How we can work together

Include me as part of your team
This approach is particularly good if you are building a web application and have your own engineering team.

For example, Lanthorn Technologies hired me to lead their existing team in the interaction and information design of a prototype for managing energy data from utilities. I performed user testing on their existing work; created the main information architecture and user interactions; and worked with their team on interface design principles and documentation. Throughout the project cycle we continued to user test our work and review it with outside user interface experts.

Similarly, I worked with the team of designers at Snapfish on a per-project basis for about a year. During this time, I was asked to add or redesign a number of features including a revamp their check-out functionality and a DHTML upload feature.

Let me design your site and build it
This is a good way to go for small to mid-size marketing sites with a smaller budget. Because I do the production myself, I am able to work very quickly and efficiently building a site with Dreamweaver. Of course, we still go through a usual process of determining your goals, audience, messages, competition, etc. which guides all of our design decisions.

There are a number of clients I have worked with this way including; Esplanade Capital, Friendly Media, and Diagonal Software to name a few.

Let me put a team together to design your site and build it
If your site is very large or if you need a lot of backend engineering, I can put together a team and manage the process for you while acting as a creative director or designer.

For the Ember Customer Support site, I designed the look and feel while working with engineers at Diagonal Software who created a user management and support case submission system. The system integrated with Salesforce.com's case tracking system, using SOAP, PHP, and MySQL.

Ask me to user test or review your current site or site designs
For example, Charles Schwab hired me to look at design work in progress in order to get a heuristic analysis from someone not working on the design daily. This can be a good way to catch problems early. Similarly, Evite.com hired me to critique their existing site and work on a new taxonomy of events in order to give their design team some peer feedback.

I've also designed a number or user tests (of other designer's work) which can be invaluable in the process of designing complex interactions with particular types of users.

Send me site updates
I will maintian sites that I have worked on and enjoy seeing them evolve over the years. Ember Corporation is the best example of this. Ember, a leading high-tech company, hired me in 2002 to quickly design a small marketing site and train an employee to maintain it. Ember continued to hire me for larger updates to the site until we redesigned the site a year or so later. For the new site, I put together a small team to help out with the DHTML and Flash production work. I also coordinated my efforts with those of a print-design house and another web shop producing the support site to maintain the look and feel across the different pieces. I currently maintain the 60 or so odd pages of the site.

Other ways we can work together
Of course, this list is by no way exhaustive. If you have any other ideas of how we can collaborate, let me know.