Back in 2003 I had been working on a project for Southern Cross Pin Company which involved photographing and setting up a surf jewelry website using osCommerce. It was a quick and dirty project but it helped me prepare myself for knowing the kinds of needs and requirements that an eCommerce site entails.

Shortly thereafter I started working on a project for Jane Elizabeth Jewelry (originally Jane Jewelry). Jane had several requirements. Jane Elizabeth was being worn by celebrities like Katie Couric and she was getting a lot of press in the Improper Bostonian as well as national mags like Lucky. However she had no commerce solution other than email, telephones and calculators.

Jane Elizabeth Jewelry design, iconography, catalog layout

We came up with the following solution:

• Create a homepage which showed recent and fresh new designs, as well as the latest magazines and media that featured Jane Elizabeth jewelry.
• Develop an eCommerce solution using the open source osCommerce product.
• Create a wishlist which would allow people to save their favorite items with an email response from Jane Elizabeth.
• Create a customer-initiated gift reminder which would allow Jane Elizabeth to send email reminders to people to buy product at certain times of the year.

If you’ve come to this site anticipating a portfolio containing logos, graphics, design, UI samples, and more, you’re not in the wrong place. It’s just that I’m in the process of catching up to the 21st century by converting my entire site to a more dynamic format: The blog.

At the risk of sounding magnanimous, I often find myself wishing I could jot down my thoughts about certain things related to user experience and how we interact with design in the world around around us. For someone who calls himself at various times an “information designer, “web designer”, “user experience specialist”, a portfolio really is very limiting. I don’t want people to just see pictures of things I’ve worked on. I want people to know what I’m thinking of and how I think about it. Additionally, I want them to see how I solve problems. I’m thinking a blog is a great format to keep people up-to-date with these things I’ve been involved in, and also things I’m currently involved in.

Hopefully, I’ll also learn to write better, and with better expression with minimal effort. After all, this is the hallmark of good design: convey ideas succinctly.

Anyway, so if you don’t see what you came to see, it’s quite possible I’m still in the process of adding those things you would like to see. In the meantime, I’ll be providing a link to my old site from 2005 which is like 20 years old in Internet time.