What the HELL is wrong with us as a culture and group of people that we can not… will not acknowledged that we suffer an epidemic in this country that others civilized nations do NOT. Upon hearing the news of yet ANOTHER mass shooting at a school… I am confronted by the terror that this has become a constant. (more…)
We are looking for an innovative designer (s) to join the CNET mobile web / native app design team. The successful candidate is someone who will take part in the ongoing product evolution to our suite of iOS, Android and mobile web products. (more…)
A look forward:Â With any interactive product, a lengthy history can be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is the vast brand awareness along with a mature and stable product and business that can deliver the brand promise at scale. This is an enormous advantage. However, this maturity can also create fragmentation as products evolve over the years and introduce adaptations to the many legacy elements. The liability of this will affect the pace of future innovations. As a result, larger infrastructure efforts can go a long way toward leveraging the pros while minimizing the cons.
A look backward: In June of 2011, I took on a new challenge at CBSi at the helm of the CNET design group. One of the key requests made by new CBSi boss Jim Lanzone was to bring a renewed heat, vitality and energy to the brand. Users needed to immediately “know and recognize” that they were at CNET.
As a kid born in the early 1970’s, the magic of Star Wars was certainly something that captured my imagination. The opportunity to take my family to check out an exhibit of the props and science behind the films made for a Saturday adventure I simply could not pass up! The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose has had an unbelievable exhibit where you can both see the actual costumes and props used in the films as well as to learn about and tinker with the robotics that powered the technology.
MetroLyrics is the most popular lyrics website worldwide, with the most comprehensive database of legal lyrics in the world. (over 700,000 titles) At it’s core, the brand believes in a hyper focus on the emotional connection inherent to the lyrics experience. With this in mind, we set out to give it a best-in-class design to insure that our users can not only find the lyrical content they desire, but to be immersed into the deeper context of the music & the artists they are passionate about.
Users of software and services will always respond to change with mixed reaction. This is a reality that creators of interactive products always do or at least should expect. As brands work hard to innovate a product, some ideas bring improvement while others may not. Good or bad, user feedback is almost always helpful. By helpful I simply mean to include enough context that it can inform future iteration & progress. Lets face it… a simple “I love it – I hate it” does not reveal enough to build upon or respond to.
Recently I have been experiencing some odd quirks on my Facebook app for iPhone. Initially, I had thought that the app had simply been updated with a change to it’s primary navigation moving from a side drawer system to a bar at bottom of the app. Below you can see the new experience. However, as I asked friends and coworkers what they thought – none seemed to have this change reflected in their application experience.
We are looking for an innovative product designer to join us in making sure that TV.com and metacritic can wow the 15 million users who visit us each month! The successful candidate is someone who will take part in the ongoing product evolution to our suite of web and mobile products.
For those familiar with my site – you will notice that I recently made some significant changes. The previous site had been fairly unchanged since it’s last overhaul in 2009. That design was a play on the idea of welcoming folks to look over my shoulder to provide an intimate look at what I was up to. I loved the playful feel as well as how it captured my roots as a traditional illustrator. However, it had become visually dated – and more important, was not optimized to display well for folks visiting on mobile devices.
I am an avid student and evangelist of user-centered design principles - I have created or overhauled some of the world's largest online Business & Technology properties. My focus has always been on building functional design systems that creatively solve business problems. Solutions that convey brand & messaging, but more importantly, are intuitive to maximize the possibilities of an interactive medium. Any thoughts, opinions, or ideas expressed on this website are solely my own and not necessarily representative of those of my employer, CBS Interactive.
