Success in Experience Design is like success in any business venture — it requires a clear, fundamentally sound strategy, a compelling design that connects with customers, and solid project management to bring the product to life. Over 14 years as a consultant, designer and manager focused on experience design, Pete has had the opportunity to focus on all three facets for a variety of world-class businesses. Following the projects and work described below, read about Pete's employment history and education. Or download a printable PDF version of Pete's portfolio and background.


Identifying or analyzing product mix, setting design-related policies and procedures, and using Experience Design to maximize business results.
 
Development of business requirements, feature ideation and selection, usability evaluation, information architecture, and interaction and interface design.
 
Development of schedules and budgets, identification of roles and resources, day to day task management, issue resolution, user testing and deployment.
 
Strategy

 
Website Planning and Operations — Ariel Capital Management
  As the Director of Internet Marketing and Operations at Ariel Capital Management, Pete is in charge of all aspects of Website and internet design, planning and operations. Pete is responsible for drawing up and managing a $600K annual budget, determining priorities of design, development and operational tasks, contracting with and managing vendors and satisfying internal customers from all areas of the business. Pete takes high-level business needs from internal clients, and develops concepts, designs and detailed development plans to implement them. As the lead designer and manager for all aspects of two customer-facing and one internal-facing site, Pete successfully balances the often completing aspects of marketing, client service and compliance.
   
Brand Planning and Experience Design — Leading Internet Service Provider
One of the largest ISPs and online content providers in the US was considering a new brand image and position, and needed help in the analysis and planning of what that would entail for the business as a whole, including the effect on online products, customer service, direct marketing, advertising, etc. Pete was asked to provide a customer experience perspective to the branding discussions, provide insight into how the brand position might be received by the target audience segments, and reduce a list of 280+ potential ways to address the new brand down to a list of ~20 high-impact, high-value actions that would most significantly reinforce the brand position. In addition, to ensure that the new brand would be implemented consistently across programming and product development, the client was planning the development of a new Experience Group. Pete was asked to lead a research effort into how premium design and brand can enable premium pricing, review and refine the proposed work processes, and propose how the Experience Group would interact with the other client business functions.
   
Strategic Technology Assessment — Leading Financial Services Company
 
The small business division of a major US financial services and charge card company asked for a broad assessment of customer-facing technology trends that might impact small business customers, as part of their 2006 Strategy Development effort. Pete led the effort that developed a structured assessment framework, identified 80 candidate technologies, performed initial evaluations to reduce the candidate list to 35 potentially applicable options, performed research into the technical details and business impacts of each (on both small businesses and on the client), and presented findings and recommendations to the small business division leadership.
   
Content Management Strategy — Leading Internet Service Provider
One of the largest ISPs and online content providers in the US had an existing call center information storage and retrieval system that was inefficient and obsolete, increasing average call time, and reducing accuracy and effectiveness for their 10,000 call center employees. Pete managed a team that was responsible for designing entirely new content publication, retrieval and management processes. Pete designed a new process employing distributed authoring and ownership, enabling separate groups to generate, categorize and manage their own content, while also enhancing information sharing and quality control, and limiting additional work load.
   
Mobile Application Catalog Development — US Wireless Carrier
  A major wireless carrier in the US sought to launch their first mobile data product, while maintaining the #1 customer service and experience benchmarks they had set for themselves. Pete was responsible for performing usability evaluations of QUALCOMM's BREW Mobile Data platform, various 2.5G data-ready handsets, and over 40 mobile data applications. Pete's specific responsibilities included the development of a Mobile Application Design Guide, business development discussions with prospective application partners, detailed customer-centric evaluation of the applications, construction and management of the application catalogs, and training of permanent client employees.
   
 

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Design
 
Mutual Fund Website Redesign — Ariel Mutual Funds
 

Pete's first major task when he was hired as Director of Internet Marketing and Operations was to redesign two customer-facing websites, www.arielmutualfunds.com (for consumers) and www.arielcapital.com (for institutional investors). Ariel's original websites were 7 years old, outdated, and inconsistent with the firm's branding. The new sites needed to reinforce the Slow and Steady Wins the Race brand promise, provide a visually rich and memorable design, and yet be simple to navigate and use.

As the only internal Internet resource, Pete worked hand-in-hand with a design firm in New York to produce initial visualizations of the site's key elements (e.g. the homepage, a sample fund information page, and a news page). Reviewing the designs frequently with both retail and institutional marketing teams, Pete applied the basic design approach to the rest of the planned pages, adjusting and extrapolating as necessary to handle the details and unique aspects of each. Pete also began working very early on with the programming vendor who would setup the site admin system, and build the .php templates, to ensure the designs would work within the CMS framework. After 10 months of design and development, at a vendor cost of ~$200K, Pete launched arielmutualfunds.com. The professional-focused arielcapital.com launched 3 months later. In their first year, 2005, both sites won STAR Awards from the Mutual Fund Education Alliance for design, content and usability. Arielmutualfunds.com won Best Retail Homepage and Best Retail Website, and arielcapital.com won Best Advisor Homepage. In 2006 and 2007, the sites won all three awards again, and the Retail site also took home the award for Best Online Shareholder Experience.

In 2008, Pete managed a re-branding launch which entailed a new look and feel, new backend templates and designs, and the combination of our consumer and advisor-focused sites into a single site. The entire design and development process was completed and launched in five months. During that time, Pete was also tasked with managing updates to all branding within the physical office space, as well as acting as branding liaison to the IT department to ensure logos, fonts, language, colors and imagery were applied appropriately across the myriad internal systems, forms, tools and processes. Finally, Pete was responsible for designing and rolling out all new branded templates for MS Office and for external PDF publishing.

   
FYE Media Stores Retail Kiosk — Trans World Entertainment
 
Over a 6 month period, Pete provided design direction for three separate development teams working to create cross-channel customer-facing retail systems for Trans World Entertainment's FYE (For Your Entertainment) media stores. This included complete design responsibility for an in-store kiosk and a Microsoft Messenger tab, as well as consultations on the design of new media sampling stations.
 

 
3G Wireless Visualization — European Wireless Equipment Manufacturer
 
Facing strong opposition in the extremely competitive telecom equipment industry, the German division of a major European wireless equipment manufacturer sought to develop a sales tool that would clearly articulate the advantages of 3rd generation mobile networks. Pete led a team in the design of two entirely-new 3G mobile applications, and then in the development of a visualization that would prove the concept of the applications and be used as a sales tool during discussions with operators.
   
B2B Agricultural Marketplace — US Agricultural Equipment Manufacturer
 
A major US manufacturer of agricultural equipment sought to build an online marketplace for the buying and selling of grain, equipment and supplies between producers (farmers) and merchants. The system was designed to enable local producer cooperation while maintaining a national reach. Initial designs were completed by the client and drew serious criticism from potential users. Pete led the design team that revised the information architecture and interface approach, and offered seminars in design.
 

 
Personalized Product Site — US Paper Products Manufacturer
 
Looking to take advantage of the explosion in eCommerce and their history in personalized printed products, a major US producer of paper products sought to link consumers with freelance artists in order to deliver personalized gifts and other products with custom text and images. Pete led the interface design and information architecture for the site, designed an online tutorial for how to use the system, and delivered a presentation on eLearning to the extended organization.
   
Other Design Projects
  Select a project below to see addition interface and information design samples.
Personal Banking Design Options — International Bank
 Training: Managing and Selling for Profitability — US Telecom Equipment Manufacturer
Training: Front Desk Skills — Major US Hospitality Provider
 

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Project Management
   
Website Management and Cost Reduction — Ariel Capital Management
  The year before Pete was hired as Director of Internet Marketing and Operations, the combined website spending was ~$550K. While redesigning both sites and managing the existing sites during his first year, Pete reduced those costs by 10%. During Pete's second year, once the websites were launched and the new administration system was in place, the annual website costs fell again by another 20%. During those years, the two websites also won a total of 6 Mutual Fund Education Alliance STAR Awards for design and usability.
   
Corporate Timeline in Print and Online — Ariel Capital Management
  To commemorate Ariel Mutual Funds' flagship fund, Ariel Fund, Pete suggested the development of a timeline highlighting the various key events in the life of the fund, underscoring the consistency of Ariel's philosophy, and strongly reinforcing Ariel's brand. Pete was asked to manage the design and development of both a print and online version of the timeline. Working with a design shop in New York, Pete oversaw all design and managed the research effort to uncover fund, company and world events over the past 20 years. The printed timeline was produced as an 11" x 24" piece, tri-folded into a letter-sized brochure. The online timeline was developed as an interactive Flash movie with animated characters and background, with pop-up content and information. Pete was asked to present both pieces to the Board of Directors and Board of Trustees. The senior management was so excited about them that the printed pieces were required in all in-office client meetings and were mailed to all new and prospective retail investors. The online piece is available to all visitors of arielmutualfunds.com or arielcapital.com, and is being updated and repurposed as a self-running feature to be presented in Ariel booths at various trade shows and conferences. Both versions of the timeline are considered very strong entries for the 2007 Mutual Fund Education Alliance STAR Awards.
   
Online Mobile Data Sales Tool — US Wireless Carrier
  A major US wireless carrier's Sales Consultants face the daunting task of trying to identify the right combination of hundreds of different enterprise mobile data products for any given customer. Pete managed a team of five through the design, development, testing and deployment of a new web-based recommendation and sales tool. Over the course of 5 months, and with a budget of $400,000, the team developed an application evaluation framework, designed and developed a recommendation engine, interactive questionnaire and product browser, and constructed and presented three training modules for the system. The finished tool presents an interactive questionnaire and product browser to enable real-time product selection advice to both sales consultants and customers.
   
FYE Media Stores Retail Kiosk — Trans World Entertainment
  For the FYE Retail Kiosk described above in the Design section, Pete was responsible for managing the development of a high-fidelity system prototype to prove the concept both with users and with the board of directors. Pete managed a team of four programmers and artists through a 3-month design and development effort. The system used a touch-screen PC, fully-functional HTML and Flash interfaces, production-ready art, and an Access database to simulate the authentic user experience. This high-fidelity prototype allowed users and stakeholders to try out virtually all of the key functions of the system before dedicating time and resources to the development of the full backend integration.
 

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Employment and Education History
   
Ariel Capital Management (November, 2004 - Present)
  Pete joined Ariel Capital Management as Director of Internet Marketing and Operations, a member of the Mutual Fund Marketing team. Pete is responsible for all aspects of design, development and operations for 3 external and 1 internal website. Reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, Pete works directly with all areas of the business, including presenting to the Mutual Funds Board of Trustees and Ariel Capital's Board of Directors. In 2006, Pete accepted a position on the 5-member eCommerce Steering Committee for the Mutual Fund Education Alliance, an industry group dedicated to furthering education and communication with shareholders. In 2008 he accepted the position of Chairman of the eCommerce Steering Committee.

In 2007, because of his background in visual design, ergonomics and vendor management, Pete also accepted the role of Facilities Manager for Ariel. As such, he manages all of the interior design, architecture, construction and maintenance vendors that contribute to Ariel's world class office space in the AON Center.
   
DiamondCluster International (April, 1999 - November, 2004)
  An original member of the DiamondCluster Media Lab, later renamed to the Experience Design Group, Pete played the role of Customer Advocate on both large IT consulting projects and focused design and prototype assignments. Pete was the senior member of the group from early 2003 until his departure in late 2004 and was responsible for primary customer contact, scoping and budgeting, ideation of design approaches, managing business, design and development staff, and partnering with business line and IT departments to integrate solutions. He also co-authored a white paper titled “Rich Client Applications” while at DiamondCluster.
 

 
OmniTech Consulting Group (June, 1997 - April, 1999)
  Pete joined OmniTech as the senior interface and content designer. The OmniTech New Media Group developed CD-ROM and Web-based interactive training and simulation systems for Fortune 1000 customers. In the small team environment (8 members) Pete and his coworkers formed a strongly multidisciplinary team, with each member taking on a variety of roles as projects required. In addition to project management and interface design, Pete developed content, built simple prototype click-throughs, scripted and produced various media for use in the systems, and managed and performed system and user testing.
   
Andersen Consulting (October, 1992 - June, 1997)
  Pete joined the New York Metro Change Management practice as the one of the first dedicated "multimedia" specialists. Pete was asked to develop animated tutorials and courseware for a variety of Fortune 100 clients. Pete was also selected as the only member of the NY practice to receive a 2-year assignment to Northwestern University's Institute for the Learning Sciences. Upon completion of the program, Pete was one of three module designers on a $20M business simulation project for a major international manufacturing and services company. Pete also provided user-input, design and testing of a custom feedback engine developed for the system.
   
MS Computer Science, Institute for the Learning Sciences (August, 1995)
  Pete completed a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Northwestern University's Institute for the Learning Sciences. The program combines computer science, psychology, cognitive science and education to explore the ways in which technology can mimic and reinforce human thought and learning. The term "Goal Based Scenario" was coined at the ILS to describe a particular structure and approach to learning through simulations.
   
MA Technical Communication, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (May, 1992)
  Pete completed a Masters degree in technical communication and communication theory from RPI. The program combined print and on-screen content design and layout, as well as theory on communication of complex thoughts and topics. Pete also received a Graphics Certification for electronic layout and design, and completed introductory courses in computer animation.
   
BA Narrative Writing, University of Illinois (May, 1991)
  Pete completed a bachelors degree in narrative writing from the English and Rhetoric Dept. at the University of Illinois. He also received a minor in Computer Science.
   
 

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