Project: The Ask Fiona Chatbot
Designed and product managed the development of an ai driven tax information chatbot that answers hyper localized regulatory questions, provides tax information for jurisdictions from around the world, US states, and Canadian provinces, and performs comparable searches.
Project: FileMaker Script Workspace
Project Outcomes: Re-designed the FileMaker platform's scripting editor to make it look and behave more like a text editor, while still supporting the underlying macro-based language; decreased the learning curve for novice builders; and increased the productivity and efficiency of advanced developers.
"For advanced developers, the most welcomed change in FileMaker Pro is likely to be the redesigned and renamed “script workplace”—in particular, the ability to enter scripts almost entirely from the keyboard... This change doesn’t make a whit of difference to end users, but FileMaker adepts are going to love it."
Project: FileMaker Custom Styles
Project Outcomes: Enabled FileMaker builders to quickly and efficiently design interfaces that are clean, polished, and consistent with end user expectations; and add new elements to layouts while matching an established design.
"In the past, I’d have to reformat every single button on every single layout—work that often took hours. With FileMaker 13, I can just redefine the button style and be done in about 30 seconds. For the first time in my life, I know what Renee Zellweger was thinking when she told Tom Cruise to stop talking in that famous scene in Jerry Maguire — ‘You had me at ‘custom styles.’”
Project: FileMaker Starter Solutions
Project Outcomes: Designed starter solutions that showcased the capabilities of the FileMaker platform and enabled business owners to solve real world business problems.
Project: FileMaker Getting Started Tour
Project Outcomes: Designed an onboarding guide that orients new users to the FileMaker platform and encourages established users to to extend their development efforts to IOS and the browser.
"I've just downloaded the latest build and automatically it opened the Getting Started window. I'm amazed with the simplicity and design, congratulations to you and your team.”
– Customer email to Heather Winkle, Director of User Experience
Project: The Legislative Directory
Project Outcomes: Designed and prototyped a web application that that will provide grass root organizations (that cannot afford lobbyists) the information necessary to influence targets and secure and schedule the meetings necessary to win legislative campaigns.
Armed with the documentation and protytpes created in this project the Advoacy Institute was able to secure funding, hire a development team, and launch the application. Read more...
Project: Interaction Design Guide for the FileMaker Platform
Project Outcomes: Create a downloadable PDF that provides novice builders actionable steps they can use to improve the design of their solutions and provides experienced users a guide to use for reviewing solutions to ensure they are applying interaction design best practices.
You can download a PDF of the Design Guide here.
A three month, online, small cohort, business design training for new entrepreneurs.
“Don’s clearly defined process meant that we always knew what the next step was, why it was important, and most importantly how to execute it. ”
— James Schaffer, Co-Founder, Shaffer-Williams Llc. | The Advocacy Institute
A three-day experiential training in design process and technique
"Over nearly two decades of database development I've informally picked up countless fragments of design knowledge. The Product Design Seminar was extremely effective in helping me integrate that unstructured information into thoughtful, organized design processes. My clients were benefiting the very next day."
– Stuart Gripman, co-author of FileMaker Pro: The Missing Manual versions 11, 12, and 13 (O'Reilly)
A two-day design conference in experience design and visual design
"This conference gave our team several new ideas, and has strengthened and deepened our approach to creating excellent client interfaces."
– Brian Shick, Beezwax Consulting
Project: Lifion’s New Design System
Partnered with Lifion by ADP’s Head of UX and UX Leads to design and implement Lifion’s first Deign System. During the year long project, I coordinated the work of a team of designers and managed two teams of engineers (in New York, Israel, and India), a three month beta period, and a rollout to internal application development teams and external live clients – on schedule with zero downtime. This project
- Replaced the open source components Lifion had used to bootstrap development with a modern, scalable, modular & tokenized styling system.
- Established the foundation to support client branding and geographic theming
- Polished every UX component
- Implemented the design team’s new layout, color, and typography guidelines