The Communication Studio LLC
Corporate Design Service Bureau
Staff: Lead UI expert, multiple clients (13 months)

In 1999 financial print publishing giant set up Immersant and spun it off as an internet service bureau design shop in order to leverage their position into the emerging web-based electronic publishing arena. I was hired as the lead Interactive Architect for the New York City / New Jersey office.

I soon emerged as the primary "human factors" expert and interaction designer for our office. As such I was responsible for client and internal web e-commerce initiatives, pioneered the Customer Experience practice and acted as creative leader, knowledge resource, mentor and integrator for our design group.

Bank One
T Rowe Price
EquiServe
Paine Webber
Morgan Stanley

Engineering the Sale

Immersant assigned me as the creative design "point man" for most of our initial client meetings in the East Coast area. I worked closely with the sales and management team to provide opportunity assessment, preliminary site evaluation, proposal writing, requirements gathering and design concept from the earliest stage of account development.

Because I could draw upon a broad range of skills and creativity, think on my feet and present well at the point of client contact, I was instrumental in "closing the sale" on the majority of our major new financial client projects.

Priming the Pump

While at Immersant I also put together criteria for making a "Preliminary Site Evaluation" of the client's site up front, which gave us a competitive advantage when we actually got in the door. Following on the success of that format, I spearheaded a proposal to host an "Interaction Design Shootout" in which we invited our customer audience to experience our design team in action.

My contributions to the firm resulted in raise, promotion and the highest performance bonus in NY/NJ office.

Skills & Techniques : Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, "application-oriented" sites, MS Outlook, MS Word documention, RoboHelp, MS Office, proposal writing

Timing is everything... In the fall of 2000 the internet bubble burst, and Immersant closed out their fledgling design venture. Oh, well.