Myles Design Studios: Portfolio

Here are a few examples of my work in application, web site, and graphic design.

Note that all information contained here is the property of the sited companies, organizations, or Myles Design Studios and may not be published, referenced, or reproduced in any form without the expressed written consent of the owners.

Bowstreet: In my three years with Bowstreet I worked on a wide variety of projects and initiatives, most notably on their flagship Designer application. Having begun our first serious design effort on version 2.0 of the Designer, I worked closely with a small team of product managers and engineers guiding all design and usability efforts up through version 5.

The screen shot below is of Bowstreet Designer 5 running in the IBM Eclipse environment. Though originally implemented as a fully browser based application, the designer migrated into the Java based IDE space over time. With Designer 5 the transition was complete with all components incorporated into a standard Java IDE.

This next screen is a detail view of one of the Bowstreet Designer 5 Builder Editors. Builders are the core component of Bowstreet's parametric development technologies, and the Builder Editors are dynamic form based interfaces that allow for quick and easy configuration of Builder parameters. Each builder editor UI is generated on the fly from meta data, allowing for simple customization of builder editors. Additionally, the builder editors may incorporate dynamic fields and dependency logic, thus allowing the forms to update and transform themselves based on user selections.

I have continued over the past few years in a consulting role to contribute designs for aspects of Bowstreet applications. I have assisted in with interaction design, prototype development, and visual design for several key new components to Bowstreet as they continue to expand their product offering.

Chordiant: Chordiant is a leader in CRM (Customer Relations Management) software, and my focus within their product line was to optimize usability for their new browser based call center product (CCABE 5.6.) Though similar in scope to some existing Chordiant products, as a call center product this application needed to be geared towards a much higher volume user than their previous Advisor and Branch product lines. To this end a ground up redesign was needed for most components of the application. Additionally, major new features such as telephony integration needed to be incorporated into on holistic design, where maximum productivity was the top criteria for success. Design efforts to solve the unique issues posed by this project resulted in many novel solutions, some of which are pending US patent approval (US Patent Application Serial Number 10/639,735).

JackHolland.net: The late Jack Holland was a renowned Irish-American journalist and author. I worked closely with his surviving wife and daughter to build a site to honor his memory and promote his last book, to be published posthumously.

Paragon Imaging: Paragon Imaging is a leading supplier of image processing software for government and commercial applications. I worked closely with Paragon, and their in house web master Denise Harrington to completely revamp their web presence.

Rude Toys: Rude Toys is a popular original rock band based out of Haverhill, MA. Following a member reorganization in the Summer of 2003 the band needed to update its web presence. Starting from a clean slate and working closely with band leader and graphic artist Tammy Schatz we developed a whole new look and navigation model for rudetoys.com. Everyone has been very happy with the results.

The site contains several unique and compelling design features along with some novel technical details. I'm currently working with hosting & content management partners Xenolutions to generalize many features designed for rudetoys.com (along with some other components) into a toolbox and template library that can be used by novice web developers to construct cutting edge, elegant, and effective web sites. Look for more information on that project soon.

The Jeff McInnis Band: Jeff McInnis is a talented guitarist, singer, and songwriter from Haverhill, MA. He's launched this new website in the Autumn of 2003 in concert with the release of his first independent solo CD "The End of the Dark Age". The site caries through the visual theme of the CD artwork created by great local artist Jeff LaChance.

ChunkyFunk: One of my musical ventures, ChunkyFunk is an original rock trio I formed in 2003 with fellow musician, song writing collaborator, and good friend Bill Blumenthal, and drummer Jim Bartman. It's a labor of love that's a lot of fun... and I was pretty proud of the web site too. But that project, and hence the site is no more.

Dr. Pie: Yet another musical project I was involved with, Dr. Pie was a fun but short lived original funk / rock 5 piece from Southern, NH. The drpie.com web site received a great deal of praise and notoriety in the couple of years it was around. The site was selected as NHTunes.com web site of the week on October 5th 2002 (Featured in HippoPress), which stated,

The newly refurbished website for local act Dr. Pie is certainly worth another look. It has a great "gig" page with expanded gig listings that tell not only when and where, but with whom (complete with links to the other band's websites), and other helpful tidbits. The "info" page has some great biographies, and an awesome high-resolution promotional photo. The site has 4 songs that you can download, and even the lyrics are available. However, the best feature of the website is the "links" section, which is so thorough it could be used as a resource area by other local musicians. It contains a ton of links to other local bands, links to many local band resources, and then some other links that are just-plain "cool". Thanks to the recent overhaul, Dr. Pie has expanded their web presence and created a new standard for other local bands who develop their own websites. - Bob Desmarais

DrPie.com was also selected as web site of the week by SeacoastSearch.com, who said

"The band's web site navigation is brilliantly simple... It's a system so simple that Barney the Dinosaur could take it in. But more importantly, it functions." - J. Dennis Robinson

OHIA Networks: OHIA Networks is a young software company developing a new and innovative network management product. I have worked with their design and engineering teams to construct a set of icons for use in the application toolbar and navigation tree control.