Manage and provide creative and technical oversight over all aspects of design (branding, promotion, and multimedia) and technology (web development, communications, and hardware)
BCBSSC has one of the largest claims processing systems in the world, and with over 12,000 employees is one of the largest employers in South Carolina.
As part of the Presentation Application Systems team, my primary responsibilities included usability oversight, designing and building prototypes and wireframes, HTML and CSS, and close integration with the Business Analysts and JSF Developers.
As UX Team Lead, I managed a small group of Visual Designers, Interaction Developers and Usability Engineers. Prior to my coming to BCBSSC, Systems Analysts were still using Visio and Powerpoint to build mockups to pass to the development team. This process created a huge delta between the application designed and the end product. Under my leadership, the newly formed UX Team designed and coded a custom prototyping platform based on tools and technology already in place and approved.
This new process, implemented alongside good usability practices and semantic HTML/CSS, allowed for rapid, accurate, and browser-based prototyping, which greatly increased the quality and efficiency of both the design and development teams.
As a Mobile User Experience Consultant, I designed and developed rich mobile web applications for corporations, primarily in the printing industry.
In most cases, these corporations strongly desired to enter the mobile space, but had no one internally that specialized in user experience or information architecture, particularly in a mobile context.
I provided guidance throughout the entire life-cycle of a project; beginning with high-level concepts and diagrams, through the wireframing and prototyping stages, design, development, and implementation.
A division of Morris Communications Company LLC, Morris Visitor Publications (MVP) creates, publishes, and distributes travel publications in more than 500,000 hotel rooms around the world with a combined annual circulation of more than 53 million.
The eMedia Team is responsible for all MVP internet endeavors. As Lead Designer, I design or approve the creative and user experience aspects of our products and solutions. My responsibilities also include on-site consulting with many of MVP's partners around the world. I've had the opportunity to travel to London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Barbados to name a few.
Morris is, first and foremost, a publishing company and I am comfortable working in an environment that deals with hard deadlines, quick decisions and a small margin for error.
Whatever my duties at a particular time, I am primarily concerned with serving content to our users and am constantly pushing myself to find better and more efficient ways of presenting information.
A division of Morris Communications Company LLC, Morris DigitalWorks (MDW) provides tools, technologies, consulting and Web development services to any of the 27 daily Morris newspapers, non-daily newspapers, magazines, and radio stations.
My primary functions included creating wireframes, site design concepts, and HTML/CSS execution of the designs. I also created and designed the presentation layer (HTML/CSS/Javascript) for the various CMS's used at MDW (for example: Joomla!, Drupal, and other proprietary template systems).
Many of the sites maintained and supported by MDW serve over a million pageviews per month.
I was also on the Usability Team whose responsibility is to plan and execute usability studies as well as evaluate, report the findings and suggest solutions.
As the company's Web designer, my job was conceptualize and design and build the interface for and, working in conjunction with our software developers, deliver the Web site within a strict time-frame (the work is tied to the Federal Tax Season which is very time critical — any delay costs a substantial amount in lost revenue.)
The primary internet application I was responsible for was the TaxSlayer online Tax program (www.taxslayer.com.) It's in the top 5 for online tax programs in the US as reported by the IRS. Additional internet applications include an online IRA (Individual Retirement Account) application as well as the entire Rhodes Financial Services family of Web sites (www.rhodesfs.com, www.taxslayepro.com, www.rhodesmurphy.com.)
Internal applications include tech support Web sites; an internal Customer Resource Management site (sales, marketing, etc.); various SharePoint sites; and a number of internal tools/Web applications. My role on these sites was to produce the design concepts and visuals; generate use cases, flowcharts, and other design collaterals as needed; and, once the Software Developers flesh out the back-end code, meld the code and Web pages into a cohesive, appealing and functional site.
Starting with two PowerBooks on my brother's back porch, we established a design company that provided identity development, Web design, and video production services to small and medium-sized businesses. Our close work with Rhodes Financial Services on their various Web sites eventually led to our sale of the company to Rhodes.
This project brings the content of Morris Visitor Publications' print products online. Published using a custom CMS developed by our team, and leveraging the extensive and professionally edited content of the Where® brand, this site gives users free access to contact info, descriptions and maps for thousands of points of interest in 50+ cities around the world.
Many of the features of wheretraveler.com were built by leveraging and integrating existing technologies (specifically JavaScript/jQuery, PHP and the Google Maps API) with our custom CMS. One of our main priorities on this project was to launch the mobile version along side the "classic web" version, while retaining (and in some cases enhancing) all the key features on mobile.
Some of our most exciting and successful projects are on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform. Below are some examples
The primary goal of the search initiative was to "do search right", something our current news sites were sorely lacking. The secondary goal was that the solution would need to be easily deployed to all of the 27 newspaper sites initially, and then to the many other non-daily newspaper and magazine sites.
Based on the Google/Yahoo concept that search is navigation, the final product was an exercise in typography, simplicity, and carefully selected added features leveraging the higher quality content specific to a news site.
Built on the Drupal content management system, activote.com is meant to be a politically focused news hub for traditional election coverage (from the AP and other official news organizations) and non-traditional coverage (blogs, videos and images) posted buy our editorial staff as well as the users. The secondary purpose of the site is to provide social networking tools to users.
Once I established the brand and designed and built the Drupal template, content maintenance of the 13 third-level domains was turned over to the respective newspaper organizations.
One of the top 5 online tax preparation sites as reported by the IRS, with over 500,000 users a year, TaxSlayer.com is built on ASP.NET. I designed and implemented the entire site presentation and user interface. (taxslayer.com)
St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Columbia SC - 2010 to Present
Deacon, Sunday School Teacher, Choir Member :)
Redd's Branch Bapitst Church, Aiken SC - 2004 to 2010
Youth Director, Assistant Music Director, Deacon, Praise Team Leader, Sunday School Teacher, Sound Committee
Memorial Bapitst Church, Aiken SC - 1998 to 2004
Youth Director, Deacon, Sunday School Teacher, Sound Committee
Millbrook Baptist Church, Aiken SC - 1994 to 1998
Music Minister Intern, Bell Director, Praise Team