux
• mySQL
• Website Design and Development

live site

Provided consultation on SEO strategy, developed an actionable SEO strategy and roadmap that resulted in traffic and conversion growth, performed keyphrase analysis, tracked search engine rankings, performed online competitive analysis, set up Google analytics on all web properties with corresponding profiles and desired filters, and tracked key performance indicators.

• SEO strategy
• Online Competition Analysis
• Google Analytics
• Keyphrase Discovery & Analysis

live site

Alaffia makes and distributes Shea butter products primarily in the US and Canada. They experienced rapid growth when they expanded their production capacity and they needed an ecommerce solution that would enable them to take advantage of the new opportunities for direct sales. Alaffia also wanted a complete design refresh.

We redesigned the website and built the Content management component using Wordpress and integrated Xcart into the website.

Alaffia wanted to manage the website internally, so we created documentation with lots of screenshots and one-on-one training to employees responsible for managing the website

Alaffia wanted to manage the website internally, so we created detailed documentation and one-on-one employee training. Because Alaffia didn't have the budget to hire SEO services on an ongoing basis, the majority of the web management training focused on SEO, content management, and SEO copy writing to enable employees to manage the website on an ongoing basis with SEO in mind.

• PHP/mySQL
• Wordpress/Xcart/thub (QuickBooks integration)
• Keyphrase Dicovery and Analysis
• SEO Guidelines and Training
• Documentation and Training
• Website Design & Development
• Linux Administration

live site

Amy Fisher is a recognized artist in the Pacific Northwest where she also served as a faculty member of The Evergreen State College. As a professional artist, it was important to to Amy that her work was available nation-wide. Amy also wanted to try selling some artwork online. Amy was not an avid internet user, but she did want to manage her website independently so I created a custom userguide and provided training throughout the project.

After presenting Amy with a number of content management options, Amy selected Wordpress for ease of use. I then integrated Slideshow pro into Wordpress to display her artwork, and customized Xcart as an ecommerce solution to meet the design requirements.

• PHP/mySQL
• Wordpress/Xcart
• CSS/xhtml/Javascript
• SEO Strategy, Keyword Discovery & Analysis
• Analytics Setup
• Linux Admininistration
• Website Design
• Documentation & Training

live site

To Go Ware was invited to be featured on the Oprah Winfrey show for Earth Day 2009. They needed a scalability strategy and subsequent website migration to handle the expected traffic increase. Fortunately, the IT support for the Oprah show delivered fairly thorough metrics regarding expected bandwidth needs.

I was approached to assist with this project less than a week before the migration needed to happen so one challenge was finding a hosting facility that would negotiate on such a short time frame. Luckily I did find three really great facilities and was able to present three different options for To Go Ware to choose from.

Once To Go Ware decided to proceed with the migration, I performed the migration to a cloud computing center (Joyent) that guaranteed burstability as traffic increased.

• Scalability Strategy
• Hosting Requirements
• Linux Server Admin
• Website Migration

live site

Implemented the company's first full cycle development environment, migrated antiquated web applications to new servers, set up and configured LInux webservers within a virtualized hosting environment, acheived PCI compliance in the web environment, performed quarterly PCI scan monitoring and submission, general Linux system administration, bash scripting and backup automation

• Linux Server Installs, Linux System Administration
• LAMP Stack Install, Configuration and Server Hardening (Apache, mySQL, PHP)
• PCI Compliance
• Web Infrastructure Design
• Web IT Strategy

live site

NorCalHostels was plagued with performance issues due to inadequate hosting. Their website had been beautifully designed but they were on a web host that could not allocate resources required by their CMS (Joomla!). Additionally, their CMS had been heavily modified into a "farm", so the initial memory requirements were an unknown at the time of launch and no performance testing had been done so I had little direct data to use when collecting their hosting requirements. I collected requirements by testing a simulation of their website in my development environment, made a set of recommendations and provided configuration support to their developer as he migrated them to the new server.

• Linux Hosting Requirements Capture
• Server Configuration

live site