In early 2016 I was approached by a friend who worked at an event ticketing startup that needed a designer to take their proof of concept and turn it into a fully fleshed out web and mobile experience. The concept was rough and the event ticketing industry is saturated, so I had my work cut out for me.

Finding The Path.

The event ticketing space is well saturated, and many solutions are convoluted. They pull you in multiple directions. We wanted to create an experience that was streamlined and focused on engaging the customer in a simple and informative way. We wanted their trip from browsing to clicking “Buy” as easy as possible.

Simplify and Engage.

Go to google and search “tickets” and you’ll see a plethora of choices, many of them do it well and many do not. Our challenge was to find a unique path through the process that met our goals of creating an easier and more engaging experience for the user. We streamlined the search and browsing workflows, and made it a simple yet aesthetically pleasing experience.

Easy as Pie.

This pie has all the best ingredients, such as: Simplified web experience - get to your event faster, or find something new quick and easy; Clean and straightforward design - Lets the events stand out and draw the user in; Streamlined payment process - find your event and get your ticket in no time.

Services:

mobile design: I designed an easy to use simplified web app to get users from search to buy in an elegant and engaging way.

web design: I designed a complete responsive web version of the app to accommodate those users. I also designed a backend for Event Creators to create, manage, and analyze data from their events.

UX research: I did extensive research on current best practices and design patterns to determine our simplified structure, which I then applied to my designs.

front-end development: To facilitate the development process, I developed the front end of the web app. Utilizing a responsive framework to make it look right and work well on all screen sizes. Then I passed it on to the dev team to complete the process.

marketing: To help sell our app to clients, I created marketing materials, ad banners, and design emails. I also created a landing page for clients that displays our strengths.

Jenzabar is a top player in higher education management software world. They Hired me to take their old wordpress site, redesign it, and set it up on a new platform, Hubspot. They had a very limited marketing team so I was mostly on my own for this project. This is the kind of challenge I’m good at though. I like to be involved in every part of the design and development process if possible, so this was my time to shine.

Unfolding The Wings.

Jenzabar had recently had an agency create a new branding system for them, so I had a new icon, font, and color set to use. Their competition was looking a bit samey and a bit collegiate, so I knew I had to do something new to help Jenzabar stand out in the field. Their new brand logo was a butterfly, so something light with bright colors would really convey that sense of new life and wonder, that fits the college experience, as well as their brand identity.

Taking Flight.

I’m no stranger to adapting and updating wordpress sites, but I’d never used Hubspot before. My first challenge was to figure out what was possible, then figure out how to do what I wanted within those limits. Designing the new look and feel was straightforward. I created a basic design system, but It took some doing to create components in Hubspot that looked and worked the way I wanted. It took a lot of custom CSS and some Javascript, but I made it work. For Example: the theme I based my design on didn’t have the slider I wanted, so I built it. Three full width slides with video backgrounds and customizable H1/H2/CTA (sadly, they don’t use it anymore). The rest of the site was a simliar experience, but in the end it came out great.

Flying Free.

From the cocoon, the new site emerged online in 2019 and flapped it’s wings… Okay no more of that metaphor. The new site is a fresh new look for Jenzabar and their online face for their customers. It’s integrated into Hubspots ecosystem so they can track data through analytics and generate leads with their demand generation features. My site design encourages users to get in contact or request a demo at key points in the discovery process. I also created marketing materials for them, like emails and materials used in their yearly conference, JAM.

Services

responsive design: I designed components that fit and work well at all screen sizes, to capture leads from a wider audience.

web design: The bulk of the work, was a complete redesign of their old static wordpress, into a new, fresh, web experience.

UX research: I did extensive research on current best practices and design patterns to determine the new look, which I then applied to my designs.

front-end development: To get HubSpot to make components and pages look how I wanted, I had to do extensive customization with CSS and Javscript. I also developed emails, for marketing campaigns.

Acquia is a leader in the Cloud Hosting, Site creation and management, and demand generation spaces. Many big names run on Drupal, which was created by one of their Founders. They hired me in 2019 to help update and support their website and other assets. I originally worked directly with the web ops team but in 2020 I moved to the Brand team to assist with a major overhaul and redesign of the website.

Building the plane.

The B2B software industry is a tough and saturated field, making it hard to stand out. Though Acquia is a strong brand with unique flavor, their website was a mishmash of different styles. Being a large company having experienced massive growth, the site was a bit like building the plane mid-flight. My first goal was to clean up the weakest parts of the site and bring everything in line with the brand. I utilized brand elements like their font Proxima Nova, the slash, the drop, and the gradient “flow”.

Pushing the brand.

Acquia.com is a big site, with a lot of pages, and with a small web ops team with a huge backlog to support it. This meant, initially, that I had to focus on making the biggest impact I could with the limited resources we had. Most of my designs weren’t going to get updated until two quarters out, so I had to design for the future as well as the present state of the company. I took this opportunity to push the brand to be stronger and more unique with the elements that make it stand out. This all shifted when the company decided to do a major overhaul of the site, using a strong redesign from Third & Grove, a Boston based agency. Following their lead I assisted in updating pages, and contributing to their design system when gaps were discovered.

A strong rebrand.

Though much of my earlier work for Acquia was replaced in the redesign. I had a hand in shaping it’s new look. I contributed to building page layouts and contributing to the design system. Acquia.com’s new look is fresh and clean and reflects the strong branding. Much of my work is still reflected in marketing materials such as banners, emails, social assets, and downloadables.

Services

responsive design: I designed components that fit and work well at all screen sizes, to capture leads from a wider audience.

UI design: Utilizing brand elements I gave site components and other assets a fresh and uniquely branded look.

UX design: Usability is paramount to a websites success. I utilized best practices and tapped ux resources in the company to deliver the best experience.

front-end development: For certain components like the button slide rollover I created small demos with html and css to help the web ops team speed up their development.

marketing: I created marketing materials like, emails, web banners, and social assets to promote the website and their conference, Engage.

Apothesource is a small software company in the healthcare space. They wanted to bring a new product to market that aggregates and simplifies the application process to charitable funds that provide patients with money to pay for medications they need. I was brought on to help make it engaging and easy to use.

The original mission.

Originally the product was business facing. It was designed to be used by nurses and pharmacists to help their clients pay for their medications. We made matching patients with funds they qualify for a breeze, made applying simple, and gave nurses the tools they needed to communicate with their patients.

Sometimes you have to pivot.

The problem came with trying to get buy in from hospitals and pharmacies to let us run a pilot. The nurses and pharmacists loved it, but when it got to the C-level no one was willing to take a chance on us. Eventually we decided we needed a new approach. We decided to pivot to a patient focused app so we can help the people that need help directly. The challenge was to design, brand, and stand up a new product in 6 weeks. We worked our butts off and got it done in time to present at a conference a month and a half later.

A strong rebrand.

We reworked the concept to be medication focused with a series of filters to help patients find funds they’re qualified for. We updated the colors, worked together to come up with a name and logo, and worked with the dev team to get it stood up and polished in record time. Next steps are to update it to include a professional facing version and eventually hospital database integration.

Services

responsive design: I designed components that fit and work well at all screen sizes.

UI design: Utilizing brand elements I gave site components and other assets a fresh and uniquely branded look.

UX design: I utilized best practices and tapped ux resources in the company to deliver the best experience and meet business goals.

front-end development: I helped code and stand up a UI-Kit in Vue3 using Storybook, and owned the management of CSS throughout the App.

marketing: I created marketing materials to help get the word out about Apothesource and Omediq at conferences and online.