Presenting at CRineta
I took a trip up to Iowa the week of Memorial Day to reconnect and brainstorm with the rest of my design team and soak up a little Summer in the corn fields. It was a great trip and I…
Customer Service Is Not A Department, It’s Everyone’s Job
With the recent move, I not only changed climates but I changed my office environment as well. I expected most of my challenges to lie in working remotely and maintaining a relationship with my team in the Midwest but that’s…
Change is Inevitable – Except From A Toll Booth
A cold Chicago weekend can always put things in perspective. My cousin Ashley recently moved back to the city. An inspiring artist and professional fire dancer, she’d never accept the label of “normal”. We met her and her son (break…
Giving Thanks
I’m sitting here, the day before Thanksgiving, staring down a nice steaming cup of coffee and a pile of apples that need peeling for pies. Many pies. I have a very large family and it’s a rare occurrence that we…
How design can impact your call center.
I spend my time at work designing web interfaces and user behaviors. While the company has many different departments, including a call center and a warehouse, my time is mostly spent interacting with my own department (ecommerce) and marketing. While I understand how my work impacts our users, I never realized how the designs and behaviors that I create can affect our internal departments, both positively and negatively.
BarcampICR and Value Learned Through Feedback
This last Saturday was the inaugural BarcampICR and it was nothing short of a great success. While Iowa City is known for being an edgy, offbeat college town, I had never seen such a large group of creative professionals conjured together. I talked to teachers, software developers, writers, marketers, an aspiring fashion designer, and a couple of fellow front end devs/designers. It was truly what they promised – a really smart eclectic mix.
Git It, Girl!
As a designer on a large commercial website I’m no stranger to source control. I was first introduced to the concept in 2007, using Visual Source Safe. It was clunky and was a hassle to update, but it was a necessary evil.
Don’t Hate Your Clients, Embrace Them
Being a designer, and having many designers as friends, I have many client-centric conversations. Amongst the occasional praise of understanding are often complaints of late content deliveries, terrible logos, and in my opinion the worst complaint, “They don’t know anything about design.”
Website Featured in Entrepreneur Magazine
I got pretty good news a few weeks ago. An email from our Human Resources department alerted me to the fact that an article had been written about a website that I had created for them the year before.
I Made A Website
I finally found the time to complete what is step one in a project that will quite possibly never be complete.
