In the Fall of 2003, I was asked by a freelance client, Skarven Enterprises, to come on board as a full time contractor. The company had been formed by a retired Navy Admiral after his business in the World Trade Center was wiped out on 9/11. Their product was a software suite that was designed to ensure that intelligence analysts knew when information they needed became available to them. The product went by different names depending on who was referring to it, but the most common names were Analyst’s Work Station (AWS) and Tripwire Analytic Capability (TAC). My primary responsibility was to make the UI more intuitive and attractive. Being the only designer in a company staffed almost exclusively by engineers, I also designed their marketing materials, print documentation, an online help center, and whatever internal office graphics were needed.
Below are some samples of the work I did between 2003 and 2008…
The User Interface
Working directly with developers in an increasingly agile environment, I worked to design and refine the user experience for every feature over the course of about a decade of active development. The image to the left depicts a grid of Afghan queries on the left screen and the details of a selected query on the right screen.
Documentation
Designed this book cover to cover. It showed analysts how the system could be utilized in conjunction with standard analytic methods like creating grids based on functions and enabling means.
Promotional Materials
Created this promotional video highlighting the software capabilities. I did all the visual work based on an audio file that I was given.