DESIGN
My passion is for leading teams of creative and technical people. I both mentor and coach team members and get down in the ditches and wrestle with code and pixels. Here are a few examples of my web, digital and mobile work over the years.
The client wanted a site with an imersive and hyper-reactive environment. Much of the creative was supplied, but it was unfortunately single frame, flat, static images. The client wanted a scene with depth and interaction.
My role on this project was to create a site that was “over the top”, like being in a Las Vegas casino when everyone hits the jackpot simultaneously. I designed the interaction and animations, and programmed the microsite.
Given only static images, it was a fun challenge to create some of the animation on this microsite.
Some of these animations became part of the larger poker project that followed. I lead the team that created an online poker game for a contest. This was a promotional poker game, and did not involve real gambling.
The America Cancer Society has placed volunteers and employees in many hospitals to provide newly diagnosed cancer patients with help and support.
In an effort to help supplement their man-power programs, we came up the concept for a patient navigator kiosk. The kiosk is placed in both high-traffic cancer centers and in cancer centers where having an employee on location is not practical, or is simply not permitted.
Designed to be both easily accessible and to take advantange of an easy-to-clean touch screen interface. Wheelchair accessibility and other accessibility and ergonomic features were central in the design and strategy behind this concept.
Wooties! is a web-based and mobile optimized social media and networking game, designed to get people talking and interacting in real life.
The goal in wooties is to "bite" as many people at a conference or event as possible. A bite takes place by generating a one-time use code and sharing it with another person at the event. This one-time use code means that players actually have to physically talk and interact, if for no other reason that to play the game. This helps to get people socializing more broadly in the context of a game.
The player with the most bites can win prizes or other recognition. This created additional motivation to meet and compete.
Wooties is also connected to twitter, and an @mention was sent to further connect the two players.
Created under enormous time pressure and with no budget, Wooties was developed over a weekend in coffee shops and work spaces.
FitDeck is a popular best-selling card-based fitness program. Tasked with bringing the system to the iPhone, I wanted to make sure it retained the ease of dealing a hand of cards, but added robust features such as workout tracking, integrated timers for time-based exercises, and an ability to customize your deck and your workouts.
Art Palette Professional (and its less powerful sister app Art Palette) are mobile image editing applications. Art Palette Professional is often likened to mini-Photoshop due to Art Palette Pro's plethora of options and powerful filters.
Art Palette (originally known as HipPaint) was one of the first third party applications available for the Sidekick. It was in development for nearly a year before there was a commercial application store available on the Sidekick.
Our goal was to fit a Photoshop-like image edition application onto an unusual device with a LOW resolution 240x160 screen.
The original Sidekick had a very unusual form factor. This created some interesting design challenges.
When Art Palette was developed we were able to streamline the usabilty of the app by binding the most used commands to an L-Shaped area clustered around the direction-pad and the scroll wheel.
Art Palette was designed for the original Sidekick/Hiptop Color in such a way that all of the most commonly used command keys were clustered next to the scroll wheel and directional pad
The Sidekick navigation paradigm used the scroll wheel to cycle through options. We briefly explored mirroring the Sidekick OS to create a seamless experience for the end user.
In the end we went with a more familiar and traditional toolbar. This looked more like something from a traditional desktop image editing application and allowed for a more shallow learning curve.
The original minimalist interface (And a simple drawing)
As the Sidekick evolved, so did Art Palette Professional. Despite the additional screen real estate, we wanted to further maximize the space we had.
We created cursor-repelled info and tool bars. If the cursor moved too close to either of these bars they would switch to the opposite side or the screen, leaving the user with an uncluttered work area, especially nearest to the point of most interest.
Art Palette Pro undergoes a modest facelift
Art Palette Pro was my baby-- it was created so that I could make pixel art directly on the device. It is one of very few applications where I actually coded a portion the application. (The gradient tool and part of the GIF color quantizer are all mine).
I worked as the de facto project manager, creative director, artist and just about everything else (non-programming related) on this title and many, many, more Requiem titles.
Attaining Zen is a simple zen garden app. You use your finger to rake sand and place stones.
Attaining Zen was an iPhone app store launch title. During launch it was also in the Top-100 paid apps.
My role was concept, art and design on this project. All of the sand and stones are digital renderings.
Copyright © 2010 Myron McMillin