This portfolio showcases my skills in visual and interaction design. There is brief discussion of how I've applied human-computer interaction methods (heuristic evaluation, contextual inquiry, etc.) to product design. Also, given my background in computer science, there are a few projects that emphasize my involvement in the technical implementation of software.

Yahoo! Projects

This project list excludes a number of confidential projects I worked on while at Yahoo!

My Yahoo!

My Yahoo! is a customizable start page that allows users to add various types of content ranging from RSS feeds to custom Yahoo! modules including: news, weather, movies and mail, to name a few. I contributed to specifying interaction design of My Yahoo! through wireframes and demonstrated product behavior by building high-fidelity prototypes. Interaction design for My Yahoo! included specifying: how to add, move and delete content modules; how to navigate My Yahoo! pages; how to browse and search for content modules; and how to customize and theme pages, amongst other things.

My Yahoo! allows users to customize their pages by using an inline personalization feature. I worked with a visual designer to specify the options available within inline personalization and the interaction and behavior of the feature.

Users are able to change their My Yahoo! page theme by using an inline personalization feature. I created several prototypes experimenting between modal and non-modal interaction with the inline personalization feature. Generally speaking, non-modal interaction is preferable since it is less likely to disrupt a user's task flow. Our tests with prototypes also showed users being very receptive to seeing changes on their My Yahoo! pages reflected immediately after an action. With respect to themes for example, users liked seeing their theme selection changes immediately--as opposed to having to confirm their theme choice and then closing a dialog box, such an approach is used in Windows XP.

Myself included, our design team consisted of five people with both visual and interaction design skills. I contributed to the visual and interaction design of a number of My Yahoo! modules including: movies, bookmarks, Messenger and weather. In many cases I built high-fidelity prototypes to better express interaction to product managers and directors.

Paper on prototyping and the design process:
Redesigning My Yahoo!: Using prototyping to facilitate communication (pdf)

Abstract: My Yahoo! is a personalized start page used by more than 48 million people worldwide. The product is one of Yahoo’s biggest, most highly trafficked properties and has some of Yahoo’s most engaged users. The My Yahoo! team used several types of rapid prototyping methods as tools to test a redesign of the product with users. The prototypes also served to express design ideas to product managers and engineers in the form of working specifications. This paper discusses the competitive landscape of personalized start pages, how prototyping helped the My Yahoo! team better understand its users and express ideas to various stake-holders, and how this affected the design and engineering process of developing My Yahoo!

Yahoo! Home Page

Yahoo's home page is the most highly trafficked home page on the Internet. I contributed to a numerous refinements in the home page's design with respect to navigation, error handling and promotional messaging. Below are a few examples of projects I've worked on applied to refining the Yahoo! home page.

After the release of My Yahoo! I worked with product managers to develop a way to better tie Yahoo's home page navigation to the navigation module used in My Yahoo!

With the increasingly dynamic nature of the home page, it is possible for content to change or network operations to fail without a page refresh. Such changes to content must be highlighted in the user interface. I worked on designs that covered cases where various types of inline messaging were necessary.

Yahoo! Messenger Insider

Yahoo! Messenger Insider appears when a user launches the PC version of Yahoo! Messenger. It's an opportunity for Yahoo! to showcase new content available on the Yahoo! network to users. Using assets from a visual designer I created an interactive prototype showing animation sequences and behavior of the user interface.