Resume and professional information

Usability - Company Web Portal (Porter)

The linked pages show two different versions of the company internal Web site. The project (named "porter")had an interesting history.

After several months of planning and discussions, the Web team apparently was unable to come up with a design. In teir defense, the lead developer had stumbled into the job and had almost zero experience with HTML, and no experience at all with information design. Based on the frustration of the Information Design group's manager with the process, I created the "Porter" design in a day, including a full set of dummy data and menus. This quick design exercise, intended as a starting point, actually became the company Intranet.

My overall design goal was to move from the chaotic site, which had evolved organically and used static content, to something that was more usefully organized and professional looking, that used menus to bring more content to the "front" of the site.

Below are the before and after views. You can see that actual before and after pages by following these links.

Before

Here you can see the somewhat chaotic nature of the original site. Downsides include:

• Poor figure/ground contrast
• Lack of visual division between different elements
• Like items not grouped
• Wild color scheme and poor visual design
• Many links are to pages of additional links

After

Here you can see the redesigned site. Improvements include:

• Improved figure/ground contrast
• Increased visual division between different elements
• Like items grouped
• Corporate color scheme and improved visual design
• Menus bring more information to "front"