Kris Trader

Lead designer of the redesign of MyMetrix. From that project, created the most used product of the company, the Media Metrix Quick Reports by which 90% of our clients receive their data.

Lead Designer of the Media Planner experience from the ground up, soup to nuts, research, design, testing. Currently being pushed for release.

Completed design and user testing on a campaign building wizard for our AdEffx product.

Redesigned and continued to refine the AdEffx dashboards, an up and coming product.

Completed several user research trials and test products with current users.

Designed and documented several UI experiences for AOL Real Estate, AOL Travel and AOL Autos, projects ranging in size from small to large.

Was promoted to Lead UI Designer on the Travel channel in my last year with AOL.

Latest project for AOL Travel in production will release sometime around December 2009, called The Local Lists, designed entire project from creative brief to final production in span of 2 months.

Designed the Insider for AOL Travel’s most recent product: tripvine: ex: http://theinsider.tripvine.com/category/chicago/
Created workflows, researched user data using Omniture.

Job required clear, proactive communication using Agile style of project management, daily scrums, standups, worked closely with developers to accomplish our goals of the best sites possible.

Currently working on a usability testing project for AOL Living & QCing a global project, message boards for all of aol.

Helped redesign corporate image in the initial months, however for displaying leadership qualities and a solid grasp of logic.

Promoted to UI design manager after 6 months and focused primarily on product's web portal/UI Design.

Worked with project engineers to come up with several design variations. In between revisions, learned more Flash, intermediate action scripting, CSS, working primarily with Dreamweaver, and some simple HTML coding.

The company no longer exists, but friendships are still going strong.

Checked video and audio feed for problems that could lead to broadcasting anomalies. This included checking chroma/vector levels, listening for audio dropouts, looking for video dropouts, watching for incorrect editing (misplaced frames, wrong timing) also learned to calculate the ins and outs of segment breaks.

After 1 year was promoted to Classified Chief. Directing a team of 9 people (6 designers) to design (keeping track of every ad placed) in 22 tabloid sized classified sections weekly within 9 hours. Total circulation 280,000 bi-weekly.

Job required intense attention to detail and meeting several tight deadlines. While working there, helped facilitate the reduced building time of a typical classified section from 8 hours down to less than 1 hour through training and streamlining the process/preparing files for designers better beforehand.

Spent entire time when not committed to other projects, working as an Ad Designer.
Performed the following:
· Ad & Magazine Design
· Won 3 national SNA awards.

Updated classified section of website, using HTML, photoshop and Claris Homepage.
· Redesigned the classified sections, winning my company 2 national awards · Facilitated meetings · Wrote classified building manual

After a half year, on top of being Classified Chief, became Art Director/Editor of ColumbusJobs; a bi-weekly full color employment publication, circulation 50,000.
· Researched & edited articles
· Designed layout, filler ads
· Designed template for ease of use
· Coordinated with Sales/Design staff

As needed trained designers in:
· QuarkXPress · Illustrator · Photoshop

Attended classes on anatomy and animation, majoring in Media Studies

Attended general education classes on Psychology, Math, Sciences & History.