Summary
App.Net is service that helps users create simple but beautiful landing pages for mobile apps. Individuals and companies can set up a ones-stop home for their app in minutes so they can focus on development. The pages are entirely customizable by the user and offer features like text message distribution, analytics, instrumented smart download widgets and social sharing to Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

See it live at App.net

Summary
PicPlz is a photo-sharing service that offers a simple way to take photos and upload them in just a few clicks. It’s easy to add a caption, tag your location and check in. Connect and share with your Twitter, Facebook and more. There is an iPhone as well as an Android mobile app, that let users add great looking photo effects for free.

See it live at Picplz.com

The other day when i received one of the many Netflix emails confirming a returned movie i noticed how useless the actual notification is. So i took the liberty to give it a shot and adding a few useful pieces of information.

I’m sure there are even more ways to add value, what are your thoughts and feedback?

Before

After

Great article by Matt Mullenweg:

“Real artists ship.” — Steve Jobs, 1983

“Usage is like oxygen for ideas.”

“If you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.”

[via http://ma.tt/2010/11/one-point-oh]

Summary
I contributed to the concept and design of various products under the YDN umbrella. Projects included the recent website redesign, creation of a new publisher section, usability and interface improvements to Yahoo Applications (YAP) as well as a new design for the YUI Configurator.

Responsibilities

• Led the creation of the Developer Network publisher section targeted to a self-service and novice audience of our products. Defined the user experience, aggregated the content and oversaw the visual design process for a clear entry point into the broad offering.
• Collaborated with designers, developers, product managers and internal stakeholders to expand functionality and improve the overall user experience with the latest redesign of the Yahoo! Developer Network.
• Contributed high quality, detailed UI specifications and advocated for their execution throughout the implementation to advance business objectives and success metrics.
• Developed, evaluated and iterated on a new design for the YUI Configurator to support new use cases, a growing module ecosystem and improve the overall user experience. Worked closely with the product and engineering team to meet user needs and deliver a design that allows users to discover modules, explore features and supports complex configuration.
• Contributed to research studying the social media strategy of technology leaders to inform Yahoo!’s social product platform
• Designed and revised interfaces to support 3rd-party experiences, like social gaming on various Yahoo! products
• Participated in usability testing for new product features.

Summary
Lead designer for a new Yahoo! product, defining the experience for consuming and sharing relevant content on the web leveraging the user’s profile, activity stream and social graph. This platform enables partners and publishers to easily access Yahoo! content off-network and provide personalized user experiences in their product.

Summary
This is a side project that I work on over the weekends and late at night. It brings the two things together that I love: Food & Mobile Computing.

Methodology

• Defined the vision and strategy for a mobile application that redefines the dining experience
• Conducted informal user studies and observations
• Created and iterated UI concepts, interaction flows and specifications
• Developed an interactive prototype to demonstrate and test functionality
• Collaborated with developer for implementation of the next version

Summary
Defined and applied guidelines to maximize user activity distribution and engagement in social news feeds off-network.

Responsibilities

• Researched and analyzed the structure of news feeds and user activity streams to establish internal guidelines for the anatomy of how activity updates display on social networks outside of Yahoo!
• Worked closely with product teams to maximize user reach, distribution, engagement and increase traffic by applying these guidelines for displaying Yahoo! content on Facebook.

Summary
Defined the user experience for accepting 3rd party logins to increase user activity and lower the barrier for participation on Yahoo! The product is will be tested in production with a subset of users on Flickr.com.

Responsibilities

• Collaborated with visual designers, engineers and product managers to expand current login functionality without impacting the user experience for current users.
• Design User Flows for various Use Cases including multiple Edge Cases and Error States
• Contributed high quality, detailed UI specifications for efficient interfaces that balance business objectives and user goals.

Live since 10/28/2010, Link: Flickr Blog Post

Summary
Won internal Hackday with an interactive prototype in collaboration with staff prototyper. The solution enables users to simply generate new API tables for use in YQL. It’s currently being considered for implementation.

Prototype: http://zachgrav.es/yql/tablesaw/