Corey Stone: Work

Shown below are some samples of my work from various companies and schools. Much of the web work I've done is for non-public web applications, so I can only show screen shots. My product design projects are shown farther down the page. To download my resume as a PDF, click the icon on the right. To contact me, email coreywstone@gmail.com.
University of Kansas: University Relations Lawrence, Kansas • www.ku.edu Interaction Designer, 2006 to present
At KU, I'm on a small web team who designs the main KU template and top-level pages. We code and maintain some pages, but some are coded by the IT group and many departments maintain their own sites. I don't have a whole lot to show yet -- so far I've worked on some "big" projects that have been well received but may never see the light of day. Funstuff.ku.edu is pretty much all my creation so you could check that out if you're just dying to see something.
Cerner Corporation Kansas City, Missouri • www.cerner.com Sr. Visual Designer, 2004 to 2006
At Cerner, I work with about ten designers to design various parts of Cerner's new web-based medical software. A design language had already been created before I got here, so all our designs must fit within the language or, if they don't fit, we must provide strong justification for updating the language.
Prototype of Global Navigation (Java) Shortly after starting at Cerner, I felt that our global navigation system did a weak job of representing the fact that multiple patients were open, so I proposed a redesign of the Java app (screen shot). The redesign also introduced a color/icon scheme configurable for either inpatient rounds-based settings (top of screen shot) or outpatient schedule-based settings (bottom). The new scheme provides "at-a-glance" information about each patient, such as their condition, their on-time status, or whether they're calling in or just need a prescription refill or a note completed. An informal usability study showed that six out of six doctors preferred my redesign over the current design. The doctors' comments included: "This design just feels right to me...I think you could sell this in a heartbeat...this is great...I love this."
Global Navigation (HTML) My biggest project with Cerner so far has been the redesign of the global navigation for our web app. The former "design" had been cobbled and Mr. Potatoheaded together, making it awkward to navigate between different functions and sections. The new design had to solve this while maximizing patient safety and being very fast from an engineering/load perspective. To solve inter-patient navigation (only one patient can be open at once), I utilized overlays from the menubar so that context wouldn't be lost until another patient was selected. To avoid clinicians accidentally working on the wrong patient, the patient name is in bright yellow and positioned so that it appears to "own" the entire page and the patient menu below it (a subsequent design solved this better, though it hasn't been implemented yet). The patient menu can be hidden by the user then hoverable on mouseover to devote the entire screen-width to the task at hand. Tabs and breadcrumbs (when needed) were used for in-section navigation. Multi-step linear processes utilized a "Process Trail" (screen shot). Feedback has been very favorable so far. Here are quotes from various people: "I just love the way the new version appears -- very slick and user friendly ... Thoroughly impressed - 250% better ... Looks more like a solution ... Flow is much better."
ACT, Inc. Iowa City, Iowa • www.act.org User Interface & Web Site Designer, 2002 to 2004
COMPASS/ESL Internet Version COMPASS/ESL is ACT's Windows-based adaptive placement testing application. When ACT decided to develop an online version, I was tasked with porting the screens to a web format and attempting to make them look "exactly" like the Windows version. Well, the GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the Windows version was a mess — hard to use and didn't even conform to Windows' crappy standards. I also had to help convince the project development team to change their development process to allow me to design the pages and site outline before any front-end coding took place. By the time the four-month 250-page project was nearing completion, some staffers were referring to the "new" (to them) development process as the way future projects should be developed. (And I should give some credit here to Alan Cooper's book The Inmates are Running the Asylum.) So far, both internal staff and current users have been very pleased with the new interface's simplicity, efficiency, and ease of use. The best compliments were about the redesign of the multiple measures feature (screen shot), which was previously a nightmare of cascading modal windows. The project's content manager said the design would have saved them two months of development time on the Windows version, and a salesperson said that she could now use Multiple Measures as a selling point. (She implied that she had previously hidden it from potential customers because it was too difficult to use.)	Screen shots: A Student Session List Multiple Measures Setup Site Management
ACT Library Internal Site ACT's internal library site was created several years ago and had outgrown its design, so I was asked to redesign it. The site contains not only library content, but also some employee forms, graphics, and other company-created content. So naturally, I viewed it as the company's unofficial Intranet. Unfortunately, some of the management didn't want an Intranet, and the librarian (who owned the project) was pretty adamant about her site being very library-focused. Some companies just aren't meant to change, I guess. Regardless, the former design hid much of its content, so I recategorized some of it and presented links in a global navigation frame to provide one or two-click access to almost everything in the site. Informal usability testing has shown the navigation to be a success and the number of visitors to the site has increased. Consequently, the library began receiving more requests to post various documents, and it was getting increasingly difficult to find an appropriate place for each of them. My solution was to create an 'Information Rack' on the Home Page similar to a real rack that ACT previously had in their cafeteria. I thought this was a decent idea, but the response has been overwhelming — people love it. The client said, "The new Web site looks great! We're already getting emails from staff members commenting on how much easier it is to use."	Screen shots: Home Page Forms Page
Activity, an ACT Online Publication Activity is a quarterly print publication that has been around for years. And when I say years, I mean like 40. But it wasn't until 2002 that they decided to put it online, which was my first project at ACT. The objectives I set for the design were to make it resemble the print version (whose single spot color changes with each issue) and be easy to archive old issues and create new ones. The Activity editor was very pleased with the design, saying how it "turned out much better than she expected." Of course, that either meant that she really liked it and it was better than how she had envisioned it, or maybe she just had really low expectations of me and I surprised her by making something that didn't totally suck. I'll assume the former.	http://www.act.org/activity/
NEXIQ Technologies (formerly DSI) Coralville, Iowa • www.nexiq.com (site has been redesigned post-bankruptcy) Webmaster & User Interface Designer, 1997 to 2002
eTechnician eTechnician is NEXIQ's fleet management web application. When NEXIQ purchased DSI (whom I was an employee of), they had already begun development of eTech but the user interface was a disaster. Its worst offense was probably its "verb > noun" methodology (that is, you select an action to do, then select which truck to do the action to. Studies have shown that people think in a noun > verb manner, ie, pick an item then pick an action to do to it). After spending lots of time reading the 200-page requirements document and learning about the complex system, I concluded that it all boiled down to doing something to a truck or group of trucks. My redesign had three main components: Home, Setup, and Admin. The Home page presents a list of trucks or truck groups on which you could perform various actions (the list of available actions depends on the package you purchased). After selecting a truck and action, each subsequent page has a "truck" navbar that identifies the truck you're working on and allows you to easily perform other actions on the truck. The Home button is always available to quickly select a new truck to work on.	Screen shots: Home Page (Groups) Group Parameters Group Monitors Vehicle Alerts
NEXIQ Corporate Web Site NEXIQ Technologies is my former employer's corporate web site that I designed and maintained. (It has since been redesigned after the bankruptcy—the screen shots are from when I did the site.) The site had to be professional-looking and heavily branded, extremely easy to navigate, and encompass the content contained in both the previous NEXIQ and DSI web sites. Unfortunately, after the NEXIQ bankruptcy and subsequent acquisitions, many portions of the site were removed and they eventually redesigned it. Regardless, one page that I thought was interesting was the Diagnostic Tools Intro page (screen shot). The former design for that page linked the product categories into a deep hierarchy, and it was difficult to find what you were looking for and even if you did find it, it took several clicks to get there. Furthermore, the categorization didn't help the user understand how the product categories related to each other. My redesign allowed people to reach any product in one action (two clicks, since they're list boxes) and the product categories were laid out in a "product map" diagram to illustrate how the products related to each other.	Screen shots: NEXIQ Home Page Diagnostics Page
IVIS-Ready Displays and Interfaces DSI created a really complicated product called IVIS (In-Vehicle Information System), which is basically a system of intelligent software running in a vehicle. The system allows you to easily manage and display all the pieces of data used (and created) by the vehicle. My job was to design digital instrument clusters, right-of-center applications, and various other applications to be used in IVIS demos. The beige design on the left was part of a fully functional right-of-center application shown at the Convergence 2000 trade show. The screens were shown on a digital touchscreen LCD that replaced the radio and heater/AC controls, and the user input control had four directional arrow buttons and a "select" button. A co-worker designed the background for the beige screens, and I designed the information architecture and individual screen content.
GUIDE for IVIS GUIDE (Graphical User Interface Development Environment) is a WYSIWYG Windows application for building in-vehicle IVIS displays and applications, such as instrument clusters, navigation applications, MP3 players, or anything else you can think to put in a car. The intended users are designers, and I was charged with creating the user interface (including icons) for the application. I did so by designing the screen layouts and wording for each of the object "property" pages. I created Visio mockups of each screen, which the programmers then implemented. This was a fun project because much of the previous application-interface work I had done was for very information-heavy database-manipulation applications, whereas GUIDE was essentially a tool to build user interfaces. The downside was that because the product was brand new with very few competitors, management's focus was on adding saleable features rather than on refining the user interface. In time, however, I was able to convince them that if they let me design the interface for a new feature before they started any coding, they wouldn't lose any development time and would end up with a better overall product.
In-Vehicle Touch-Screen Interface This was a fun project where I was asked to design and document the GUI specifications (see the document) for an application that would run on a small 4.5" x 3" monochrome touch-screen display placed in a truck. The most significant design challenge was the keyboard screen because of the small display size and the fact that the user was a trucker using his finger rather than a pen-like instrument. If all keys were equally sized, each key would've been about half the size needed to accommodate the 95th percentile fingertip. In an attempt to increase typing speed and reduce errors, I used three different key sizes and a non-QWERTY layout. The unique key layout was based on the following rationale: If typing in English, about 70% of the keystrokes will occur on the nine large keys on the right. Because the most frequently used keys are bigger, users will be able to find and touch them quicker (Fitt's Law) with fewer fat-finger errors. Letters that occur together most frequently in English (e.g. TH, HE, AN, IN, ER, RE, etc.) are located very close together on the keyboard, reducing finger-travel distance of frequent letter sequences. The user will usually use the device while seated in the driver's seat. He will probably touch the screen with his right index or middle finger, thus obscuring his view of the screen that lies to the lower right of his fingertip. For this reason, the more frequently used keys are placed toward the bottom right of the screen, allowing the user to begin searching for the next key while touching another key. Keys that often occur in consecutive order were placed so that the key that is typed second is not placed to the lower right of the first key.
iLoan, an Online Loan Advisor The client came to us with some serious back-end technology and a messy sketch of the information to be presented. The major challenges were to: 1) understand what the heck they were talking about (Bayesian math - ugh!), 2) display the overabundance of data in a non-intimidating manner, 3) help users understand what the numbers mean, and 4) make the whole thing intuitive enough to use without instructions and even seem "game-like." My solution was to place each "variable set" in its own color with the entry fields at the top and the resulting data at the bottom. In the middle was the "Click Here to Recalculate!" button, which caused the application to recalculate the results from the current values in the input fields. Even though we had little time to complete the project, the client was very pleased with the ease-of-use and visual appeal of the design.
Desktop Dispatch Pro Desktop Dispatch Pro is a fleet management desktop application designed and programmed by DSI. DDPro had already been begun by another company, but it was a buggy convoluted mess. DSI was contracted to redesign it and recode it. It was the first big application I had designed, and it was quite a challenge to learn all the functionality in an industry (trucking) that I knew little about. In addition to designing the layout for each screen and the flow between them, I also created all the icons so that they formed a consistent visual language throughout the application. (As it turns out, I actually enjoy making those little 16x16 icons.) This was also my first time working closely with programmers, which is something I learned a lot about at DSI and NEXIQ.	Screen shots: Edit Trip Screen Edit Order Screen
Freelance Logo & Web Site Work Shown below are links to some sites that I've done in my spare time—some for pay and some for free. Note that for projects like these, I design and create the site's logo, organization, navigation scheme, and graphic look, then often someone else maintains and updates the site (which can sometimes be a bad thing).
	www.kucheer.com
	Gus' Bar & Grill
	Site's gone!

	www.skidmarkz.org
	View the Former Site
B.F.A. Industrial Design - University of Kansas, May 1997 The Industrial Design program at KU provides a fairly well rounded design education to its students partly due to the disparity between the three main design professors. One is very user-focused and stresses a process-oriented approach and generous usage of human factors information. Another is very market-driven: "what are the benefits and why would someone buy this?" And the last stresses the "coolness" of the design, with more emphasis on form and uniqueness. In addition to our actual ID classes, we also learned a smattering of technical skills such as modelmaking, materials & processes, and presentation skills, as well as the fundamentals such as drawing, drafting, and art history. Shown below are some of the design projects I did in school. Click them for more information.

M.S. Biomechanics - University of Iowa (May 2000) I decided to get a Master's degree in Biomechanics (which is the study of the movement of the human body) to improve my ergonomic design ability. Although I learned some valuable stuff, if I had to do it all over again I'd study cognitive psychology because the majority of today's ergonomic problems involve the mental aspect of the user interface.
Master's Thesis: The Effect of Keyboard Design on Finger, Forearm, and Shoulder Muscle Activity Abstract: EMG activity of finger and postural muscles during typing on three different types of keyboards were compared. The keyboards tested were Dell's QuietKey (representing a "standard" design), Microsoft's Natural (a modern "fixed-split" ergonomic design), and Kinesis' Contour (an alternative non-adjustable ergonomic design). The muscle activity of seven subjects' flexor digitorum superficialis, extensor digitorum communis, extensor carpi radialis brevis, and left and right trapezius were recorded with surface EMG electrodes. FDS and EDC efficiency were also calculated. Measurements consisted of 10-second recordings while subjects typed a brief segment of text on each keyboard at a 30 words per minute pace, a comfortable typing speed, and a fast typing speed. Results showed that FDS, EDC, and ECRB activity generally increased as typing speed increased, but trapezius activity did not. Few differences in muscle activity were found when using different keyboards, except that FDS activity was higher when using the Kinesis keyboard than when using the Natural keyboard, and FDS efficiency was lower when using the Kinesis than when using the standard or Natural keyboards. Slightly lower EDC and ECRB activity was seen when using the Kinesis keyboard, but differences were not statistically significant. It was concluded that muscle activity generally increases with typing speed, and typists achieve optimal efficiency when typing at comfortable and fast speeds, rather than slower-than-normal speeds. It was also concluded that keyboard design has only small effects on muscle activity. Use of the Kinesis keyboard was associated with a trend of lower EDC and ECRB activity, but significantly higher FDS activity and lower FDS efficiency. A study including greater numbers of subjects may have been necessary to detect more significant differences in muscle activity when using the different keyboards. Additionally, surface EMG recordings may not be sufficiently sensitive to show small differences in muscle activity when using different keyboards.
3D Computer Models Unfortunately, we didn't learn any 3D graphics program in the ID program at Kansas. But at Iowa I was able to take a class in Alias Wavefront. Shown below are some of the models I made for the class.