- Xerox PARC – 2014
- In a ten-day time-critical contract to redefine DocuShare CMS as an organizational solution rather than a technology service:
- • Provided information design suggestions which resulted in the page navigation bars and site architecture being redesigned the next day
- • Developed a headline formula which used active verbs and consistently inserted the word “solution” almost unnoticeably
- • Debugged a major code/marketing issue, which PARC developers were then able to correct in one hour
- IBM – 2008
- While working as a senior Consulting Web Analyst at IBM, I advised the web development department on taxonomy procedures and standards for classifying IBM's 4 million web pages, in specifics such as:
- • Suggested a hierarchy design – mostly adopted
- • Explained practical limits on data-points/filenames per category, based on the Dolby-Resnikoff 30:1 Rule – adopted
- • Best choice of characters for accurate data entry and legibility – some adopted
- • Flagged potential conflicts with established taxonomies – some adopted
- Library of Congress – 2003
Task Force Recommendation Research and Design Review: Improving User Access to Library Catalog and Portal Information
- Was retained as lead Information Architect to this Library of Congress project through the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Science (GSEIS). The pilot project was for a clustered/faceted search module to augment the Library's standard search, based on The Contemporary Thesaurus of Search Terms and Synonyms: A Guide for Natural Language Computer Searching. Was also responsible for coordinating with suppliers and subcontractors to maintain compatibility with ISO standards.
- Bootstrap/SRI Open Hyperdocument System, principal investigator Douglas C. Engelbart (mouse inventor) – 2000-2001
- As Information Architect:
- • Wrote specifications for metadata in tagging documents within dynamic knowledge repositories
- • Coordinated architecture with international standards bodies
- • Wrote specifications and high-level coding architecture for implementations
- • Maintained scenarios and use cases
- • Developed a browser plugin for granular addressibility of content on remote web pages from sentence to sectional length, with extensibility to tie together excerpted material with annotations and external links.
- Website Builds and Restructuring – 1996-Present
- Working with information systems and web development, I have designed or restructured several hundred websites and online data repositories, starting the design process with users and their content needs, and building the architecture from that base. Since 2005 this has increasingly meant working with both proprietary and open source CMSs, and anticipating the needed link-outs to social media platforms during the process of defining the content architecture.
- Translations
- Online Translation of the Taoist Canons (Daozang)
- Currently developing a scalable website (in beta) as a home for translations to English and Mandarin Pinyin of the Taoist Canons, as translated directly from the 84,000 ZhengTong woodblocks carved in 1445, sourcing the text from the Yi Wen prints made in 1923-1926. Total web pages will exceed 320,000, showing both the original woodblocks and the translations.
I am responsible for designing the content architecture and technical aspects, including the file naming conventions, website structure, searchable indexing, and scalability. The current filename convention, e.g., daozang-0131-003b2.html, identifies the source of the text (the Daozang), the precise Yi Wen edition (131), and the precise web page (web page b2 from woodblock 003) – in 18 characters. If the web pages are later transferred to another website, the filename convention should still remain canonical.
- Book Structuring, Layout, and Production Editing – 1992-Present
- These are two samples out of several dozen books I have sent to press or released in various electronic formats (PDF, Mobi, Epub). The books' structure has ranged from a traditional linear sequence of chapters and text (Moral Capitalism) to highly complex structuring of multi-volume series (the collected works of UCLA professor Marcia J. Bates), in which dozens of papers and figures had to be extracted from legacy websites, converted from PDFs, edited, and ultra-proofed (the Excel project spreadsheet on request).
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- • Moral Capitalism and The Essential Economy, 2006
- • Information and the Information Professions: Selected Works of Marcia J. Bates, Vol. I
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