Project management and user interface design for a Web based intervention to aid U.S. armed service veterans in the understanding of their disability benefits. Funded by a Veteran’s Administration grant, this program uses custom Ruby-on-Rails programming to create a virtual motivational interviewing experience. Client: U.S. Veteran’s Administration.

Program designer for a start-up company developing a unique fund raising Web site for non-profit organizations. Client: Jacoby Storm Productions, Easton, CT, U.S.A.

Instructional design consultant and interface designer for an initiative to create comprehensive Web based safety training for a major scientific and medical research institution. Client: Proven Practices, Bethesda, MD.

Past projects

Production consultant, video director, and interface designer for a federally funded study to learn if a Web based intervention can help prevent teenagers from getting type II diabetes. Client: Yale School of Nursing.

Sample screens

Web site design for the Lingnan Foundation.

Project management and design for TeenCope, a Yale School of Nursing Web based research intervention.

Consulting – Information Architecture – Web based training – Web based research interventions

Consulting

Simon Interactive is available to consult on Web and Internet related projects. As part of an engagement SI can provide the following:

• An analysis of the web site objectives and audience
• Prototype designs of home and internal page templates
• Strategies for maintaining your Web site
• Suggestions for publicizing your Web site
• Cost benefit analysis
• Facilitate “brain storming” meetings and planning sessions

Information architecture

The information architect defines the nature and scope of a web site before any Web pages are constructed. Much like the building of a house, the architect provides creative and technical vision to the idea presented by the client, and provides clear direction on how the vision should be constructed.

Phillip Simon has years of experience providing the creative and technical vision that clients require for their Web sites, and putting that vision into a pragmatic plan for the site.

In order to produce the plan Simon helps the client identify mission and goals, the client’s vision, define the audience, inventory content, and research the server environment.

As a result of Simon’s collaboration with the client he provides site and content maps, page schematic or “wire frames” and may define the construction process for the artists, writers, and programmers.

As part of a site plan Phillip Simon prepares:

• A statement of goals, vision, and audience
• A graphic site map
• A content outline
• Schematic sketches of main and secondary pages
• A technical summary

Web based training

The Web has proved a fertile ground for the proliferation of a variety of new approaches to training and education. The central distribution of content, and database tracking of student activity, has compelled many to use the Web for training.

Phillip Simon has many years of experience with developing Web Based Training (WBT) solutions. He has managed training projects for Yale University, Yale-New Haven Hospital, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Quinnipiac University.

As part of a WBT engagement, Phillip Simon provides the following analysis to determine the appropriateness of WBT to a training need, and then provides the framework for creating a WBT application:

• Conduct needs assessment
• Establish training goals
• Conduct task analysis
• Specify objectives
• Develop assessment strategies
• Select media
• Produce materials
• Test delivery
• Revise
• Test results

Web based research interventions

Simon Interactive (SI) is a Web design and interactive communications consulting business. The guiding principal at SI is to use creative analysis techniques for communicating ideas, collecting information, and presenting data.

SI helps the client identify mission and goals, the client’s vision, define the audience, inventory content, and research the server environment.

SI has years of experience providing the creative and technical vision that clients require for their Web sites, and putting that vision into a pragmatic plan for the site.

Simon Interactive is owned and operated by Phillip Simon of Woodbridge, Connecticut, U.S.A.

Phillip Simon
As a printmaking major at the University of the Arts, Phill learned and practiced the art of graphic arts, combining drawing and photography with traditional printmaking techniques. In 1980, during graduate school at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, Simon began experimenting with multimage techniques to marry image and sound to express ideas.

In the early 80s Phill created sound design for dance and theater performances. He also expanded his media skills as a free-lance video producer. In the early nineties he collaborated with Joy Wulke contributing projections and sound design to installations.

In the mid eighties he worked producing computer graphics for presentations and video productions. It was at this time, in 1987, that Phill’s tenure at Yale University started, where he was hired to establish a video production unit. His work doing video led to the creation of video disks for multimedia productions, and subsequently to the management of educational software production.

In 1992, with the advent of the Web, Phill started to apply his design approach to projects using the Internet. The nineties brought more graduate school and culminated with a fusion of print and photography using digital techniques.

Phill has won numerous awards and has presented papers at national professional conferences.

In 2000, Phillip completed a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies degree from Wesleyan University. His master’s project was a suite of digital imagesexploring the relationship between photography and drawing.

Currently Phill works at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, as the Director of Interactive and Online Programs for the School of Communications.

Prior to starting at Quinnipiac in 2009, Phill spent 22 years at Yale University. He finished his tenure there as a program designer and on-line educational specialist. Phillip held positions at Yale as Director of Operations for Web Design and Development at the Yale University School of Medicine, Director of Operations for the Yale Center For Advanced Instructional Media, and Director of Biomedical Communications.