Jordan Kolasinski

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AST The Showcal

I’m a UX designer, developer, and creative tinkerer with over 10 years of experience in the interactive field. I’m currently a UX protyper and designer at Hulu. I think great design comes from asking why a lot. Before Hulu, I was the UI lead at IPTV startup, and before that I ran my own web design company and freelanced on a huge range of digital projects. I’ve advised startups on design and digital strategy and sit on the board of directors of GrooveBoston. To me, user experience design is the glue that bonds technology’s potential to a healthy love of our digitized lives, and creating experiences that work with people is what I love to do. I have a blog about UX sound design called Beyond the Beep, I produce lots of music, and I think squash is the best sport ever.

UI Lead at American Standard Television

At AST, I worked on building a next-generation, multi-language TV service delivered entirely over the internet. My role was designing the user experience for the TV and smartphone remote, creating user flows and wireframing product screens, overseeing user research, as well as coding the actual user interface for our set top box. Out of our research and prototypes came some awesome features...

A Much Better Programming Guide

I designed the programming guide to complement and prioritize what we found users are actually looking for – what’s on TV right now, what’s on next, and what’s on later. The design improves upon many limitations of the traditional spreadsheet-looking guide, particularly though using one sheet photos to efficiently communicate the tone and content of each show.

A Smart Remote

Our solution to the classic UX design challenge of the remote control was a smartphone app that only displays buttons relevant to the current section. The layout maintains a familiar design pattern across sections, so a practiced user won’t need to look down for every action, and it's built for iOS and Android devices.

Channel View & Custom Channels

While we don’t think the days of channel flipping are over, we’re happy to bid farewell to the remote control's keypad. In its place, I designed an easier and very visual way to jump to a desired channel. In addition to our programmed channel lineup, we’re also going to allow users to add custom channels, à la Pandora.

Flip It

Channel surfing has been a core element of the TV experience since the invention of the remote control, and our service just wouldn’t feel like TV without it. Channel flipping also adds an element of serendipity into the TV experience, something that has gotten lost in video on demand services which force the user to make many decisions before watching any new program.

The UI Speaks Your Language

Our initial content is for foreign-born and multicultural Americans, so properly displaying, translating, and subtitling our UI in the user’s own language is essential to creating a truly authentic and immersive experience.

On Demand Search & Browse

Our video on demand section was designed for when a user has a specific program they’d like to watch, or would like to browse their available options with more granularity than the EPG provides. The design maintains our clean and highly visual aesthetic, and organizes content in a familiar format to other video on demand services.

TV Everywhere

While the living room is still the primary venue for watching TV, users are becoming increasingly familiar with viewing content just about anywhere via tablets, smartphones, and browsers. Given the increasing fragmentation of the TV viewing experience, we’re also developing versions of our service on these platforms to deliver the same experience for users beyond the living room.

The Showcal

Inspired by my deep love of going to live concerts and my frustration with the lack of well designed sites that help me discover shows in my city, I decided to build The Showcal. The Showcal’s goal is to quickly communicate which artists are playing in your city each night, and familiarize you with them as efficiently as possible. This is achieved through using artists’ current Facebook profile photos, which can speak volumes about their vibe and style of music, by allowing you to watch the artists’ YouTube videos in the page with one click, and by organizing shows by the day they’re occurring. The beta version is live at TheShowcal.com, and I am aiming to launch the brand new version in April ‘13. It will be 100% html, use deep Facebook API integration for social recommendation, and have an even better UX inspired by user feedback and my evolving thoughts about the concert discovery experience.

A handful of the dozens of projects I designed or developed over the past few years:

The Kitty Landers Show

A quirky and explorative site for a very quirky and imaginative kids TV show. design + dev

The Sims 3 Console Site

A highly interactive, media-heavy, and über-localized (21 languages!) site for the popular video game. interaction design + dev

The Motorola Xoom Launch Site

The launch site for one of the first real iPad competitors. Featuring a 360° tablet spinner and specs galore. dev + interaction design

Easy A International Site

The international site to promote a pretty awesome movie. dev

Some of my favorite projects from 4+ years ago, way back when smartphones weren't so smart

PALINdrome

A cheeky and interactive Sarah Palin speech synthesizer that TMZ helped go very viral. concept + design + dev

Eneco Carbon Desk

A corporate but fun web presence for one of the Netherland’s largest energy companies. design + dev

The Final Four of Everything

Interactive and viral site for Simon & Schuster to promote their book, "The Final Four of Everything." design + dev

Become An M&M

A massively complex site to design your own M&Ms avatar I worked on at The Barbarian Group. freelance producer

The Passat 120 Features Minisite

An ambitious and award-winning site with over 120 original videos I worked on while at Arnold Worldwide. producer

The New Jetta Minisite

A deeply interactive, media-heavy and award-winning site I worked on at Arnold Worldwide. producer