Design Examples

Drafting large visual aids for science teachers was my summer job in college. I draw, sketch and put ideas into writing using a good, dark pencil and a handy notebook. I start with words or sketches of concepts, structures, anything that can help me organize and communicate ideas.

This process of visual communication is instilled in me as a composer who writes in graphic notation and needs to thoroughly communicate musical and performance instructions using symbols and visual elements on paper. As a computer engineer, I work with diagrams, flow charts, and engineering drawings that best articulate visual design.

This is an audio playback GUI to review phrases that concatenate several audio files. This was useful for toy development folks who reviewed concatenated phrases that optimize chip memory space. I created and coded this project in Macromedia Director (ActionScript).

The design challenge: how might we create a way for electronic-audio toy developers quickly review highly concatenated phrases before embedding them into microcontrollers? Waiting to review the phrases until they were embedded in hardware prototypes with the microcontrollers took time and cost more. This system helped development save cost and time.

This is the digital wireframe.

This next example is an initial concept for a web-based IDE for microcontroller projects.

The design challenge: how might we create an integrated development environment (IDE) for electronic hobbyists and tinkerers that is simple, efficient and has a community support for projects? Other environments are complicated, not streamlined and lack good community connection.