REALTOR.com Site Redesign
Move, Inc. | 2009-10 | Role: Design Lead, Interaction Design
The REALTOR.com site redesign began as ideation on what we could do to showcase some powerful back-end technology being used on another Move site. I holed up in a room with another interaction designer and together we came up with some pretty slick ideas for a new search and browse experience on the site. The executive stakeholders decided to elevate the experiment into a full site redesign and expanded the team. I was given the role of design lead for the project and engaged additional designers to help flesh out our intitial wireframes into designs that covered all aspects of our multi-tentacled agent and broker products across the site. In the end, the schedule for development proved to be too long and the project was scaled back to mostly a reskin. However, work is currently underway to finally put some of our designs in place piece by piece.
REALTOR.com Faceted Navigation
Move, Inc. | 2010 | Role: Interaction Design
I collaborated with two other IxDs on the design of search suggestions and faceted navigation on the Realtor.com homes for sale search results page. The dropdown for search suggestions included recognition of neighborhoods and displayed suggestions based off of cookied location first, then areas outside. The UI includes the affordance for showing a more detailed breakdown of facets for appropriate fields such as baths (introducing half-baths), and square footage (more granularity). One of my early concepts included a price distribution histogram. Worked very closely with the development team to test many variations in the search suggestions algorithm.
Yahoo! Real Estate Homepage Redesign
Yahoo!, Inc. | 2009 | Role: Interaction Design, Flash Prototyping
The year had been a huge rebuilding period for Yahoo! Real Estate. After sitting in maintenance mode for several years, a solid team was assembled to bring the site to parity and take it beyond. The homepage has been redesigned in a phased approach. The goal of the first phase, version 3.5, was to clean up the interface, remove a slow-loading interactive map, and increase the prominence of the home search box. We conducted participatory design sessions with users to help guide both the first and second phase of the design. After launch, click-through on the search box increased 15.9%. A second phase of the project reflected a new focus in strategy and engineering but did not make it to the table. My role was much more involved, however. I worked with the lead product manager to develop the vision, created multiple wireframes with different approaches, worked with a visual designer to flesh them out, and created flash prototypes for usability testing.
Yahoo! Autos Auto Shows
Yahoo!, Inc. | 2006-07 | Role: Interaction Design, Content Management
I worked with a new product manager to develop a plan for delivering articles and photos from content providers. I created an initial set of wireframes for a landing page, article template and photo gallery. The article template was built upon the successful design of the Green Center, but with a different content management tool. I stepped in with many evening hours after the daily show write-ups and pictures were received and helped to format them and push them out live in a timely manner so that the Yahoo! Front Page team could promote our fresh content the following day on Yahoo.com.
Yahoo! Autos Green Center
Yahoo!, Inc. | 2006 | Role: Interaction Design, Content Management
Yahoo! Autos partnered with Environmental Defense to develop the exclusive Green Rating to rate the environmental friendliness of cars. The higher the rating, the greener the car. The Green Center also added articles about current and future green automotive technologies. This was the first major addition of editorial content to the Autos site. I worked closely with the product manager during the aggressive 3-month project to provide strategic feedback and offer suggestions for types of content to include, then provided preliminary site maps and iterative wireframes. The integration of social content (Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Groups, Del.icio.us modules) became a successful model for other properties. In the first seven days after launch, we reached 98% of our entire 2006 page view goal. The site was the main driver that pushed Yahoo! Autos into the #1 position of most visited automotive research sites.
Yahoo! Autos Custom
Move, Inc. | 2005 | Role: Design Manager, Interaction Design, Prototyping
The Custom site grew out of ethnographic research that revealed a deep market for car enthusiasts. Yahoo! Autos Custom provides a place for people to show off their "pimped-out rides" as they modify them, get inspired by and learn from others, and share their modification details, vendors and installers. As the design manager, I took part in strategic planning, project scoping, task effort estimation, and design research coordination. We were working on an aggressive launch deadline (plus I had a personal deadline as I was nearing the birth of my son!) and I worked long hours to fill my responsibilities as manager and the only interaction designer on the project.
Yahoo! Autos Site Redesign
Move, Inc. | 2003-04 | Role: Interaction Design
Yahoo! Autos embarked on a site redesign to bring the architecture and visual design up to parity with competitors. Autos was one of the earlier Yahoo! properties to move away from the original HTML table background/border, limited graphics layouts encouraged by the company for quick download. I conducted a card-sorting study to help provide direction to the site architecture and produced the core site map. Much of the site design was completed by an outside design agency. Once released, several key areas of the site experienced marked drops in traffic. I redesigned the Model Overview layout to better encourage users to click through to trim pages, resulting in a 12% increased clickthrough. I also redesigned the trim photos page to provide a better user experience when browsing through the 19+ photos, increasing the page views to 14 times that of the design released.
The REALTOR.com site redesign began as ideation on what we could do to showcase some powerful back-end technology being used on another Move site. I holed up in a room with another interaction designer and together we came up with some pretty slick ideas for a new search and browse experience on the site. The executive stakeholders decided to elevate the experiment into a full site redesign and expanded the team. I was given the role of design lead for the project and engaged additional designers to help flesh out our intitial wireframes into designs that covered all aspects of our multi-tentacled agent and broker products across the site. In the end, the schedule for development proved to be too long and the project was scaled back to mostly a reskin. However, work is currently underway to finally put some of our designs in place piece by piece.
I collaborated with two other IxDs on the design of search suggestions and faceted navigation on the Realtor.com homes for sale search results page. The dropdown for search suggestions included recognition of neighborhoods and displayed suggestions based off of cookied location first, then areas outside. The UI includes the affordance for showing a more detailed breakdown of facets for appropriate fields such as baths (introducing half-baths), and square footage (more granularity). One of my early concepts included a price distribution histogram. Worked very closely with the development team to test many variations in the search suggestions algorithm.
The year had been a huge rebuilding period for Yahoo! Real Estate. After sitting in maintenance mode for several years, a solid team was assembled to bring the site to parity and take it beyond. The homepage has been redesigned in a phased approach. The goal of the first phase, version 3.5, was to clean up the interface, remove a slow-loading interactive map, and increase the prominence of the home search box. We conducted participatory design sessions with users to help guide both the first and second phase of the design. After launch, click-through on the search box increased 15.9%. A second phase of the project reflected a new focus in strategy and engineering but did not make it to the table. My role was much more involved, however. I worked with the lead product manager to develop the vision, created multiple wireframes with different approaches, worked with a visual designer to flesh them out, and created flash prototypes for usability testing.
I worked with a new product manager to develop a plan for delivering articles and photos from content providers. I created an initial set of wireframes for a landing page, article template and photo gallery. The article template was built upon the successful design of the Green Center, but with a different content management tool. I stepped in with many evening hours after the daily show write-ups and pictures were received and helped to format them and push them out live in a timely manner so that the Yahoo! Front Page team could promote our fresh content the following day on Yahoo.com.
Yahoo! Autos partnered with Environmental Defense to develop the exclusive Green Rating to rate the environmental friendliness of cars. The higher the rating, the greener the car. The Green Center also added articles about current and future green automotive technologies. This was the first major addition of editorial content to the Autos site. I worked closely with the product manager during the aggressive 3-month project to provide strategic feedback and offer suggestions for types of content to include, then provided preliminary site maps and iterative wireframes. The integration of social content (Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Groups, Del.icio.us modules) became a successful model for other properties. In the first seven days after launch, we reached 98% of our entire 2006 page view goal. The site was the main driver that pushed Yahoo! Autos into the #1 position of most visited automotive research sites.
The Custom site grew out of ethnographic research that revealed a deep market for car enthusiasts. Yahoo! Autos Custom provides a place for people to show off their "pimped-out rides" as they modify them, get inspired by and learn from others, and share their modification details, vendors and installers. As the design manager, I took part in strategic planning, project scoping, task effort estimation, and design research coordination. We were working on an aggressive launch deadline (plus I had a personal deadline as I was nearing the birth of my son!) and I worked long hours to fill my responsibilities as manager and the only interaction designer on the project.
Yahoo! Autos embarked on a site redesign to bring the architecture and visual design up to parity with competitors. Autos was one of the earlier Yahoo! properties to move away from the original HTML table background/border, limited graphics layouts encouraged by the company for quick download. I conducted a card-sorting study to help provide direction to the site architecture and produced the core site map. Much of the site design was completed by an outside design agency. Once released, several key areas of the site experienced marked drops in traffic. I redesigned the Model Overview layout to better encourage users to click through to trim pages, resulting in a 12% increased clickthrough. I also redesigned the trim photos page to provide a better user experience when browsing through the 19+ photos, increasing the page views to 14 times that of the design released.