Portfolio
Welcome to Brad Lauster’s portfolio. This is just a simple, single-page display, showing some of my past work – no unnecessary categorization or navigation.
My work is largely focused on the behavioral side of interaction design, though Iʼve also held roles in programming, communications and teaching.
For most of 2008, I worked as the lead designer for LinkedInʼs Address Book. Prior to that, I led the User Experience practice for Stanford University’s IT Department. Iʼve designed desktop and web applications, organizations, communications plans, user generated content sites and social web services.
I recently started a new job with AppFolio, in Santa Barbara, California. I’m not entertaining job opportunities at this time, but I’m happy to discuss my previous work. You can reach me at hello@bradlauster.com.
Events Customer Service Tool
LinkedIn, 2008
As part of LinkedIn’s Events product rollout, a customer service tool was needed to help manage the system.
I was responsible for all aspects of this product’s interaction design. Taking input from the project manager and customer service staff, I created a design that could be built in a very short time frame.
This is a design mockup of the tool’s home screen. The magenta text and arrows are notes to the developers about how the application should behave and what should be displayed.
Contact Information on a User Profile
LinkedIn, 2008
To increase visibility of the Contacts application and to make one of LinkedIn’s most often requested features available, I designed a module for the profile pages. This module displays contact information and lets users add private notes about their connections.
I also designed a simple dialog to help users merge contact records when multiple records exist for a single connection.
The major challenge with this project was balancing the demands of representatives from various parts of the company. After a couple rounds of mockups, I found myself fielding input from two product managers, the Director of User Experience and the VP of Product.
Deep knowledge of the product’s capabilities, a good understanding of the internal politics involved and being able to quickly produce new mockups were key to being able to address everyone’s concerns and get the product released on schedule.
Address Book (Contacts)
LinkedIn, 2008
My primary responsibility at LinkedIn in 2008 was to redesign their Contacts application. The most major release included a full set of address book fields with inline editing. I designed several other features for the platform which may or may not be released in the future.
Several rounds of user testing guided many of the design decisions and regular peer reviews helped refine the product’s direction.
Pictured here are two screenshots of an interactive mockup I built in html and css. The standard top and left nav came from our internal toolkit, but I coded everything else by hand, including the interactive bits (rollovers, transitions, animation, etc.) for which I wrote some simple jquery scripts.
SavvySource Quiz, Learning Plan & Learning Registry
SavvySource.com, 2007
SavvySource.com is a site that provides parents with preschool reviews, information on camps and classes, advice on books and educational toys, and an activities encyclopedia.
The Quiz, Learning Plan and Learning Registry are a set of features that help parents assess their children and choose developmentally appropriate tools, toys and activities for them.
I did all of the information architecture and interaction design for this feature.
This capture shows an example screen from my documentation. Each of the blue callouts have a corresponding description with information about the item and how it should behave. Copious notes were necessary because the development team was overseas and not readily available for design reviews.
Site design sketches
Backlight.org, 2007
Much like Facebook supports your social life and LinkedIn supports your professional life, Backlight seeks to support your creative life. It is a community built on spreading inspiration and hope through sharing personal creations. I’ve been an advisor since 2007, when the founder, Brad Wolfe, first began working on the idea.
The top sketch shows some ideas I had for the home page. The bottom sketch is one my designs for the user profile page.
Stanford Guest Accounts
Stanford University, 2007
Stanford Guest Accounts is a service that allows members of the Stanford community to grant non-Stanford affiliates access to Stanford’s computing systems.
It includes screens for guest authentication, account creation, management and for sending bulk Guest Account invitations.
I designed the interaction and user interface for the entire system. I also hand coded the HTML and CSS for all the screens.
Stanford Integrated Email & Calendar Concept
Stanford University, 2007
This was a project to explore the integration of Stanford’s email and calendar systems. User research was a big part of the project. We wanted to understand both how people were using the current systems and how the new systems might enable new ways of working and collaborating.
I created and presented a story about how Lorena and Dr. Ubele (the faces you see in the pictures) would use an integrated email and calendar system to set up a meeting, share documents and collaborate while Dr. Ubele was in Chicago and Lorena was on campus at Stanford.
The meeting, where I presented the story to about 60 faculty, staff and students, was very successful. Using the story as the basis for the discussion, we were able to collect details about peoples’ work lives that we weren’t able to uncover using other methods.
Artist Sample Card & Biography
Aaryn Walker, 2006
In 2006, Reno-based artist Aaryn Walker was recognized for her work. She asked me to create a sample card to showcase her paintings and give the attendees at her award gala some information about her background.
I created the card and had it printed. She liked the final product so much that she ordered several hundred and now distributes them at her home furnishings store, Red Chair, in Reno, NV.
Socialwork Concept
Stanford University, 2006
During the process of completing a bunch of research to help one of our groups develop a more strategic communications plan, I discovered that our entire organization had an alarming dependence on email. Everything from meeting notes to project documents were trapped in email and not being shared openly across the organization.
As a response to the problem, I designed a social networking web application focused on collaborating around project work.
I presented the Socialwork concept for something we called “innovation funding” at Stanford, but left before the project went any further.
Stanford Desktop Tools
Stanford University, 2006
Stanford Desktop Tools manages single sign-on authentication and software updates for computers at Stanford.
I designed the interaction and user interface.
The top screenshot represents an intermediate step in the design process. The bottom screenshot is the final working product.
Open Source Application Foundation Volunteer Work
Open Source Application Foundation, 2005
This is some concept work I did as a volunteer for the Open Source Application Foundation. The screenshots show:
1. Some ideas for displaying multiple events in a single time slot on a calendar.
2. A “deadline event” where there’s an end time, but no start time.
3. The use of translucent interface elements for various reasons.
Stanford University Network Registration
Stanford University, 2005
Stanford University Network Registration is a web application we built to make it easier for people at Stanford to get their computers registered for use on the network.
I designed the site, the graphics and hand coded all the HTML and CSS.
ITS Client Liaison Process Design
Stanford University, 2005
This is an example of a deliverable I created for a process design project.
Desktop Configuration Manager
Stanford University, 2004
Desktop Configuration Manager is a product we built to help our contract support team more easily manage the configuration of new and repurposed computer hardware at Stanford.
I was responsible for the interaction and user interface design.
This screenshot shows some of the notes I made for the developers.
Essential Stanford Software
Stanford University, 2004
Essential Stanford Software is a collection of software that Stanford IT Services licenses and offers to the Stanford community for free.
Over the years, this set of software had grown to point where people were often confused about which version of the applications they had on their computer. People didn’t know what they had, what was new and what needed to be upgraded.
I designed an application that served as the front end for Essential Stanford Software, eliminating the confusion around deciding which software to install and making it easier to launch the software’s installers.
The screenshot represents one of the framework mockups that led to the final design.
Sundial Training Videos
Stanford University, 2003
In 2003, IT Services at Stanford released a calendar product that, frankly, wasn’t very easy to use. The Help Desk was getting a lot of calls about a few particularly confusing areas of the product, so I offered to create some training videos to help reduce the call load.
This was not so much an interactive design project as it was a script writing and performance piece for me.
The videos are still available online: http://calendar.stanford.edu/how-to-videos.html
Leland Systems Site Redesign
Stanford University, 2001
This is a super quick site redesign exercise I did in a single evening.
The group, Leland systems, had an outdated website with confusing information architecture. The screenshots show some sketches from the exercise, the “before” site and the end result, which I actually built.
Message Phone Concept
Cooper Interaction Design, 2001
The Cooper Interaction Design test is practically a rite of passage for interaction designers.
These screenshots show my solution — a couple of the interface screens and an example of what the physical buttons might look like for a product that Cooper calls the Message Phone.
Intel E-mail Effectiveness Coach
Intel Corp, 2001
The Intel E-mail Effectiveness Coach is a Microsoft Outlook add-on that helps the sender detect and correct common behaviors that decrease e-mail-related productivity. The tool reacts to about a dozen common behaviors, such as sending an e-mail without a subject and replying to all, instead of only to the message’s sender.
I designed the dialogs, the messages and the interaction.
After I left Intel, the tool was released for free and is now used on hundreds of thousands of computers world-wide. It’s available for free on itsharenet.org: http://tinyurl.com/3dse6k
