Mathew Sanders is a user experience designer interaction designer information architect designer in Boston.

Professional me

Hello. I am T-shaped designer with 8 years experience and love of user research, sketching, wireframation, prototyping, the grid, semantic markup and agile development.

I have a Bachelor of Science with a major in computer science where I learnt Haskell, Prolog and LISP but squeezed in papers on organic chemistry and pathology because it's fun to wear a lab coat.

Currently I'm a senior interaction designer at Monster Worldwide. Previously I've had the pleasure of working with Air New Zealand and great digital agencies like Datacom, RHE & Associates, and LeftClick.

Personal me

I'm inspired by smart people like Tori Amos, danah boyd, Meryl Streep, Jane Jacobs, PJ Harvey, Bill Buxton, and the league of amazing designers this generation is creating.

Outside of work you may find me biking the streets searching for Boston's best coffee and cheeseburgers, browsing second-hand book stores, eating cherries and hugging all the cats.

You will find me living in the glorious cradle of liberty (a.k.a. Boston) but I'm originally from Aotearoa (a.k.a. New Zealand.) I love postcards, write to me at 69 Park Drive, Boston, Massachusetts 02215.

Projects / Prototypes / Experiments

Air New Zealand: global refresh

The project goals of increasing revenue from ancillary sales (such as accommodation & rental cars) and matching Air New Zealand's online presence with it's brand values and new in-flight experience.

My process involved:

facilitating a design vision exercise with project stakeholders to create a set of guiding design principles for the project;
using web analytics to identify key pages and red routes;
card sorting to explore potential changes to the site structure;
testing proposed site structures with Optimal Workshop's Treejack;
exploring concepts with with low-fidelity sketches and medium-fidelity wireframes; and
conducting formal usability studies and informal cafe studies on prototypes.

This project is being pushed to production is multiple sprints. See what's live at airnewzealand.com.

jQuery experiment: take a weekend away

Airlines and online travel agents spend a lot of time making their booking flows frictionless.

Most travel interfaces ask for a set location and provide flexibility in dates. This concept explores the needs of a niche persona: "the weekend traveller" and instead uses a set travel period (next weekend) and allows people to explore possible destinations.

This was a personal experiment that I used when I was first learning jQuery and uses the excellent isotope jQuery plugin by David DeSandro to dynamically reorder and filter results with an exciting animation.

Open prototype or read more.

Facebook: BeKnown jobs tab

This project was the creation of a Facebook tab app that allows HR staff for a company to create a page on Facebook that shows a list of jobs which are automatically pulled from numerous sources into a single view.

Working with the BeKnown product manager I designed the backend administration screens that allow HR staff to link their Facebook pages with a jobs tab and also the jobs tab itself.

An emphasis was placed on making the installation, configuration and maintenance of the tab app as easy as possible.

An example of the jobs tab can be viewed on Monster's Facebook page.

Wikipedia: easier navigation & reading

After attending a Wikimania conference I was inspired to explore some ideas of how interaction design could help Wikipedia with some of the challenges it was facing with declining participation.

My concepts focused on:

increasing visibility of actions (View, Discuss, Review, Edit);
integration of the wikimedia family of products (such as Wikipedia, WikiNews, WikiQuotes, Commons);
applying some emerging navigation conventions (search at top right, local navigation in a side column); and finally
typographic enhancements such as a fixed line width, and styles for markup such as blockquotes.

I further explored these concepts with a Chrome extension that alters stylesheets when viewing a Wikipedia article.

Install Chrome extension or read more

Monster & Yahoo!: career answers

This was my first project working for Monster Worldwide. The project goal was to increase referrals from organic search by hosting long-tail career related content.

Working with product and technology teams I created pixel-perfect wireframes for a number of screens including search and browse discover pathways, and custom modules to provide targeted content on the highly trafficked Monster homepage and job search results pages.

This project involved research and understanding on the limits of the publicly provided APIs with our content partner Yahoo!

The launch of this project resulted in the meaningful positive changes to Monster's target KPIs.

Mega breadcrumb pattern: NYC.gov prototype

An important difference between government and commercial websites is that instead of competing for disposable attention, government websites must strive to enable citizens access to information and services quickly and painlessly.

Failure of this goal leads citizens to alternative channels (such as phone or in person visits) which are a lot more expensive to provide.

One pattern that I developed in response to this goal was the mega breadcrumb which combines mega menus with a breadcrumb to replace a traditional global and local navigation patterns.

To explore this pattern I created a HTML prototype based off the NYC.gov page for licensing your dog.

Open prototype or read more

Testimonials

Matt worked with us on a number of key strategic projects at Air New Zealand. He demonstrated a keen insight for technology solutions and was always passionate about creating a world class user experience for customers. He has a talent for quickly evaluating business opportunities and developing technical concepts.

His skills and background were very beneficial to us at a difficult time in our project and he was able to provide clarity and innovation in his analysis. His friendly style, can-do attitude and sense of humor made him a great fit with our team. I would hire Matt again in a heartbeat.
Scott Giles — Grab-a-Seat, Online Marketing Manager, Air New Zealand

Matt was a pleasure to work with! He is the consummate professional: friendly, approachable, and focused on achieving the tasks at hand.

I was particularly impressed by Matt's rare ability to understand and work in both development and user-centric areas. This unusual skillset made him a very valuable team member.

On a personal level, Matt's thoughtfulness and impeccable manners made him a firm favourite with everyone he met. He would be a valuable asset to any company he chooses to join.
Laura Lilienthal — Online Marketing Manager, The University of Auckland

Mat came with strong recommendations and he didn't disappoint. His ability to understand business and customer requirements and develop creative UI solutions was a huge help to our project.

He provided structure to our customer experience design process that stood up to rigorous reviews, debate and formal presentations. For every ounce of energy he put into his work during the day, he always came in the next day with even more.

Mat's an absolute pleasure to work with and I hope that one day I'll get the opportunity to again.
Lynsey Blacklock — Customer Experience Designer, Telecom New Zealand

I have worked with Mathew on a number of web projects in the past 5 years. Mathew is charming, intelligent, and gets along with all of his clients. Mathew is a strong information architect and user experience analyst and always over delivers both my own and the client's expectations.

Mathew's documentation and diagrams clearly communicate the user's needs and what is required from the designer, and works well with the client to find the best experience for the end-user.

Mathew is constantly researching the most up-to-date information on user experience models and keeps up with the latest.

Mathew is not afraid to state his expert opinion and backing it up with good reason and explanation. I would hire Mathew in his expert role anytime.

He is an absolute pleasure to work with, and blows me away every time with his new thinking.
Mandy Neal — Senior Business Analyst at Terabyte Interactive

Matt is passionate about working with people and their business to deliver their online vision and strategy in a way that is innovative, refreshing, but most of all in ways which creates impact to the end customer.

He feels strongly about delivering results with scalable benefits beyond the online space. Matt has always been fantastic to work with, he is highly intelligent and well articulated and would be an asset to any team he joins.
Kanaway Yusingco — Market & Business Development Manager, Air New Zealand

I’ve worked with Mat on the client side at Air New Zealand and later within our team at Datacom. He has real passion for creating the best possible user experience in internet and software solutions.

Mat has excellent analytical skills, the ability to run focused, interesting and valid workshops, producing quality outputs.

He develops easy to understand User Interface concepts focused on delivering business and user goals. Mat is also easy to work with and gets through a lot of work quickly, without fuss. Just the sort of guy you want on the team!
Dave Flemming — General Manager, Datacom Interactive Design

I worked with Matt during the NTI Insurance project at RHE. NTI was a complicated, highly demanding project on both a technical and customer level.

Mathew displayed professionalism and dedication during his time on the project, and built strong bonding friendships with both his fellow colleagues and client staff. I wish Matt well in all his future endeavors.
Shelly Mutu-Grigg — Test Manager, RHE & Associates

Mathew is a hugely talented user experience architect with exceptional insights into consumer behaviours. In all the projects he has worked on, clients have always commented on the high standard of work produced.

He is an active member of the Usability community, and always contributes new and thought-provoking ideas.

I worked alongside Mathew at Datacom, and I have learnt such a lot from him with regards to UX. He is a super lovely guy to work with and I miss him greatly.
Winnie Ng — User Experience Architect at AKQA