I often get asked, how did a guy with a Philosophy degree end up in design. It's a long story, I understand, and I suggest you jump to the next portfolio entry and avoid this trip down memory lane. If you are interested in understanding my entire journey, dig in, and I promise to not bore you to death when we get into the more substantial UX work.

The short answer to how I started in design is, it was fun, so I learned how to do it.  I got my start at CDM Sports, one of the first fantasy sports companies, as a graphic designer.  I have never been a graphic designer, but my self-taught html, css, and flash skills caught the eye of the President.  It didn't take long before I was building all of the sister sites as well as helping bring the company website over to css.  I introduced them to various dynamic flash pieces, that effectively increased engagement and conversions.  Admittedly, it was more novelty that would lose its luster in the coming years, but it worked.  My knowledge of search engine optimization provided the opportunity to analyze google analytics to drive design decisions.  My first foray into data informed design. 

My success with flash led me to start my own web design boutique, focusing on flash.  I worked on interfaces for old school mobile devices for Nokia and Samsung, which gave me insights into how users utilize spaces and information architecture.  After a few years of great success, Apple killed flash and I was back at square one. 

I learned how to manipulate content management systems like Joomla and I was back in business.  The art of acquiring new clients was a crash course in stakeholder interviews.  Who was their intended audience?  What were their business goals?  What were the pain points with their current solution?  Who were their competitors?  Focusing mainly on parity and the "what" concerning pain points found in the quant data, I was able to make quick and effective solutions for failing newsletters, increased conversions, and increased sales for my ecommerce sites.  Still, the projects began to slow down again and I had to look for another corporate home.  

This lead me to Lawson Screen and Digital, a screen printing manufacturing company.  I joined the team and began redesigning the flagship site.  This held all of the large ticket items, while a turnkey ecommerce solution sold all of the small ticket items.  They basically replicated their sales model and used the flagship site as a catalog where users could see items, with no prices, and inquire about them by phone.  This is a company that existed for over 50 years, passed down from father to sons.  The passion in the product was evident in what they prioritized on the web, which I will get to later.  

The first task was simply to make the site mobile accessible. We could see clearly in their analytics they were missing out on substantial business opportunities by simply not catering to where their customers were. Making the site responsive provided instant results in basic traffic metrics, but no significant jump in sales emails or calls, which were the only way to purchase these items. There was no changing the business model, so I looked into the data to find drop-offs. We identified that it took several clicks to get to a meaningful product page. Once a user was there, it was absent any clear call to action. Instead, the pages focused on passionately telling the story of each piece of equipment, down to the most minute spec . Even the image of the product was small and obviously secondary to the very dense content. A user needed to know what a small circular icon meant, in a row of 4 icons with various functions.  

I used the opportunity to go down to our showroom to talk with current clients and potential clients to get feedback about our site.  They confirmed they couldn't find how to inquire about a product, and also that what they were interested in was seeing more of the product.  I took that information to reprioritize the images of the product along with a clear call to action at the top of the page, while also taking out additional steps to allow the user to get to products in one or two clicks.  Upon relaunch we saw an immediate increase in emails and calls, by 200%, a 6 year high.  This increase maintained for months after the relaunch.  I found the voice of the customer and combined it with the available quant data to find a solution that persists to this day.  Yes, a site I designed in 2015 is still being used, successfully.  I still had a lot of growing to do, and was certainly too focused on being right than following the learning, but I was on my way.