Climatic Branch Overview Briefing

I made this PowerPoint briefing completely from scratch to replace one that was very old and ugly.  Some key attributes of the new version:

• Curb appeal: a polished, professional look that's clean and simple rather than gimmicky and cluttered. 
• Flexibility: the core slides can be used effectively for a five-minute overview, but they are backed by dozens of supplemental slides that contain enough information to use for test program negotiations. 
• Navigability: both the person giving the briefing and those receiving it benefit from the visual cues to the organization of the content.  Extensive linking allows for easily diving into details at any point and for easily returning to the point of departure.
• Maintainability: Updates and edits can be made without triggering a cascading set of consequences.  This was especially important in that an expansion of facilities and some organizational changes were imminent at the time this was produced. 

Travel Report Infographics

In both 2007 and 2008 my wife and I combined work trips and vacation time into multi-week cross-country journeys.  These infographics summarize the trips, and the state outline photos show some of the specific locations visited.

  

Book of Dates (1752-2111)

This booklet of dates started as a Java programming practice exercise.  I expanded on a small example program that would create a one-month calendar when a month and year were specified by the user.  Instead of one month, I had my program output a full 359 years calendars.

The raw data wasn't very usable, so I formatted it such that four years dates at a time would fit on a printed page.  In the outside margin of each page I specified the dates covered.  The position of this indicator is an indicator of itself - at the beginning of the booklet it is near the top of the page, but by the last page it has moved nearly to the bottom.

To complete the package I wrote up the results of some calendar research I had done, added a colophon and the Java code, and turned the whole thing into a PDF.

George Washington Quotation

I saw this statement for the first time on a framed print in a stairwell in Washington Hall at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania.  I was there for a couple nights on a work trip, and the statement seemed so apropos that I took a picture.  About a year later I was in an office where my coworkers needed to hear something like this, so I printed it, framed it, and hung it on my cubical wall (the original is in storage right now; this is a rendering with a little more texture to the background).

I'm not sure that it triggered any profound changes, but I am sure that everyone got the point.

Interface Mockup for Custom Testing Software

As I put it in one version of my resume: "Created and documented a mockup of a database-backed system for test tracking and recording."  Some of the resulting visuals are in the composite image to the right..

This was a self-initiated project sparked by seeing how inefficient and mistake-prone testing could be, even with clear regulation-based guidelines.  Some common problems came from turnover in the testing workforce, the sheer volume of test items, the volume and variety of test data, and the frequency of delays during the tests.

My proposed database-backed system would take advantage of the formalized guidelines to make the testing process run on rails, and would thus solve the just-listed problems.

UPDATE 1: Speaking of rails, as I researched the best way to implement the system, I got a taste of the future when my research took me to the Ruby on Rails project; I could see that web-based approach was certainly the best solution.

UPDATE 2: Looking back from early 2013, I can also now see that tablet-like devices would have been (and still would be) the ideal hardware to match with the software described/shown.  On-the-floor testing makes even notebook-type solutions awkward, but a direct touch-based interface running on a small tablet would be just right.

Test Procedure Documentation

From the middle of 2005 to late in 2006 I worked at a government test lab.  The hydrostatic pressure test was one of the most complicated procedures we did, and surprisingly it was also completely undocumented.  After I finally learned how to do the test I decided that it would be a good idea to help future testers by documenting the procedure.

Because the software tools available were very limited, I settled on using hand-drawn illustrations in a Word document.  A scan of some of the original drawings is to the right, and a PDF of the full test procedure is linked below.

Wedding Announcement

Made for my own wedding with Macromedia Fireworks MX.  (I did not produce all the component images - the central picture on the front, the paperclip, the seed, and the bee are the work of others.)