Brian O'Neill

Current

Independent consultant: interaction design and user experience at Rhythmspice.com Media

Past

Director of Design and User Experience at Eons, Inc.
Experience Design Lead at BrownCo (Jp Morgan Chase)
Design lead / Information Architect at Fidelity Investments

Designer at Lycos
Designer at Smartplanet
Designer at ZDU
Designer at ZDNet

see less...

4 more...

Education

Northern Arizona University

Recommended

10 people have recommended Brian

Connections

213 connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

Brian O'Neill’s Summary

I have been designing web sites and applications since 1996. In 2007, I became a full time independent user experience consultant. These days, doing business as Rhythmspice Media, I work heavily with startups and larger corporations to design and prototype useful, usable, and beautiful web applications. I have worked with companies large and small including Lycos, Fidelity Investments, JPMorganChase/BrownCo, Etrade, updown.com, myhappyplanet.com, MITRE, Akorri, and others.

Portfolio on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24117555@N03/sets/72157604768070832

How I generally work in a business:

I provide design and user experience guidance/management to my clients and execute on projects as needed at various places in the product development cycle. Sometimes this is broad level vision/discovery work to get from ideas to something visual; other times, I am seeing projects through from ideas to design, from prototype to live code. Occasionally, I do persona research and creation, run usability tests, and give accessibility consultations (reports available on request). In short, I believe strongly that software designers need to understand design, business, technology, and code to create useful, usable, beautiful software.

My goals as a designer:

* Design useful, usable and, beautiful applications for people
* Help businesses with their online strategy and the balance of business goals with user experience
* Combine agile / rapid development methods with user-centered design
* Robust, interactive prototyping over documentation (show, don't tell)
* Act as a bridge between product people and software engineers
* Apply XHTML/CSS (Web Standards) and encourage accessibility awareness (Universal Design)
* Get stuff done fast. Execution matters more than Ideas.
* Use open source when possible. Contribute back.
* Help businesses hire smart, diverse, well-rounded designers over experts

Resume: http://www.rhythmspice.com/resume.cfm

Brian O'Neill’s Specialties:

User experience & interaction designer, information architect, design management, web-standards, prototyping. Usability testing, user research, personas, AGILE. XHTML, CSS, dHTML, Javascript: JQUERY, AJAX. Ruby on Rails, PHP/MYSQL, Drupal, ColdFusion, ASP, JSP/STRUTS. SEO specialist. 508, WCAG, Accessibility expertise. IxDA. Financial services, active trader, brokerage, travel industry, survey science, data visualization, language learning, designing for boomers and seniors.

Brian O'Neill’s Experience

Independent consultant: interaction design and user experience

Rhythmspice.com Media

(Internet industry)

January 1999 — Present (10 years 11 months)

Rhythmspice is my company and the name under which I offer my design and user experience expertise.
Director of Design and User Experience

Eons, Inc.

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)

February 2006 — February 2007 (1 year 1 month)

* Lead the information architecture, interaction, and visual design of the original Eons.com site (August 2006 launch)
* As the original designer, I built and managed a team of designers and user experience specialists
* Helped integrate Agile and User Experience methodologies
* Conducted and began a usability / user validation program
* Architected and coded much of the original front-end XHTML/CSS for the site, employing Web Standards methodologies
* Designed several of the core applications and some of the database models
Experience Design Lead

BrownCo (Jp Morgan Chase)

(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; JPMC; Financial Services industry)

January 2005 — November 2006 (1 year 11 months)

I help design the information, interfaces and experiences of our active traders. I use the user-centered design (UCD) methodology and am responsible for everything from goal/task exploration through usability testing and final markup/CSS creation. Early on, I helped BrownCo’s Product Management team learn how to analyze and build visual models of customer goals to help steer design.

On a daily basis, I am the Design Lead for the new Accounts and Online Application areas of the site. I am also leading and teaching the cost-effective, and accessible use of Web Standards methodologies (structured XHTML, CSS, and ECMA Script) and manage the creation of CSS and markup at BrownCo. Coworkers see me as a bridge between the UI Development and design groups. I also help propagate usage of Web Standards in other JPMC business. Finally, I act as a primary consultant for web accessibility issues and am a member of JPMC’s Access Ability networking group.
Design lead / Information Architect

Fidelity Investments

(Internet industry)

2003 — 2004 (1 year )
Designer

Lycos

(Public Company; Internet industry)

2000 — 2003 (3 years )
Designer

Smartplanet

(Internet industry)

1999 — 2000 (1 year )
Designer

ZDU

(Internet industry)

1999 — 2000 (1 year )
Designer

ZDNet

(Public Company; Internet industry)

1999 — 2000 (1 year )

Brian O'Neill’s Education

Northern Arizona University

Bachelor of Music , Percussion Studies / Instrumental Performance , August 1995 — May 1999

Graduated summa cum laude.

Additional Information

Brian O'Neill’s Websites:

Brian O'Neill’s Interests:

design, user experience, music, percussion, jazz, tiki, mid-century, architecture, photography

Brian O'Neill’s Groups:

Interaction Design Association (IxDA),
Usability Professionals Association (Boston),
Several bands and ensembles in Boston,
Boston Musicians Association (American Federation of Musicians),
Percussive Arts Society International