Team Lead, lead designer, lead developer. This was the first website where I pushed for content to be developed first, before any design work was done. This was also the project that I realized I had a talent for information architecture.

 

We started with an outline, using the menu structure you see below. I then had the content team populate that structure with whatever relevant content they could find. Then we went back through and trimmed away the fat, as it were, working to say everything they wanted to say with fewer words, and trying to communicate complicated ideas using simple graphics.

 

This website was career changing for me. I realized what I had been doing wrong (or had been allowing to be done wrong). I started reading more books about website development, following blogs, attending conferences, and understanding terms like information architecture, interaction design, and usability. It also set the model for building sites that I have been following (more or less) ever since.