Sara Nicholson: Portfolio

SalesCrunch

saranicholson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:35:04 +0000

SalesCrunch provides products and information tailored to salespeople to make their business lives easier. These consist of a web-based meeting application with sharing and tracking abilities, gathered articles specifically about the sales world, and coming soon, training materials based on users’ own experiences/meetings/presentations.

I joined SalesCrunch in 2011 as their User Experience Designer. I have designed and redesigned the UX for the meeting application itself as well as the overall brand. My job is to provide wireframes, mockups, html and css coding when needed.

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Cell Phone Illustration

saranicholson — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 04:44:20 +0000

Project: Cell Phone Illustration
Programs: Adobe Illustrator

Got Bulldog?

saranicholson — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:33:07 +0000

Project: Decal Design
Programs: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop

The Shaving Gallery

saranicholson — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:55:22 +0000

Project: Website for The Shaving Gallery
Created in Collaboration with Qudeso
Responsibilities: Design, HTML/CSS coding, assisting developer with shopping cart CSS

Hyundai

saranicholson — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:11:49 +0000

Employer: The Cobalt Group
Client: Hyundai
Responsibilities: Wireframing, Design (Homepages and Widgets), Client Reviews, Graphic Production (Agile Methodolgy)

Active Sites:

PopChiX

saranicholson — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 22:12:14 +0000

PopChiX is the product of four determined females who wanted to expand the GamerchiX universe. Chloe Brown, Christa Charter, Andrea Avellan and myself set forth to make a larger space for the girls in the GamerchiX group to chat on. With the new site, we could give the girls a chance to not only chat, but to submit articles and reviews for their own site. The goal for this site was to encourage girls to write about what they loved and get published. We had seen several posts behind closed doors that deserved to be read and this seemed like the logical way to do it.

The girls write about anything from child-rearing woes to the latest first person shooters.

I designed and built the new site as well as added new features where requested.

We started a PopChiX store in 2010 at Zazzle.

View Site Screengrab
View Artwork Created for Group
View Hero Artwork Examples

Site:

Artwork Created for the site:

Example hero shots:

GamerchiX

saranicholson — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 19:02:58 +0000

Having been a fairly competitive gamer during the first years of the Xbox release (around 2003), I came across a fair amount of female bashing. Of course, it wasn’t my fault that my 7.62 rifle round found the middle of the offender’s forehead but after a while, it got to be really tiresome. Trust me, I’m not one to complain at every little verbal smack given to me but it was constant and began making what should have been fun, well, not so much.

When I met Christa Charter from Microsoft and Chloe Brown from PMS, we all complained about this treatment and decided to do something. We understood that many people felt bashed by the “anonymous” bullies online but we concentrated on what we knew first hand – female gamers. In 2006, we banded together and formed GamerchiX – a group female gamers could join to find other female gamers. We created this for the girls and it was pretty much run by them. We had few rules but they were enforced strictly. Mostly, it just consisted of respecting your fellow gamers.

Microsoft graciously gave us our own space on Xbox.com and we got our own community gaming night that was advertised on the Community Channel on Xbox Live and on Xbox.com. We also had a special GamerchiX leaderboard started on mygamercard.net to make it easier for girls to find each other. This was a night for the girls to get together and play without having to deal with the annoyance of less than stellar players.

GamerchiX Ladies Night on Xbox.com

Microsoft also allowed us to create avatar clothing for girls to not only promote the group but to just give more options for female gamers. My contributions were the logo hoodie, the jeans and the black sneakers with purple stripes:

Female Avatar Clothing

We now have over 10,000 members and have moved on to create a space for them to have an even louder voice by allowing them to contribute to the running of their own site. (see PopChiX)

We have hosted a variety of events for ChiX in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and New York where girls were invited to come out, meet each other and play some games.

An offshoot of the group, GivingChiX, run by Kiki Lewis and Nori Grismore has raised money for different charities across the United States.

Pimp My Poker

saranicholson — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 09:01:53 +0000

Pimp My Poker specializes in creating custom poker tables. The goal of the website was to attract new and returning customers by showcasing their work, giving an overview of how to order a table, and selling poker accessories. Being the “new kid” on the block for this niche, they needed something other table makers didn’t have. This spawned the table “customizer”. The customizer is an interactive Flash piece that allows the customer to pick their rail color and fabric, racetrack color and material, playing surface color and material as well as cupholder color. They could then print it out and share it with those involved in the purchase and have it handy when placing their order on the phone.

It was highly successful and spawned a number of imitations.

Client: Pimp My Poker
Responsibilities: Design, Client Meetings, Flash (AS coding), HTML/CSS, Graphic Production

Columbia University: QMSS

saranicholson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:45:32 +0000

Employer: Columbia University
Client: Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences
Responsibilities: Design, Client Meetings

Columbia University: EVP for Research

saranicholson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:58:22 +0000

Employer: Columbia University
Client: Executive Vice President for Research
Responsibilities: Design, Client Meetings