Harlan Lewis web design

Howdy! I’m Harlan.

What's web experience design?

First and foremost, I’m a web designer. That means I build web-based software with a focus on how real people use it to get things done.

Designing web experiences requires a pretty intimate knowledge of what your software is trying to accomplish and who the people using it really are. When it's done well, those people feel smart and happy, they come back again, and they tell their friends.

How does that get done?

On a typical project I write HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP or Ruby. To use these effectively, I've studied the DOM. I work with JSON, RSS, Atom, and XML feeds and APIs. I set up CMSes like Drupal, ExpressionEngine, and Wordpress. Web software is delivered to different hardware with very different interaction methods, such as mobile devices, screen readers, and regular old web browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. But even just within regular web browsers there's a lot to keep track of - they all interpret and present web pages differently from each other, and even differently from themselves from one version to the next. My sites account for all these differences.

But before the technology matters, building software takes a team that can design and communicate. It takes a lot of concept models, user flows and personas, wireframes, mockups, and usability tests. This all happens pretty fast, and it would be easy to get lost in the process without collaborative tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab, Git or SVN. My graphic design tools range in complexity from Adobe Photoshop, which I've been using daily since 1998, to pencil and paper, which I've been using since the age of three.

You mentioned experience.

I built my first commercial website 11 years ago (that's 1998), complete with shopping cart. I led a team that won a big award for video game design in 2001. My desktop software interfaces were featured in print in 2004. I went to UC Santa Cruz in 2002 and studied the History of Art & Visual Culture and American & African History. I've worked in-house as a front-end engineer for Quiddities Dev, Inc, and I've worked fulltime as an independent contractor.

I've been doing this stuff for a while, and I'd love to do it for you.

“It was in large part Harlan's responsiveness, flexibility and attention to detail that the results were so professional. He was an extremely important member of our development team, and I know that all members valued his ability to weave both technical and design elements through the project, and the enthusiastic spirit that he brought to everything.”

- Tom Rosewall, CEO, California Energy Initiatives

“You have done an incredible job on this. When I first did the design I did not expect the response I received. The response your completed version is going to get is going to be incredible. You took the concept and ran with it all the way.”

- Harold Harmon, Harmon Graphics

“I so admire your incredible talent and work ethic.”

- Amie Forest, Creative Director, Quiddities Dev, Inc

MacFan Magazine (Japan)

OS X interface design bundled on CD and featured in print. March 2005.

MacPeople Magazine (Japan)

OS X interface design bundled on CD and featured in print. November 2004.

MacHome Magazine

OS X interface design featured in print. May 2004.

Grand Prize: The Mill's Contest

Video game design. 2000.

2nd Prize: World Trade Week

Poster. 2002.

3rd Prize: Unsanity's Theme Contest

OS X interface design. 2004.