Web & Data Projects

Patient Proxy was born of a friend's goal to promote and provide the means for all people to have end-of-life care plans.

• the design:
• • The client wanted "soft, clean, medical-but-not-sterile, colors reminiscent of old circus posters."
• • The client liked Mint.com and USPS.com.
• the solution:
• • The logo is my handwriting, cleaned up in Illustrator.
• • The user is gently navigated with large, clean text and familiar buttons throughout.
• • We use friendly, warm images, and a begin with an interactive U.S. map, providing the user a symbol of stability and many smiling faces.
• • Purple is calming, yellow buttons encourage simple actions.
• the code:
• • I coded the site in PHP from scratch. It is a one page form that is passed to itself, collecting information about the user's decisions on the client side only in session variables for patient privacy (all variables are destroyed upon navigation away from the page).
• • At the end of the form, a pdf is generated on-the-fly, outlining the patient's wishes.
• • A small MySQL database is used only for storing client emails and coupon codes.

CATES is a tutoring and test prep company with whom I work. My work at CATES began as data entry, then I did several freelance front-end development projects for them, and now I work almost full-time there doing php web development work, marketing and design work, and tutoring.

• CSS work:
• • Created custom mark-down tags and corresponding css to correctly display complex fractions, extended square roots, and other tricky formatting that appears in SAT and ACT math, science and grammar questions.
• jQuery work:
• • Designed and built custom radio buttons to similuate the look and behavior of a standardized test bubble-in answer sheet.
• PHP & MySQL work:
• • Wrote a script that analyzes and cleans data from an old database and prepares it to be inserted into our new database.
• - Each record was viewable and editable by a user before officially updating into the new database.
• - Each old record became up to 18 new records (data separated into many tables), which made for a lot of testing of existing records and possibly updating old records.
• • Created form object that generates and receives an html form based on the type of user and action passed to it.
• • Created a test diagnostic generator script that analyzes a student's performance on the SAT and generates paragraphs of text explaining what strategies the student could benefit from and a graph displaying the student's actual and projected scores. The script diagnoses:
• - timing issues: missing or omitting a greater proportion of questions at the end of a section
• - omission strategy: omitted-to-missed ratio is appropriate
• - careless errors: missing a larger proportion of easy and medium questions than of medium and hard questions
• - gaps in student's knowledge of content
• - question types with which a student struggles (ex: comparing passages, data analysis, sentence completions, deconstructing geometric shapes, etc.)
• • Created several widgets for the user home page, as well as tables listing all of certain things like upcoming mock tests or tests entered into the database.
• Email campaign work:
• • Significantly improved the design and content of all the company's email marketing campaigns, increasing click-through rate by an average of 15%.
• • Reorganized the Constant Contact Email Lists so that campaigns go out to targeted client markets.
• • Created easily-editable templates for each general type of email that is sent out so that other staff members can easily send campaigns to their client lists.

SommerhomesNC is a Realtor's website (my mom's, to be specific) that I designed and then built with WordPress.

• the design:
• • Had to look clean, inviting, informative.
• • Had to be easily updatable as information changes frequently.
• the code:
• • Since I wanted my mom to be able to add and change content herself, and since I am comfortable with PHP, I used WordPress as an easily-maintainable solution.
• • I added a custom post type for house-listings.
• • I built the theme using the "Twenty-Ten" starter theme.

Cardinal Graphics is a commercial printing company on Long Island, NY, for which I designed a logo, marketing collateral, and this website.

• the design:
• • The design is based on the design for the client's brochure. He wanted it centered around definitions he thought were meaningful to his clients.
• • The whole purpose of his site is to provide information to someone who looks for his business online--it is not to seek out tons of new clients.
• the code:
• • Simple HTML & CSS with a very basic PHP contact form. This is from back in my early days of building websites.

I designed and coded this site as a side-project while working for G. Coles-Christensen Rug Merchants.

• the problem:
• • The company's old website was cumbersome and difficult to navigate. The rug market portion was difficult to find and use and therefore had no sales.
• the solution:
• • I designed and built this simple HTML & CSS site as a clean sales site that both encourages people to explore our rug offerings and makes purchasing a two-click process (via paypal).
• the result:
• • This website sold over $20,000 in rugs in the first six months.
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• the problem:
• • The company changed names (to General Mercantile), and added many products, including consignment art and many small retail objects from various vendors, making our previous method of inventory-tracking (a spreadsheet) obsolete and unsuitable.
• the solution:
• • I researched FileMaker as an affordable solution to data and sales tracking for a small business, but since the out-of-the-box databases were insufficient to run a business from, I got several books on FileMaker and learned about building custom databases.
• the result:
• • I built General Mercantile a custom sales and inventory tracking FileMaker database, tailored to their needs. When I brought my database to a local FileMaker developer so he could help me find any gaps or mistakes, he was so impressed with my work that he offered me a job working for him building more FileMaker databases for small businesses.
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*As G.Coles-Christensen Rug Merchants is no longer in business, this site is no longer online.

While I was initially hired as a Graphic Designer at Brooklyn Roasting Company, I soon began creating invoices in Quickbooks and then tackled some data-management problems as they arose.

• the problem:
• • The sales team had no consistent method of recording coffee and equipment orders as they came in (often recurring weekly, biweekly, or ordered several weeks in advance of the ship date).
• the solution:
• • I created a shared google spreadsheet to track orders, including an expected order column so we could see at a glance what wholesale customers we needed to contact for late orders.
• • The spreadsheet helped the sales team keep track of which customers were ordering more or less each week; it helped the production department predict what to roast each day; and it helped the espresso team repair staff know when parts ought to be ordered and re-ordered.
• • The spreadsheet I created is still the way they track all incoming wholesale orders.
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• the problem:
• • There was no inventory management system in place when I started working at Brooklyn Roasting Company, and we frequently found ourselves out of necessary elements for production and distribution.
• the solution:
• • I went through the past year's worth of vendor invoices and compiled a master inventory spreadsheet for each department, detailing approximate frequency of ordering, costs, product numbers, and vendor contact information. This eliminated the frantic and expensive emergency orders from vendors when we'd realized too late that we'd run out of a key element for production.
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At Wing Forward Solutions, I helped design and build FileMaker databases for several of our small business clients. I also helped solve problems with several of our clients' websites, including a large WordPress product sales site and Magento-based sales website.

• projects:
• • Helped design, build and maintain student-tracking database for local pueblo's school system:
• - Designed and built user interface layouts that made use of scripts to hide and show related data.
• - Wrote scripts to perform daily tasks, such as the creation of attendance records.
• - Met with client on a bi-weekly basis to train them, update them on our progress and seek their feedback and development requests.
• • Improved and maintained database for American Sign Language, Inc.
• - Redesigned user interfaces to be more intuitive.
• - Updated old scripts to conform to our new methods.
• • Suggested implementation of (and then built) a new database template that includes our base tables, layouts and scripts.
• - Significantly decreased initial development time on new projects and kept our new databases consistent inwardly and from database to database.
• • Designed and built database for Santa Fe Pro Musica's Contacts and Donations:
• - Wrote import scripts to clean and import their old data.
• - Created new method of making fields editable or locked that made working with data simpler for the user.
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I designed a logo, a poster and a website for this Thanksgiving Day Fundraising run as a pro-bono project.

• the design:
• • They wanted the logo to include a roadrunner, appeal to young children and families, and be easily printed on t-shirts.
• the solution:
• • The logo is hand-drawn for a cute, playful style. It includes a roadrunner and a turkey made from foot-shapes. The word "Atalaya" is made to look mountainous, as the school (Atalaya Elementary) sits at the base of Mount Atalaya and the 5K run is hilly.
• the code:
• • Simply HTML & CSS. The site only had to display the race info pre-race and the race results post-race.

*They used to ask a different artist to create a new logo and design each year, however it appears that they are still using this logo, while the site has been updated significantly.

One of the first websites I built, this site was for a friend's non-leather shoe company business proposal.

*The friend for whom I made this site decided not to pursue manufacturing of the shoes, so this site is no longer live. If you love all things hip vegan, check out her current blog/site at mynonleatherlife.com.