Sharon Read about how I defined the requirements and selected the technology for a new web site service my team offered.
Even with a 24-hour turnaround, a cohesive and visually appealing lesson is possible.
Prototype created using Adobe Character Animator to explore methods for improving information retention.
Read about the design changes in this customer-facing project.
Kanban boards revolutionized our approach to project management and prioritization.
This experiment uses CSS to style Captivate’s text boxes. This innovative approach is an attractive alternative to Captivate’s defaults.
I elevated our monthly reporting capabilities by creating a series of visually compelling Power BI infographics.
These Adobe Express thumbnails helped ensure a consistent visual identity across product lines.
This character’s cheeky smirk is close to my heart.
Wow, the job search has changed. In the past, I usually had a 1:6 interview ratio. For every six applications I completed, I had one interview. I understand the landscape has changed a little? /s My graphic resume opened many doors, but I can’t use this format today. Instead, everything has to be one column, and fairly boring, to better comply with the needs of ATS systems. In the past I had one brief paragraph per job. Today I need 10+ bullet points per job, and it seems I need measurable metrics at every stage. That’s the hardest part for me. I can tell people why my projects were innovative or important, but I don’t always have hard numbers to explain if a project was a success. I have questions about the whole ATS thing; questions I need to research once I feel I’m past the post-layoff Endless Revisions Cycle. For example, if I used Captivate in all my jobs, and I mention Captivate as part of all my jobs, does ATS see that as greater proficiency if I mentioned it once? If so, how many mentions make a person expert level? So may questions, so many tasks, and only so much severance. I’m a little stressed. Guess I need to stop writing and return to revisions.
I miss my colorful, high-impact vita.
About six months ago I migrated my website. My former company kept jacking up the price, year after year, until I was paying an outrageous $200 per year for their baseline hosting package. To add insult to injury, they offered me better pricing after I told them I was moving. What’s up with that? If you wanted to keep me as a customer, HostGator, you should have kept prices reasonable so I’d never need to look at other options. Honestly, hosting is worse than car insurance. The migration made me face up to several issues on my site. The theme I bought five years ago was broken, and the developer had moved on to other fields. The portfolio contained a lot of outdated content, including Flash content I hadn’t completely eradicated. Broken shortcodes littered the posts, as I disabled a bunch of plugins as part of the migrated. I made lists of things to fix, and promptly ignored the fixes because, work. Funny how quickly your priorities can shift post-layoff! My resume and the portfolio are now the center of my life. I feel like I can’t apply for jobs until both items are healthier. I had a specific vision for the portfolio. My last portfolio was all on one page, with 40+ items showcasing skills I’ve picked up over 30 years. It had category buttons for filtering, but feedback lead me to believe people weren’t using the filters. I also felt the portfolio wasn’t telling a story. Viewers didn’t necessarily understand my strengths, my career path, or what I wanted from my next job. At the same time, I loved visual impact of the masonry grid on the old portfolio. I decided to go with multiple pages highlighting key career strengths — Interactive Content, Graphic Design, Workflow Transformations, and Documentation/Training. I threw in a section on Personal Projects for fun. Each page features its own masonry grid. If viewers mouse over a grid item, they can see a short description of the post, and clicking opens the post in a lightbox window. Users can navigate through all the grid items without leaving the lightbox thanks to forward/back buttons. I think it works from a usability perspective and as storytelling. For anyone interested, my WordPress setup uses Essential Grid, GeneratePress, and GenerateBlocks. The basic layout is finished now, and my next step is to start working with the content; adding new materials and editing the old!
Last Monday morning I was struggling with my PC, trying in vain to get it to boot, when my co-worker C jumped on the SMS chat that a few of us in my department participate in. She said she had been laid off. My heart sunk into the ground. C, who everyone loves, had been with The Company for almost 20 years. If she wasn’t safe . . . So I reached out to my Director, and informed him of the PC issues as a just-in-case. He responded immediately, and in moments I was in a phone call with HR, getting the dreaded news. My first layoff at age 55. I’ve had all the feelings, and I don’t want to dwell on them here. Instead, these posts will focus on how I’m managing this problem. How the job hunt is going, what hunt-related activities I’m engaged with, and how this opportunity will change my life for the better. This will help me stay accountable, and hopefully positive. (Make a note: This might be a good answer to one of those standard, dreaded interview questions.) Soon I’ll write about the changes I’ve made to my resume, and later in the week maybe the changes to my portfolio.
This SCORM learning object, created in Storyline, features a video, a quiz, and PowerPoint slides.
Acrylic paint pours were popular a few years ago. These are a few I made.
This learning object, created for an anthropology class, helps students measure bones.
This project, designed to familiarize International Studies students with situations they may encounter while traveling abroad, was developed in Storyline 2.0.
These identity graphics demonstrate creativity and strong design skills.
My favorite project from my Texas A&M days is this challenging create-a-scenario engine, created with Storyline 2 and JavaScript.
A proposed conference journal contained active learning elements to help faculty incorporate evidence-based in their classrooms.
Hobbyist electronics, including technologies or concepts like makerspaces, 3D printing, or Arduino prototype boards, are quickly finding their way into the classroom and board room. This personal project is my first step into a new playground.
This flyer, advertising learning communities, was designed in Adobe Photoshop.
Closed captions proved to be a challenge in this online lecture for a Landscape Architecture.
I created several assets for an alternate reality game pilot.
This “engagement quilt” shows how members of an educational community contribute to student success.
This futuristic logo with high-tech flames embodied the spirit and mission of the department.
I designed these advertisements for video game classes using actual game boxes. The ads were successful, if by “successful” you mean students stole the ads off the walls.
This Ferris wheel illustrates the journey that takes students from jeans to graduation robes.
Logo design is always challenging, it’s tough to reduce an entire team (or company) into a visual.
Designing an island in Second Life required good project management skills including goal setting, prioritization, and workload distribution. My life-long love of interior design also helped make this project successful.
I designed a site in Ning that enabled a department to maintain ties with former students, guest speakers, and other stakeholders.
One of my former employers strongly believed in giving printed instruction manuals to faculty. I served as co-author on our Blackboard training manual. The manual incorporated Quality Matters principles. A few pages from the manual are below.
I created this cootie catcher party invitation for game night.
This flyer, promoting a session on clickers, is an example of too-good design.
After receiving a slew of confused emails from students I ran to my lab and produced this video in under three hours.
I designed a wiki for my department at University of Maryland Global Campus, and developed a popular implementation strategy that resulted in 100% participation over three months.
A Second Life project involved creating a custom currency system and a PHP dashboard faculty used to reward students with ‘seed’ money.
Google helps you share content with your students using Google Groups and Google+ Communities. Which is better? This presentation explores the differences.
These eggs are decorated using pysanky techniques, which are similar to batik.
This short tutorial was inspired by a professor with a new cell phone who wanted an easy way to share articles with students using his Blackboard class. The first part, shown here, describes how to post to Twitter using Gmail using IFTTT. The second part, which is unfortunately not available, teaches how to set up a Twitter feed in Blackboard.
Align objects and change stack order in Storyline and PowerPoint using your number keypad.
Silly video snippet I sometimes use as a sample for training classes, or for testing.
Watch my Mac read a spreadsheet, and my PC enter the numbers into Storyline!
Easily add active learning slides to your PowerPoint deck.
Redecorate the artist’s Bedroom in Arles using elements from Van Gogh’s other paintings. (This is a discussion of an in-progress project.)