Portfolio « InterfaceThis - Dave Feldman rants about product design

TechCrunch:Product Management(2007 - 2011)

Managed a redesign and relaunch of the site to update the brand, improve usability and performance, and increase engagement without undue community backlash. Worked with TechCrunch management and editorial, AOL executives, the WordPress VIP team, and internal and external developers to make it happen. Handled product management, provided design feedback, and assisted with engineering.

TechCrunch is a popular tech news site with a strong, unique brand and over 40 million visitors per month.

Atlas:Product Management, Design(2010)

I took over product management of the site early enough to define much of the feature set. I also did the interaction design, visual design, and some of the front-end code. Atlas addressed enough of a pain point at AOL that it was incredibly well-received, making it an extremely rewarding project.

Atlas is a new employee phone book, project database, and internal social network for AOL, launched fall 2010. It replaced a more bare-bones and utilitarian phone book site.

Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone:Product Design(2008 - 2009)

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Helped initiate the project. Did the product design, interaction design, and preliminary visual design. Co-product managed the 1.0 release.

A streamlined Yahoo! Messenger client for the iPhone OS. Within a month of its release it became the #1 free social networking app on iTunes, and was featured by Apple. It is currently rated 4+ stars with over 100,000 ratings.

Yahoo! Messenger 10:Design Management(2008 - 2009)

As Director of the User Experience Design group I managed staffing, logistics, and overall creative direction. Also did some of the interaction design work.

With 108 million monthly active users worldwide, Yahoo! Messenger is the #1 instant messaging product in the US and other markets. Version 10 added high-quality video calls, social content aggregation, in-product language switching, and numerous UI refinements.

Pints for iPhone :Personal Project(2007 - 2011)

Conceived, designed, and built the app using HTML5 and a native Cocoa Touch wrapper. Included code to allow offline operation with asynchronous server sync. Given performance concerns, I am currently looking at rewriting the app using Cocoa Touch and CouchDB.

Pints (work in progress) is a mobile app that helps beer aficionados choose their drink at the bar, and allows the app's editor to rate beers on-site.

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista:Interaction Design(2007 - 2008)

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Designed the user experience in collaboration with a visual designer. Received Yahoo!'s internal "Purple Design Award."

An all-new Messenger client for Windows Vista, built on Microsoft's WPF front-end platform for a next-generation experience. Focused on polish, delight, and simplicity, it was well-received and well-reviewed in the press.

Publisher Alley:UX Design(2003 - 2004)

Designed the user experience and much of the look & feel. Created mockups and prototypes using PHP, XML, and XSLT. Designed buttons, icons, and graphical elements. Wrote a UI specification. Used then-new CSS techniques to provide a flexible, cutting-edge user interface.

A new, data-rich Web application that allows book publishers to review and analyze sales data.

Sequoia:Product Design(2004 - 2005)

Conceived the project as an evolution of today's email experiences. Designed the feature set and front-end algorithms, to be paired with an advanced text-mining system. Created functional specifications, mockups, prototypes, and an animated demo. Wrote and filed a US patent application. Pitched to potential partners and venture capitalists.

A product that addresses information overload with intelligent, tools for browsing and managing a large collection of documents.

ActiveMedia:UX Design(2005)

Provided late-stage interaction design expertise, focusing largely on screen layout and look & feel, as well as more fundamental workflow questions for the administrative application. Produced mockups and workflow diagrams, then helped ClearStory implement the new design using CSS and JSP.

ActiveMedia is a Web-based digital asset management tool produced by ClearStory Systems, with both an end-user and an administrative interface.