Philip Fierlinger

Current

• Head of Design at Xero (www.xero.com)
• Owner / Director at Turntable (www.turntablemedia.com)

Past

• User Experience Strategist, Senior Designer, Flash Designer/Developer at Shift (www.shift.co.nz)
• Design Intern at General Magic

Education

• University of The Arts

Recommended

12 people have recommended Philip

Connections

181 connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

• Xero
• Turntable
• Blog

Philip Fierlinger’s Summary

These are the main things that I obsess about on a regular basis:

• How to create designs and interactive experiences where people keep saying to themselves "damn this is good"

• Making sure that whatever I deliver works effortlessly, solidly and dependably

Throughout my career I have worked hard to push the boundaries of interactive design while remaining obsessed with providing the most gratifying user experience.

I work across the entire lifespan of a project: from requirements gathering, to strategy and concept development, through prototyping and user testing, into design and coding, all the way through to user acceptance testing and documentation.

Philip Fierlinger’s Specialties:

Core Expertise

• User experience strategy
• Interaction design
• Visual design
• Information Architecture
• Backend / Frontend programming
• Research and strategy development
• Audience analysis and user testing
• Copywriting

Software expertise

• XHTML, CSS, XML, Javascript, Actionscript, PHP, MySQL
• Flash design, programming, animation, and video
• Photoshop, Dreamweaver

Philip Fierlinger’s Experience

• Head of Design

  Xero (www.xero.com)

  (Public Company; 11-50 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

  July 2006 — Present (2 years 4 months)

  At Xero we have created a seriously kick-ass online accounting platform. People are loving Xero, saying things like it's sexy and fun. Sexy and fun...accounting!
  
  For us, it's huge fun making it, working with a great team of highly talented, passionate people.

• Owner / Director

  Turntable (www.turntablemedia.com)

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Online Media industry)

  September 1994 — Present (14 years 2 months)

  I co-founded Turntable with my brother in 1994.
  
  We tend to do a lot of entertainment related interactive design work for major media empires, as well as small indie outfits. Our expertise and style also lends itself well to design conscious corporates that seek our ability to appeal to youth culture, early adopters, and fashion focused consumers.
  
  Our client list includes: Comcast, Dreamworks, Warner Bros, Disney, Sony Playstation, Macromedia, Apple, Palm, Beastie Boys, De La Soul, Eric Clapton, among many others.

• User Experience Strategist, Senior Designer, Flash Designer/Developer

  Shift (www.shift.co.nz)

  (Online Media industry)

  January 2002 — June 2006 (4 years 6 months)

  At Shift, I helped define the online strategies and produced major deliverables for key clients such as Tourism New Zealand (www.newzealand.com), New Zealand Now, TeAra.com, National Library, IRD, TEC, Housing New Zealand, NZ Cricket, among numerous others.
  
  My strategy, design, and coding work on newzealand.com helped Shift win a Webby in 2005, 2006, plus a nomination for best homepage in 2005, and another nomination this year.

• Design Intern

  General Magic

  (Public Company; Telecommunications industry)

  January 1992 — June 1992 (6 months)

  I was the first intern at General Magic, an early PDA developer founded by the legends of Apple: Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, and Susan Kare. I worked on product development concepts for 3rd generation devices - smart phones, which we projected would take 5-10 years to hit the market. I was pretty surprised that it took so long.
  
  I got to work with some remarkable people while I was there: Megan Smith, Tony Fadell, Steve Perlman, Scott Knaster, Scott Collins, Kevin Lynch, and heaps of other incredibly talented people that have gone on to do some amazing work.

Philip Fierlinger’s Education

• University of The Arts

  BS, Industrial Design, 1988 — 1992

Additional Information

Philip Fierlinger’s Websites:

• Xero
• Turntable
• Blog

Philip Fierlinger’s Groups:

•    New Zealand Web Development

Philip Fierlinger’s Honors:

I was the design lead and Flash developer for the travel.NewZealand.com homepage, which was nominated for a Webby in 2005 as a result. The site won a Webby in 2005 and 2006 for best Tourism site.

My design work has been featured in numerous publications: ID Magazine, Adobe Magazine, Adobe Gallery, Macromedia Gallery, Linkdup, Cool Homepages, Music Dot Com, Stylegala, K10K, among numerous others.

I have been invited to speak at SXSW, Webstock, FlashForward, Macromedia UCON, Seybold, Macworld, Midem, and numerous other conferences around the world. I have also written on Object Oriented Programming, as well as teaching graduate courses on interactive design.

Philip Fierlinger’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch