Nathan Philpot. Design is honest.

An artifact from a recent project I was on. A piece of artwork in and of itself, I think.

I used the visual vocabulary standardized by Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path.

A friend of mine, Noel Portugal, over at Oracle, has developed an enterprise Twitter using Oracle APEX. He told me that he is looking for an application icon. He held an internal icon competition and had some good ideas. He asked me if I would like to give it a try, and I, of course, said yes.

Website & logo design for NewsHive.

NewsHive is a place for anyone and everyone to report on local news.

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Website redesign. Graphic design, HTML, CSS, PHP (nothing to get excited about).

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ShopComposition by superheroes.

Checkout by Sofa.

I was refered to this talk by my brother, who said he went out and bought a pocket knife for his two kids after hearing it.

The principles mentioned in the talk can be applied at any age in just about any situation.

Website redesign. Graphic design, HTML, CSS, PHP (nothing to get excited about).

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I drew up this diagram of my thoughts and experiences, so far, of the skills of a good Ix Designer.

Business Analyst The Business Analyst and or the Requirements Analyst might (not always the case) not have the mind set to be thinking about or know how to improve the end-user’s experience.

Graphic Designer When I say graphic design, I mean typography, making an interface readable, visual rhythm, branding and then making it look good and feel right.

Front-End Development The ability to create prototypes is important as an Ix Designer. The closer you can come to the real thing the better. Also, part of usability and accessibility is in the actual markup.

This diagram is not meant to show all the skills necessary to make up a good Ix Designer, but what is helpful skills to have in addition to the core usability knowledge he or she will possess. Depending on the organization you are in, some or all of these roles may be played by the Ix Designer.

Download PDF of the diagram.

I have always liked crows.