Employer: Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)
URL: undisclosed
Project year: 2008

One of my projects through the State of Minnesota was to work with the Department of Humans Services Child Support Office to help them redesign their child support website, not only giving it a fresh look, but increasing its ADA compliance, load efficiency, and give it the flexibility of a stylesheet-driven layout and out of the old table-based layout they once used.

Among the many improvements, the layout was built in such a way that we could re-use many common elements and use stylesheets to determine how and where it appears in the layout. This allowed them to maintain consistency between participant and employer sections, but each with their own unique branding (blue for participants versus green for employers).

Because of privacy issues, I cannot provide a URL or actual screenshots of the new version of their child support web application.

Employer: Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)
URL: to be determined
Project year: 2008

License Minnesota was a large initiative taken on by my employer to make the process of finding, applying for, and renewing licenses much easier and more efficient than its previous version.

It was a large project that involved a team of people from Deloitte Consulting, Tridion Professional Services, and Versa Gateway — a project that spanned over seven months to create the new License Minnesota.

My role in the project carried over from a related project, where I headed up a group for the design for the new Minnesota.gov. This group comprised design professionals from various state agencies to create the branding and identity for what carried over into the new layout for License Minnesota, including the header/footer branding, color/font standards, and other things that influenced the presentation of this website.

License Minnesota is a web application that allows you to browse through licenses in a variety of manners, each offering a unique way to find the license you're looking for. The views offers a folder like structure by topic, indexes by topic and license name, licenses by state agencies, and on the landing page you can see the most recently added, most common, recently updated, featured licenses, and a quick browse feature that allows you to get to the license you're looking for right away.

One of the things I pride myself in this project is the attention to detail with regards to both ADA compliance and usability while still offering a great degree of functionality for users that are able to employ client-side Javascript. Government website developers and designers have typically been fearful of using Javascript because of so-called section 508 issues. I've overcome those obstacles by ensuring that our content gracefully breaks down should the end user be using a screen reader or have Javascript disabled.

In addition, we've ensured that content displays well for both mobile browsers and when printed out.

Originally this project was intended to be launched in tandem with the new Minnesota.gov launch. But because of issues pertaining to funding and political will, the Minnesota.gov project has been suspended until an appropriate funding model can be proposed and accepted by the legislature and OET senior leadership.

The last screenshot here shows the beta version of the Minnesota.gov logo as it was orignally intended to be used. Minnesota.gov would become an enterprise brand on all state agency websites with the green bar becoming a sub-brand that would be customized by state agencies, portals, and other state government websites to uniquely identify themselves while sharing a common look and feel.

Employer: Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)
URL: http://www.ombudsfamilies.state.mn.us/
Project year: 2007

In 2007 I helped introduce the Office of Ombudspersons for Families to the public by producing their first web presence, allowing them to share basic information about their services and how to reach them. Because they're a smaller office of only a few advocates for families, they needed something simple that they could maintain on their own with Dreamweaver. Their brochureware website is entirely laid out with stylesheets and is easily edited without having to dig into the formatting of the website.

In addition to designing and developing their site, I provided them with hands-on training on how to effectively use and manage their website from a lay-person's perspective.

Employer: Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)
URL: http://www.indianaffairs.state.mn.us/
Project year: 2007

The Indian Affairs Office needed a new website to coincide with the appointment of their new director and some changes they were making internally as an organization. They looked to OET to provide those web changes, and I worked closely with their director and her assistant to create a website that would work for them and help achieve their desired end goals for providing information for their constituents. The website was created in a static environment that they can maintain on their own with Dreamweaver.

Employer: Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)
URL: http://www.admin.state.mn.us/
Project year: 2007

The Department of Administration had been operating under a search-driven environment for their website, and information was difficult to find for one reason or another. In cooperation with Admin and a few people from my office, we worked together to create a website that was audience-driven instead of presented and organized by agency structure. We felt it was important and most effective to make this change for the sake of end-user satisfaction and for the ease of finding information quickly. In addition to a change in architecture, I provided them with a layout that was fresh, modern, and would help dispell the "state agency" feel.

Employer: Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)
URL: http://www.oet.state.mn.us/
Project year: 2006

Shortly after I came on board with OET, they were in process of redoing the architecture of their website. To coincide with that redevelopment, Gopal Khanna (CIO) approached me about revamping the visual aspect of the OET website, specifically to give it the feel of a respected leader among consulting firms worldwide. After doing some research on various consulting firms and presenting a few options for the layout to Mr. Khanna, we selected and implemented the one that is in place today.

Employer: Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)
Project year: 2006

In 2006, State CIO Gopal Khanna wanted to send out a special holiday greeting to OET employees as well as other CIO's and commissioners within the State of Minnesota. For his e-card, I played, recorded and mixed the music in Adobe Audition and developed the e-card in Macromedia Flash using a combination of Actionscript as well as blending together variously styled images to blend them together. This is that e-card:

Employer: Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)
URL: http://www.renewable.state.mn.us/
Project year: 2006

Several state agencies worked together to find a way to make finding state-related information on renewable resources easier. The Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Employment and Economic Development, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency looked to OET to help pull this information together. My role with this project was to provide an interface and layout that was fresh, had "green energy" written all over it, and would help make navigating through the information easier.

Employer: Office of Enterprise Technology (OET)
URL: http://www.firstlady.state.mn.us/
Project year: 2006

One of my first projects going forward with my new employer, was to give the First Lady's website a face-lift and reorganize her information. The Governor had recently undergone a site redesign and the First Lady had followed suit.

Employer: Uniprise, a Unitedhealth Group company
URL: company intranet, unavailable
Project year: 2006

As part of our initiative to bring intranet websites into a common look and feel and under a more well-organized architecture, we used the Operations Division as one of our prototypes. The design used Uniprise / Unitedhealth Group branding and gave the division a much more professional appeal than had been before.

Employer: Uniprise, a Unitedhealth Group company
URL: company intranet, unavailable
Project year: 2006

Senior leadership created an initiative to share ideas and information and the marketing division I worked in put it into action. The screen shots here are prototypes of the layout.

Employer: Uniprise, a Unitedhealth Group company
URL: http://www.uniprise.com/ebc/
Project year: 2006

With the completion of the new Unitedhealth Group Executive Briefing Center (EBC), I was given the privilege of creating a multimedia presentation that would showcase its features, energize Unitedhealth Group executives about using the center, and invite large corporate executives to come and meet with our executives to address their health care issues.

What made this project engaging, fun, and challenging was the use of multiple skillsets: photography, graphic design, audio manipulation, and flash development. They allowed me to go in the EBC just as it was nearing completion to take photographs for use within both the presentation and printed materials a colleague of mine was developing.

Having a great deal of flexibility given to me for how I presented the piece, I incorporated music from their "welcome video" made for the EBC, drew in some common elements from the printed piece my colleague was building, and built in some interactive pieces into it as well.

But the best way to understand the piece is to expierience it for yourself:

PC users: download and unzip meetingcenter-v1-0.zip
Mac users: download and unpack meetingcenter-v1-0.hqx

Run the presentation file that is unpacked/unzipped in the above file to view the Flash-based presentation.

Employer: Uniprise, a Unitedhealth Group company
URL: company intranet, unavailable
Project year: 2006

As part of our initiative to unify our company intranet and the dozens of sites that were hosted in that environment, we set out to "eat our own dog food" as it were and deploy our site within the new look and current branding. The Creative Services division was the creative arm of the Uniprise Marketing Division, responsible for creating a host of marketing collateral, websites, presentations, and an array of other materials in many different forms.

Employer: Uniprise, a Unitedhealth Group company
URL: company intranet, unavailable
Project year: 2006

Periodically Uniprise would release communications to its customers in the form of a PDF and website to be updated on the latest issues regarding healthcare coverage. My colleague would build out the print/PDF version and I would execute it for web.