Following completion of the initial PPM Report Template, the second half of the project involved a dynamic visual display of filings, by type. The common iconography from the PPM Report results were the logical choice for styling, since this task is meant to show a physical representation of the PPM Summary report page.

After initial wires and discussion, my team of superusers uncovered that the act of collapsing the files by TYPE, would provide a cleaner, more intuitive, interface. The near-term UI/UX goals were to improve findability of bad actors/entities, and yet be capable of further filtration. This phase of the project involved rapid iteration, and experimentation with several different styles before deciding on the approach shown.



I used Icons8 and some custom vector work to create the Key for the PPM Report, and the accompanying Filtration graph using SigmaJS.

UX tasks:
Methods Employed: Agile Methodology
Design Project Skills used:
Discovery, rapid iteration, Rapid Prototyping in Sketch for multiple views

Other: Frontend development in VS Code, Atom and Brackets; using HTML5, CSS3 and light javascript

The electronic Research Administration (eRA) at the NIH acts as a grants gatekeeper; supporting multiple agencies such as SAMHSA, CDC and FDA. Every year, hundreds of applications for grants are submitted to Grants &Funding; some by seasoned medical staff, others by graduate students/researchers.

All applications are eventually filtered, processed and organized using the Internal Referral Module or IRM for short.

The scope of scientific topics requires extensive expertise, even for the initial assignation. Applicants are assigned a Reviewer to rate their research on a variety of criteria. The Reviewer, in turn, is authorized to accept the assignment, reassign to someone more qualified to review the research, or finally to remove the application from the UI, after providing an explanation.

Prior to 2019; this entire process was done via paper, mail and fax. Funding/new research announcements and other alerts which require senior staff review could be held up for weeks. This often hindered or delayed the in-person, live meeting where final application scores are assigned.

The initial discovery session revealed that senior staffs were split into 2 tiers – Reviewers who worked with grant applications directly, and senior eRA staff who invited and maintained Reviewers to participate in the process. A key function for both Reviewers and Senior Staff was being able to send feedback to aid in refining the application content quickly, ensuring that both Reviewers and Applicants fulfilled their duties on schedule for the appropriate phase in the Meeting schedule.

Following initial rapid iteration, I determined that all medical staff already went to the same screen to find alerts and announcements related to their work. The pain point discovered was the mixnig together of different alerts; confusing staff. I proposed a dashboard approach, grouping alerts together and stacking them by category.

This optimizes the view of internal staff, and yielded the desired result of increased efficiency in processing of submitted Grant applications.

The IAR dates back to the 1980s – it is how application grants are properly scored and catalogued by NIH. Initially an all-paper process, by the 2010s, most submissions for Grants were made in Word/docx format. If Reviewers or grant applicants were working in a remote area, proper correspondence and timely review was often not possible with the limitations in connection in many countries. View Flow in Full Size


Taking advantage of newly available resources, the UX team was given the task of adding an online interface to IAR. I made use of our newly customized Design System components, and designed a customized interface that housed a dynamically populated template system. This system interacted with existing NIH infrastructure, to populate the correct version of the Research Questionaire.

Online Critique Templates were tested and approved by both the presiding group of senior faculty, and development stack was approved by the IAR lead. The OCT system is now live for select research demographics, using the same UI and colors originally proposed by myself.
UX tasks:
Secondhand research of dynamic data entry, optimizing form design, cross referencing with Nielsen Norman standards.
Artifacts created included documentation of the user flow, UX discovery, and UI design + production based on this research. A/B Testing; informal, then semi formal with local IAR stakeholders included.
Methods Employed:
Agile Methodology, Lean UX principles
Design Project Skills used:
Discovery, rapid iteration, Typographic Rules, Rapid Prototyping in Adobe Illustrator
Additional Information is available at the OCT section of the IAR index: https://www.era.nih.gov/erahelp/IAR_Rev/#IAR_ReviewersHelp/5_OnlineCritTemp/OCT_Navigating.htm

Unisys had several projects running concurrently when I joined; the first one being Temporal Analysis with Data Mining for USCIS. I was briefed, then paired with a senior data scientist, who was preparing to publish and present his research on NLP, and how it could be used to indirectly “predict” the ideological radicalization of a person, given their connections and recent social events attended.

As the project was already underway, I did not have to perform a formal Discovery. The greatest challenge was creating presentation graphics and a UI that allowed the source data to be shown, while also assigning a visual “priority. Until this time, the program assigned a value to whatever individual was entered; however the value lacked context to everyone but the research team.


UX tasks:
Performed color/contrast and design audit on prototype graph display (cover image )
A/B Testing; informal, then semi-formal with entire working group included.
Methods Employed: Agile Methodology, Lean UX principles

Design Project Skills used:
Discovery, rapid iteration, Graphic Design and Typographic Rules, Rapid Prototyping in Adobe Illustrator for both web and application UIs. Once this was completed, I handed off designs to the senior developers in charge of deployment, to switch in new colors and iconography.

Other: Frontend development in Adobe Dreamweaver, using HTML5, CSS3 and light javascript

Private Placement Memorandums (PPM) are securities disclosure documents, used by a company (issuer) that is engaged in a private offering of securities. A PPM serves as a single, comprehensive document outlining the material details about the offering.

FINRA developed a way of combining numerical data mining with Natural Language Processing, Data Mining and Tribal Analysis.

This program runs predictive algorithms on thousands of PPMs to summarize, then assess the credibility and assign “a probability score”, essentially, of FINRA’s entire library of broker/dealer entities.
Bad actors are classified as entities that had several high risk relationships: for example, if they had worked in the past with others that were penalized or barred from further financial practice. The algorithm eventually assigned a general score to an individual, citing the compiled risk of all their past financial records, submissions and relationships.



My first round of wireframes ran through several changes while I determined best way to show the scale of probability via graphic elements, entity demographics, and finally how to cross-reference the PPM findings with another database; assigning the same hierarchical values along the way.
UX tasks:
Methods Employed: Agile Methodology, partial Lean UX principles
Design Project Skills used:
Discovery, rapid iteration, Rapid Prototyping in Adobe Illustrator for both web and application UIs. Other: Frontend development in VS Code; using HTML5, CSS3 and light javascript

As Lexmark modernizes their delivery platforms, a new media initiative was developed. The first priority of this information ‘hub’ would be the showcase of multiple new products and subscription vehicles. Officially deemed Lexmark’s The Spot; the hub was to have new articles, and target industry-relevant social media posts across LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
During my initial Discovery, I determined the hub would share characteristics of “top 10” style content hubs and listicles, similar to Buzzfeed.

While discussing programming resources with the development lead, I consolidated requirements to the creation of a single template page; capable of housing 3 types of entries . The three most relevant media to be supported were articles/listicles, image galleries, and HD videos.

Stakeholders approved our wireframes, allowing us to move forward with existing Lexmark framework components, which ensured delivery time. (new components to be created when development resources are available). Finally, artifacts and documentation/recommendations and customization of tags were provided for future indexing.

Wireframes were handed off to a digital designer, who created an advanced prototype using Adobe Experience Manager.

UX tasks:
Secondhand research of medium sized content hubs, and appropriate methods for indexing topics. (12-15 entries )
A/B Testing; informal, then semi formal with entire working group included.
Methods Employed: Agile Methodology, Lean UX principles & Web Heuristics

Design Project Skills used:
Discovery, Typographic Rules, Rapid Prototyping, then Wireframing in Adobe XD

In 2018, the Office of the Director (OD) at NIH approved the eRA ( Electronic Research Administration) to perform a multi-level web and UX upgrade to their their website and application suite. The new UX team was formed in 2019. We looked past thecode base and existing frameworks, and set about modernizing the overall experience.

UX Advocacy became a large part of this process, as the eRA application suite is quite complex, and no longer followed typical web standards. UX team work sessions were first conducted on paper, then whiteboard, then eventually moved into vector applications ( Balsamiq, Adobe Illustrator)



As part of the new UX team at eRA, one of our goals was to consolidate and unify all of the existing app styles within eRA Commons. To this end, I introduced basic iconographic principles, allowing the UX team to propose a modernized UI Navigation of eRA applications.

The second phase of this project was to begin writing UX guidance for appropriate use of the components found in the eRA Styleguide, a heavily customized version of Bootstrap 3.x



UX tasks:
UX Advocacy – presenting our team, our function and how to interact with developers. eRA consisted of approximately 25 application groups; and we presented to them 2 or 3 at a time.
A/B Testing; informal, then semi formal with entire working group included.
Methods Employed: Agile Methodology, Lean UX principles
Design Project Skills used:

Discovery, rapid iteration, Typographic Rules, Rapid Prototyping in Adobe Illustrator
Other: HTML5, CSS3, VS Code and JIRA

This long-term project involved the merging the existing Lexmark Brand Center, with the most versatile and modern components from their development framework (LxCore, customized from modern design systems) .

I used my knowledge of modern design systems in this multi-step process, by streamlining the color palatte, modernizing use of tagging and heading styles, and finally producing wireframes and presentation graphics.

The resulting UI was the result of extensive feedback from Primary Use Cases: internal Web Design Staff, programmers/developers, UX Staff and frequent marketing partners.

A great deal of this demographic was shared with the News Hub project Lexmark’s The Spot: and both projects subtly influenced each other as they were finetuned.

UX tasks:
Secondhand research of industry standard design systems: Bootstrap, Mineral UI, Google Material, IBM/Carbon.
A/B Testing on mid fidelity wireframes on extended team for impartiality; semi-formal ruleset followed.
Methods Employed: Agile Methodology, Accessibility/Contrast principles to streamline color scheme.


Design Project Skills used:
Discovery, consolidation of Palatte into proposed web/ux suite

jpp 10

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