I feel my positions as information architect and usability/interface designer are perhaps the closest I can get to being an anthropologist in the web design and development world. My position allows me to put the user first in my design of user interface and web tools to create a user experience that is both intuitive and cutting edge. Utilizing hands on studies such as card sorts and other qualitative and quantitative research I have real information to back up my design work making it not only meet but exceed user expectations. I feel lucky to have landed a position such as this as it is both challenging and rewarding both in a professional and academic sense.

In my previous positions as web developer/designer I worked on projects ranging from work-group solutions for the JCPenney's Marketing department in Lasso, FileMaker Pro, MySQL, PHP, CSS and Javascript to building a custom web-mail interface in C# and .Net for Principle Data systems. In addition to building those systems I also did web design work using tools such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Flash. My design work included designing interfaces for the work-group solutions I built at JCP, the JCPenney point-of-sale interface, and the user interface for the Principle Data System school portal.

You can find examples in the web section of this site.

I enjoy studying people, how they interact with the world around them and each other. I couldn't decide which social science to focus on for my BA, so I completed an interdisciplinary degree in philosophy, psychology, and anthropology. My focus as a philosophy student is on behavioral and religious studies. As a psychology student, I chose to explore the fields of criminal, abnormal, and sexual behavior. As an anthropology student, I use both philosophy and psychology as tools to learn more about people and their cultures.

I am currently pursuing my Masters degree in Applied Anthropology focusing on Internet culture through the University of North Texas. I find the internet to be an incredibly interesting place to watch people come together from all over the world to form unique groups as they create a culture of their very own. It amazes me to see how and why people use the internet in their daily lives and how quickly the internet changes things even in the analog world.

In the side column you can find my reports I completed for my hands on classes in Design Anthropology (EcoMoto Project with Motorola) and Ethnographic Field Methods in Anthropology (Ethnography of a Guild in World of Warcraft) for my undergraduate degree. What you won't find there is all of the ethnographic field world completed to create those two reports.

For the Eco Moto program we utilized photography as well as video interviews. For the Warcraft project I collected data via interviews, surveys, and through participant observation both in game and online. Due to the fact the Eco Moto piece is just my part of a group project, and the Warcraft one was turned in for a grade, I was not able to include any field work here. I fully intend on posting anything I complete for my graduate studies here as well. Please give me feed back on the content, I know I need an editor. ;)

You can find out more about my education and employment background in the info section of the site.

Photography and Digital Manipulation

I completed my Associates of Art Degree in 1999. I focused on photography for my AA by completing a series of classes in black and white, color, and digital photography. My experience includes hand processing film and hand developing prints in black and white and color. During the first year I was in school for my AA, I worked at 2 different photo labs where I gained an eye for color, composition, and color correction. In 2002, I completed a yearlong certificate program that concentrated on digital arts including sound engineering, digital music composition, video, 3D animation, flash animation, and web design.

Today, photography is a hobby of mine. Due to my schedule as a stepmom who works full time and has several freelance projects on the side, I am unable to get out and take pictures as often as I would like. When I cannot take the pictures myself, I find stock photography and make something entirely new out of it through digital manipulation.

You can find examples in the photo and misc sections of the site.

Writing, Gaming, and Music

In my free time, I keep an online journal where I post about my daily life, articles I find interesting, current events, and occasionally poetry. My gaming experience harkens back to my father's Atari at the age of 5 and my very own Super NES at the age of 12. I played Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, or various pinball games any chance I had to play at an arcade. At the age of 21 I worked for 3DFX, a manufacturer of gaming video cards. I did tech support first for the PC and then the Macintosh line of video cards. One of the benefits of the job was playing video games to test the video cards. Today, I own all three major consoles and I am a member of and webmaster for a raiding guild in World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

I quit playing saxophone and euphonium after I left high school and now I realize how much I miss playing an instrument and creating music. A couple of years ago I received an acoustic guitar for my birthday and as soon as I graduate I look forward to picking it up again. I also want to get back into digital music after the brief introduction I received while earning my digital arts certificate.

You can find more information in the web and misc sections of the site.