Skills: Software

SKILLS & TOOLS

Highly Skilled

Tool Proficiency

Capable

Project Deliverables

Educated

Advanced degrees. Smart

Entrepreneurial

Managed own business. Created software for Fortune 500 clients.

Preachy & Teachy

Conferences, Articles & Professional training

Software products are a delivery mechanism for services.

The services provided by a company are paramount; without the services, the software products are meaningless. The software products simply make the consumption of those services faster and easier.

Service-based software products must not only focus on the services they deliver, but they must also collaborate with other products that support those underlying services. A traditional utility-based (silo) approach to software design can lead to disparate products with duplicated and dissimilar features.

Without a thorough understanding of the underlying services and who those services target, it is not possible to appropriately define software behavior or disseminate features between products. It is necessary for designers to help define the services (especially if no on else is picking up the reins) before designing the products.

Software: Making it Real

During the "first wave" of online interactivity in the 1980's it became clear that the Interaction Design practice needed to handle four important jobs:

Presentation	Needed: global HTML-like tags to identify and control coherent page elements and stylesheets
Production	Needed: information placeholders to allow easy updating of graphically sophisticated pages
Transaction	Needed: flexibly-defined "info hooks" so that data could be easily manipulated by software engines
Transformation	Needed: platform-independent "identifiers" so that information could be delivered in a range of formats

The newly emerging interactive online industries needed to build a large number of pages that could be updated easily, were platform independent, and retained some "meta-information" intelligence about themselves. We didn't really have many standards in the interactive industry just yet, so I invented my own data-tagging system. It was crudely XML-ish - but it worked.

TCS Software Products

Here are the products that The Communication Studio put on the market to support the "first wave" of interactive services in the US between 1984 and 1988.

TEXTUP

Context Management System

The TextUp Workstation lets you quickly edit graphically sophisticated pages through a simple Template and Clip Art-driven design tool.

Edit, merge & highlight Text content

Merge graphic Clip

Generate Bar Charts and Histograms

Custom Font Styles for Text Titling

Manage your production process

This product was a bit ahead of its time. Basically, it's kind of a rudimentary XML-like meta-information tagging system with a user interface that allows a person with secretarial skills to easily update graphically sophisticated pages safely.

IMAGE LIBRARY
Clip Art

Designed for use with TEXTUP, we offered hundreds of images and animations (View some examples), including corporate, product & sports logos, icons, portraits, backgrounds, illustrations, maps, animations, bar chart styles and custom font styles.

ENVIRONMENT
Interactive Database

This fully-featured site plateform was targeted as a standalone information "kiosk" (View an example) that could be updated online.

Key-activated shortcuts

Database Routing Editor controls

Easy ad insertion & cycling announcements

"Program intelligence" into specific applications in the database

Billboarding "attractor" mode, mini-show presentation

SHOW
Page Presenter

Lets you create, edit and present a group computergraphic pages as a "slideshow".

EDNA
Annotated Code Disassembler

This technical tool displays the underlying code of a NAPLPS computergraphic file with referential annotation - Also allows simple editing.

OTTO

Automated Formatter

This software "page engine" takes a text file, automatically reformats the information into graphic templates, and stores the result under a new filename. In many ways, Otto may be viewed simply as an automated version of TextUp (View an example).

"Batch" process a group of files

Reformat a single file of ASCII information into multiple display formats (for different applications)

Control presentation attributes

Merge graphics on basis of rules

Generate Bar Charts and histograms on the basis of the incoming data

And since all OTTO templates are TEXTUP-editable, you can also edit and customize individual pages.

Our Software Clients

These organizations licensed our Communication Studio software between 1984-1990.

Citibank "CitiVision"
Herman Hospital IFCD
IBM Corporation
Indiana University
London (UK) Docklands Development
MediaNet
National Bureau of Standards
NYNEX Information Resources

NYNEX Computer Services
Pacific Bell "Info-Pac"
Pacific Bell "CareerWise"
Prime Computer
Sheridan College
Sony Corporation
Telerate SportsTicker Plus
Trintex (Prodigy)


TEXTUP	Context Management System The TextUp Workstation lets you quickly edit graphically sophisticated pages through a simple Template and Clip Art-driven design tool. Edit, merge & highlight Text content Merge graphic Clip Generate Bar Charts and Histograms Custom Font Styles for Text Titling Manage your production process This product was a bit ahead of its time. Basically, it's kind of a rudimentary XML-like meta-information tagging system with a user interface that allows a person with secretarial skills to easily update graphically sophisticated pages safely.

IMAGE LIBRARY	Clip Art Designed for use with TEXTUP, we offered hundreds of images and animations (View some examples), including corporate, product & sports logos, icons, portraits, backgrounds, illustrations, maps, animations, bar chart styles and custom font styles.

ENVIRONMENT	Interactive Database This fully-featured site plateform was targeted as a standalone information "kiosk" (View an example) that could be updated online. Key-activated shortcuts Database Routing Editor controls Easy ad insertion & cycling announcements "Program intelligence" into specific applications in the database Billboarding "attractor" mode, mini-show presentation

SHOW	Page Presenter Lets you create, edit and present a group computergraphic pages as a "slideshow".

EDNA	Annotated Code Disassembler This technical tool displays the underlying code of a NAPLPS computergraphic file with referential annotation - Also allows simple editing.

OTTO	Automated Formatter This software "page engine" takes a text file, automatically reformats the information into graphic templates, and stores the result under a new filename. In many ways, Otto may be viewed simply as an automated version of TextUp (View an example). "Batch" process a group of files Reformat a single file of ASCII information into multiple display formats (for different applications) Control presentation attributes Merge graphics on basis of rules Generate Bar Charts and histograms on the basis of the incoming data And since all OTTO templates are TEXTUP-editable, you can also edit and customize individual pages.

These organizations licensed our Communication Studio software* between 1984-1990.*
	Citibank "CitiVision" Herman Hospital IFCD IBM Corporation Indiana University London (UK) Docklands Development MediaNet National Bureau of Standards NYNEX Information Resources	NYNEX Computer Services Pacific Bell "Info-Pac" Pacific Bell "CareerWise" Prime Computer Sheridan College Sony Corporation Telerate SportsTicker Plus Trintex (Prodigy)