Syncables, a software company based out of San Francisco, was transitioning from the OEM-distributed software model to the direct-to-consumer web application model. I was brought in to help with this.

After coming on board I lead a complete rebranding of the application. I also began a redesign of the desktop application UI.

At this time I also took on the role of managing the web application design and engineering. With the help of the Lead Web Engineer, we completely rebuilt the infrastructure and API's that powered the application, along with completely rebuilding the web application UI. For that, I was responsible for the design, he was responsible for the front-end development.

I had various other responsibilities, such as designing direct email campaigns and the marketing website.

In the end, the product failed to gain meaningful traction, and it's technology was ultimately acquired, in large part due to this final product repositioning. Overall, it was an immense learning experience.

The original version of Snipt was the brainchild of Nick Sergeant (@nicksergeant) and Pete Karl (@steyblind) at their company Lion Burger. It was designed as a way to store and share snippets of code.

As the product grew, and Nick began the task of rewriting it from scratch to improve the app and add the features the community was asking for, he also decided that it was a time for a visual refresh. He asked me to take this on.

I put together a new visual identity as well as a complete redesign of the application UI. This is currently in development, so things may change, but overall the design has received great feedback from the community and has increased excitement while we continue to build on and evolve the product.

billQ was the first application that came out of the company I co-founded with Zack Gilbert (@zackgilbert) called Adams/Gilbert Co.

It was built to solve a personal need of the both of us: keeping track of our increasing large number of bills after graduating college. Many people struggle with this same problem, sometimes using a calendar, or to-do lists, or post-it notes, or just trying to keep it all organized in their heads. We thought there was a better way.

billQ is designed somewhat counter-intuitive to most web-apps in that our goal is that the less you have to use it, the better it is. We didn't really want people to have to think about billQ, we wanted it to just work and fade into the background. It would do all the hard work of remembering your bills, when they were due, and who owed what, and you would just get a text message or email when you needed to pay it.

It proved to be the right approach. We have thousands of users, keeping track of hundreds of thousands of bills, and personally for us, it's one of the few web apps we both continue to use after all these years. Maybe it's because we built it, or maybe it's because it just works. Either way, we learned a lot from it and we hope to release a completely new version, rebuilt from the ground-up, sometime in 2012.

My responsibilities for this product include a little of everything. I'm primarily responsible for the design of the marketing website, marketing materials, communications, icons, web application UI, desktop app UI, Dashboard Widget (remember those), and some customer support, along with business responsibilities. Zack is the Product Engineer responsible for coding out most of the front-end and all of the backend along with maintaining the server infrastructure (an increasingly large task).

A project in collaboration with Nick Sergeant (@nicksergeant), SidePros is a marketplace that matches skilled professionals with local side jobs.

We think this is a completely new approach to getting work done, and we're pretty excited about it.

I would be considered the Product Designer as I'm responsible for all the visual design across the entire project — from the web app UI, to the marketing materials, to the communications.

But being that this is a start-up, roles become pretty blurred. Nick and I both end up doing various things, depending on the what needs to get done at the time.

The plan is to build this product out over the next few months through a limited launch in Rochester, NY. If it takes off like we believe it will, and we're able to validate the model, we will expand to other markets and figure out a way to scale this thing. Exciting stuff.

Flint was the second application that came out of Adams/Gilbert Co with Zack Gilbert.

The core of Flint is based on a project we completed for a local alternative newsweekly, Rochester City Newspaper. We thought this solution might also be able to help the other papers within their industry. The alt-weekly industry is a group of about 200 independent newspapers across the country who try to cover news, arts, and culture differently than the larger papers in their area. Flint was the product that we put together to begin to taget this group of newspapers.

I'm primarily responsible for the design of the marketing website, marketing materials, communications, the web application UI, the template designs for all clients running on our product, customer support, and all business development. Zack is the Product Engineer responsible for building the entire application, front-end to back-end, along with maintaining the server infrastructure, doing customer support, and integrating templates for each of our clients.

A local newspaper was in need of some help technologically. They were running on a very old content management system that was really hindering their ability to adapt to the needs of their readers in an internet driven world. My business partner and I, Zack Gilbert, under the company we co-founded, Adams/Gilbert Co., approached them to see if we could help. This lead to a very large project that consisted of writing a custom content management system from scratch that would power their website, along with giving them a complete visual refresh that was done along side the redesign of their printed paper.

Close to a 12 month project, it ran the gamut of challenges and successes. With a very small team (just Zack and I), we were able to deliver to them a powerful CMS that did everything from mange their sitemap, to allow them to post articles and blogs, to giving them a full-featured events calendar, a restaurant and bar directory, a full community section with profiles, and groups, and forums, and much more.

It is one of the project I am most proud of because of what was required to make it a reality. My responsibilities were pretty extensive for this project. They included all the visual design, from the CMS, to the website, to the various templates and all their visual elements, along with project management and client relations. Zack was responsible for the engineering of the CMS from the ground up, along with the development of all the templates and integration of their database into our new system.

Overall, this project was very successful. The readership loved the new website and all its features, traffic has grown, ad revenue has grown, and we have continued to work with CITY on a number of projects. They have consistently been recognized as leaders in their industry for their progressive use of the internet to power their newspaper. They are one of the few that have truly embraced the medium and used it to grow their paper.

Customer Mobile, originally a subsidiary of Syncables, was in the process of becoming fully independent when I was hired at Syncables. Because of this they needed to completely refresh their branding and put together a marketing website to organize their rapid growth around a concise brand.

I was responsible for designing the visual identity and logotype, along with the design of their new marketing website. I also did a good amount of copyrighting and adapted many of their internal materials to make them more web-friendly.

While working at Syncables on LivePlay, it was soon obvious that their company website needed some attention as well — especially if we were going to be able to present ourselves in a way that would attract talent.

As a result, I took on the roll of redesigning their website and introducing some visual consistency across their brand. This would need to be reflected on their products other than LivePlay, including their original product: Syncables 360, so the visual style was extended to that product's website next.

The design received positive feedback internally but for various reasons, the company failed to fully launch these redesigns across all their sites.