Real Uses

Objective

I’m Mike. Welcome to my online web resume.

I’m seeking a position within an organization or design firm in User Experience, User Interaction, Interaction Design or Information Architecture. I’m a Master's candidate in Human-Computer Interaction, and would like to continue focusing on producing creative interfaces based on user-centered design principles. My ultimate goal is to work, collaborate and learn from creative, driven people.

I love working on and discussing User Experience and User Interaction; anything that focuses on making experiences with technology easier for the average user. I especially enjoy testing the efficiency and usability of web applications and mobile platforms.

Ultimately, I would like to work with software and web design firms, communicating application design principles and strategies for ongoing development. In my work, I have always tried to simplify communication barriers, focusing on bridging the gap between end-users, designers and developers.

I currently reside in San Francisco, CA.

Specialties:

User Experience Design, User Interaction Design, Information Architecture, website layout & design, website schematics, wire-framing, prototyping.

Languages:

(X)HTML | CSS | JavaScript | jQuery | ActionScript 3 | Markdown

Education

DePaul University Chicago, IL 2009 - Present

Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL 2004 - 2007

Northwestern University Chicago, IL 2006

University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder, CO 1999 - 2003

Knowledgebase

Operating Systems

Software & Applications

Web Apps

Other Insights

Languages

Languages / Markup

(X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ActionScript 3, Markdown

Course Work

(X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, ActionScript 3, Adobe Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop

Work Experience

Interests

Etc

Social Media Experience

Objective

This is my resume in narrative form

What is this resume and why did I decide to design it this way? I had a few problems with my original resume. One was that it was just too long. Typical resume guidelines recommend having 1-2 pages max. I don’t like to leave anything out and, if printed, mine comes out to be 4 pages.

Realizing again and again how boring writing (and reading) a resume can be, I needed a better way. With this style, hopefully you, the user, will be able to get a better idea of who I am. I don’t think my friends or colleagues would say my talents lie in a bullet point list. I am multifaceted. I have many interests. I like to learn. If I were a drawn as a mind-map, I would have many branches.

My goal is to keep you on this page. It’s common web design practice to try to keep the user entertained enough not to leave the site. I’m not ashamed to admit that I am trying to trick you into actually reading my resume. Is there a better place to showcase my UI/UX layout design beliefs and strategies than my resume?

Coming back to the challenges I struggled with:

Problem 1: Tons of information, too much to show on one page

Solved: I used a jQuery (JavaScript) plugin that scrolls through the sections of my resume.

Problem 2: I wanted 2 versions of my resume, one telling you about my experiences in plain narrative form, and one with clean strait up bullet points, a traditional resume.

Solved: Another plugin that allows you to toggle quickly back and forth between the two. I mean, you need a real resume, right?

Problem 3: Getting you to read my resume

Well you can be the judge: Entertain the user by giving a story of my experiences and choices I made along the professional path.

Believe it or not, this resume brings in and addresses the same concepts businesses look into when struggling with the design their site. Ultimately, we are all looking for conversion rate. Whether it’s a business driving traffic by advertising a product via Google search ads or an aspiring UI dude getting eyeballs to stay on one page. Both are trying to sell you something and keep your attention for as long as they can. Trying to reduce mouse clicks, eye-fatigue and general boredom is tough, hopefully I can reduce it a bit on your case. Thanks for reading.

Education

College in Boulder was a good time. Other than your normal, typical college experiences, Boulder allowed me to get back to some of the activities I used to love but were not as easy to do in Chicago. Photography was and still is a love of mine, as is snowboarding. I skied my whole life, but really hard boots get old after a while. I picked up boarding after a “yard sale” I had at Keystone. Soft comfortable boots and one board to carry around—I haven’t turned back.

A tech nerd in college, I conducted my first (extremely unofficial) usability study. I had just bought my first iPod and the Rio for a comparative study. I quickly learned why Apple and the iPod were going to be as big. Although the cheaper Rio offered the same storage with the same quality of playback, there was little doubt which device had a home in my pocket and which would remain homeless at Circuit City. Trying to articulate this finding in my head, I gave the two mp3 players to my roommate to see which he liked. His iPod review: “Uh, I don’t know, it’s just nicer”, With the iPod’s intuitive interface, the finger scroll, together with the proprietary iTunes software, I knew Apple had a winner. Windows users couldn’t disagree. iTunes was a brilliant way to organize your library and sync the “organization” to the iPod. Some may argue that the Orwellian proprietary nature was a bad thing, locking users to one device (kinda like a cell phone contract). But the general public at that time was uncomfortable having a music library in digital form. It lacked tangibility, and I think the idea of not being able to hold a CD case in your hand scared people. iTunes made the mp3 collection visible again by adding cover art and an organizational scheme similar to how people sorted and browsed through a music collection at home.

When I explained to college career adviser that my interests were based on my psychology major and my passions for tech, his recommendation was for me to apply to a graduate Industrial/Organizational Psychology program. This ultimately proved to be the wrong choice, but I know where he was coming from. I explained to him that I was interested in the design of consumer products, (e.g.the iPod test), as well as how individuals interact with them. His conclusion was simply a mistake of mismatched words. Based on my interest in product design and interaction, I believe he meant Industrial Design. While I explained I was into the psychology of how we use technology, psychology was added as the second word. So we have “Industrial Psychology”. I didn’t know the difference: I was just too stupid to have seen my mistake. I convinced myself that I/O Psychology was what I was passionate about because I just wanted to go to grad school and get some letters added to the end of my name. Because User Experience and User Interaction was such a new field and I was such am ambitious new grad,I created a rocky situation for myself in grad school.

IIT was the next stop after college, I came back home after tearing my ACL during a patriotic game of hallway football (we didn’t win). In professional Industrial/Organizational Psychology masters program. I learned about training and development, the employee selection process, how to hire talented people, and how to critique really long journal articles. The whole time I was there, I was trying to figure out when I was going to learn about employee fatigue based on office design and foot traffic. Needless to say, that wasn’t part of the curriculum. I did find one study particularly interesting. It was about leadership traits perceived in individuals in group settings. The study looked at three group settings, one was chat-room based in which group members communicated purely via text.

Knowledgebase

Resume Narrative

This is my resume in narrative form

Resumes are boring. I am currently writing a new kind of resume that will hopefully be more entertaining to read. It will be a chronological account noting the schools I have attended, the jobs I have had, and the decisions I have made along the way. You will always be able to switch back and forth between the two by clicking the above links. Click here to see my traditional resume.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Languages

Resume Narrative

This is my resume in narrative form

Resumes are boring. I am currently writing a new kind of resume that will hopefully be more entertaining to read. It will be a chronological account noting the schools I have attended, the jobs I have had, and the decisions I have made along the way. You will always be able to switch back and forth between the two by clicking the above links. Click here to see my traditional resume.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Work Experience

I learned a lot while working at the Apple Store. When I started I did not own a piece of Apple hardware except for my iPod. Imagine my humility, I was working with people that could be considered the biggest MacHeads around and all I could cling to was my obsessive passion to learn and teach technology. I educated myself by listening to Mac-centric podcasts on every time I was in my car. Gave up the radio and tuned into MacBreak Weekly, Mac Observers and Mac OS Ken. I needed to know what I was talking about and eventually I did, I was able to hold my own.

It wasn’t until a week before I left the store did I purchase a MacBook Pro for myself and an iMac for my mom, actually they were graduation presents from my parents. Yes, as a present from my parents I told my mom to buy herself a new computer.

When I really started to get comfortable with OS X (took about a week), I found myself using my computer more. I had always used my past computers for some heavy lifting, but I found that the design of your average OS X application was far more pleasing to look at and to use than its counterparts. I wanted to learn more why this was. It really opened my eyes to the global idea of Usability and user interface. I eventually ended up enrolling at DePaul University in their Human-Computer Interaction program. I found that this was the field that really bridged the gap between psychology and technology in a lot of respects.

I started working as an intern at the Walgreen Company (that’s really what it’s officially called). Walgreen’s was my second and final requirement for my masters from IIT. I learned some interesting, practical things while in the recruitment department of a Fortune 500 company. While I was there in 2007 Walgreens was #44 on the list, but it didn’t feel like I was at a huge, public company. Maybe it was because members of my family worked there and had been for quite a while. But none the less, Walgreens had a hometown feel. One of my projects there before I started working with the undergraduate interns was to find new methods for recruiting undergraduate and masters level students. This was not a small task, and for the department it was a challenge considering the competition of the other 499 companies on the Fortune list.

In a presentation I gave to some department heads, I introduced the idea of using RSS feeds to push out notifications of new positions in the company. I explained what an RSS feed was and how it could be an easier way for students to get the latest news about the company and for those who may not be willing to check the Walgreens site or job boards everyday. I also presented the concept of mass SMS texting for recruitment purposes. At that time texting was not considered as much of an official means of communication as it is today.

There were a lot of things about the recruitment process that I took away from the job, but one really stuck with me and remains important. I was given the duty to create an account on Facebook for “research”. Essentially I was to try looking up applicants and browse what they had posted. My first Facebook experience was to actually execute what others have only heard about. We all know the warnings telling us to be careful about what you post, and to not post anything you wouldn’t want an employer to see. Well I got news for ya, I was that guy you should be afraid of. I learned early on the potential side effects social media can have. To this day I find myself educating others about safe online behavior and in particular the pros and cons of social media networking and marketing. I know the potential power of “sharing”, the good and the bad. I remain very active in the social media realm keeping up with the news about privacy as well as how to use it for marketing purposes, and staying out of trouble. You name the service, chances are I have an account.

Interests

Resume Narrative

This is my resume in narrative form

Resumes are boring. I am currently writing a new kind of resume that will hopefully be more entertaining to read. It will be a chronological account noting the schools I have attended, the jobs I have had, and the decisions I have made along the way. You will always be able to switch back and forth between the two by clicking the above links. Click here to see my traditional resume.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Etc

Resume Narrative

This is my resume in narrative form

Resumes are boring. I am currently writing a new kind of resume that will hopefully be more entertaining to read. It will be a chronological account noting the schools I have attended, the jobs I have had, and the decisions I have made along the way. You will always be able to switch back and forth between the two by clicking the above links. Click here to see my traditional resume.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.