melissa carmichael

About Me

I am a Senior Interactive Designer specializing in digital media with twelve years of experience. An end-user advocate, I balance creative innovation, usability, and client business goals. I have strong organizational skills, am able to handle large-scale projects, tight timelines, and multiple projects all with a great sense of humor.

I love art, gardening, cooking, enjoying nature, and volunteer one day a week at a local dog shelter.

How I found my path... A native of Vermont, I moved to Boston in 1996 to attend The School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Originally a Photography major, I wasn't totally convinced that a career in photography was for me. So I took a year off, backpacked solo around Europe, and tried to figure things out. I landed in London where I worked at a small comany called Redstart, dedicated to promoting graphic designers, illustrators, and photographers through their portfolio showcase website. My exposure there sparked an interest in digital media. I returned to the USA to finish college and immediately changed my focus of studies (there are no "majors" at Museum School) to graphic design and web design. While finishing up my last semester at school in 2000, I had the opportunity to work part-time at ZEFER Boston. On my first day there I was asked to choose a department; Front-end Development or Visual Design (ah...the early days of a digital agency!). At the time I considered myself to have stronger coding chops than design skills, but wanted gain the most out of the experience, so I chose Visual Design. It turned out to be a great learning opportunity and I have been designing interactive media ever since.

RESUME SUMMARY

• Senior Interaction/Interactive Designer | Mobiquity, Inc. | Boston, MA

  July 2011 - present

• - Lead interaction and user interface design efforts on enterprise level application projects.

  - iPhone, iPad, Android, and tablets

• Senior Interactive Designer | Cambridge BioMarketing | Cambridge, MA

  Oct 2009 - Feb 2011

• - Led interactive digital efforts in projects ranging from websites, application interfaces, kiosks and email campaigns. Help plan and strategize for digital projects.

  - Presented concepts, contribute to pitches, brainstorming sessions, project scoping, and budget estimates.

  - Performed design audits, competitive analysis, focus group testing, rapid iteractive prototyping.

  - Collaborated with marketing, strategists, content writers, and IA/IX team members, and developers.

• Art Director | RDVO | Somerville, MA

  Aug 2007 - Oct 2009

• - Conception of interface designs, animations, games for interactive kiosks, applications, websites, and online rich media campaigns.

  - Managed freelance designers, coordinated with 3rd party vendors, assessed scope and budgets, presented designs in client meetings, led large-scale production coordination efforts.

  - Prepared detailed documents, deliverables, site architecture, technical specifications, and style guides.

• Senior Designer | Cramer Productions | Norwood, MA

  Aug 2004 - Aug 2007

• - Creation of interface designs, animations, and games for interactive CD-Rom, kiosk, webcast, and website projects.

  - Managed freelance developers and junior designers in small project teams, assessed scope and budgets, presented designs in client meetings, prepared production documents and templates, responsible for final deliverables.

• Animation Designer | Animation Technologies | Boston, MA

  Mar - Aug 2004

• - Designed and built interactive Flash interfaces for high profile legal cases and pharmaceutical companies.

  - Produced litigation graphics requiring accuracy, confidentiality and under tight deadlines.

• Lead Designer | Acadient e-Learning | Boston, MA

  Mar 2001 - Jun 2003

• - Lead designer for instructional CD and web-based applications, training programs, and streaming media broadcasts.

  - Created interface designs, icon systems, educational illustrations, and interactive graphics for online courseware.

• Visual Designer | ZEFER | Boston, MA

  Jun - Dec 2000

• - Lead designer on website projects, created graphical user interfaces, information architecture, wireframes and style guides.