Storytelling
Toyota | Future of Connectivity
future scenario storytelling + ux design
Car manufacturers have noticed the changing technology landscape for many years, yet have struggled both to keep up, and incorporate it into their vehicles in meaningful ways. All too often it is a gimmick designed to entice customers to upgrade to a new yearly model, without much impact on the driving experience.
Recently, Toyota sought to change that by assessing the current state of technology in both broad and detailed strokes, and combining that with informed 5-10 year projections. Working with Danny Stillion, I told the story of what is going on in the tech world, the direct implications for Toyota over the next decade, and recommended a clear course of action for C-Suite decision makers, first on the wall, and then digitally.
It was so well received I am unable to show any of the actual content from the slides. But trust me when I say “it’s going places.”
J.Crew | Very Best Personal Stylist Experience
Mobile App UX + narrative design + art direction
J.Crew is big on face-to-face personalized service because a proactive and insightful staff of “personal stylists” can be a powerful competitive advantage. And what better way to develop this type of sales experience than actually modeling it out through classic teaching patterns of demonstration and rehearsal?
I designed The Very Best Personal Stylist Experience to lay a foundation of basic sales principles before escalating to a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-type demo, requiring the stylist to literally choose and recommend outfits for different personality types. The danger was real as outfit recommendations were either accepted or rejected, with the boss seeing every attempt.
Microsoft | Project Unify | Category Management
MOBILE APP UX + art direction + VISUAL DESIGN
It’s no secret how large a corporation Microsoft is. With that size comes extreme complexity preventing internal teams from finding and knowing what is the most up-to-date and correct product information. I was able to design a mobile app with a simple narrative to educate teams about an internal initiative called Project Unify. This initiative helped employees move away from the myriad of internal databases with disparate information to the new location, guaranteed to be correct and reduce search time.
Microsoft | Ethics Learning Gamification
MOBILE APP UX + VISUAL DESIGN
I designed an RPG to help lighten the burden of Microsoft employees who are subjected to the dreaded annual ethics training. The user would build an investigation team of specialists from a pool of characters, each having unique skills that would be needed at certain points of the game. Budget constraints eliminated possibilities of fully rendered worlds, or even side scrolling. So I had to get creative.
Using a turn-based strategy game type, users would be unable to complete needed tasks without particular characters and acquired gear, dossiers, and experience (XP). Each step was designed to not only invoke serious ethical decision making that could be applied to real-world situations, but also be able to repeatable with different outcomes.
Sunflower | Use Case Scenarios
storyboard illustration + UX design
To demonstrate the plausibility of my personal navigation system, Sunflower, I explored it from three different scenarios:
Firefighters in burning buildings
Families in crowded public places
Students on complicated campuses
I chose these diverse scenarios because they highlight very different aspects of why we use our eyes and explore what happens when we cannot see and need to find another way. I used this storytelling to establish a vision to help coordinate the efforts of scientists, researchers, and designers to respond to the problem of low-vision navigation in the future.
Plenty | Smart Fridge
future concept + UX Design + Industrial Design + STORYBOARD ILLUSTRATION
Plenty is a future concept of a compartment-based fridge that conserves energy by keeping 90% more cold air inside when opened than traditional two-door fridge/freezer units.
Using embedded sensors within each compartment, the fridge identifies and tracks each item. When an item is nearly depleted or approaching its expiration date, the system builds a smartphone shopping list and notifies the owner of the contained food status.
