I'm an Usability Architect and Software Engineer, currently finishing my Master's degree at New York University. My field of Study is Management and Systems with a specialization in Database Management. My final thesis is around the Semantic Web topic.
My skills range from OOP Objective C, Actionscript 2 & 3, PHP, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript.
I've got professional knowledge of:
WireFrames, IA, ER and Information Flow Diagrams
Created and develop the site's entire UI and back end structure using Drupal. One fundamental step in the process of redesigning the entire user interface was the conduction of usability testing, which was done in 2 phases: one only with employees and the second with prospect clients.
Another great thing about this project was to work with Drupal. A heavy customization of Drupal templating engine and the creation of few custom modules to integrate with external APIs had to take place in order to accommodate the project's requirements.
One exciting aspect of the project was to work with Sencha Touch, the most advanced javascript MVC framework at the moment. We developed mobile version of the site using this Framework. Using Drupal to generate the JSON server, it was relatively painless to generate all the API calls required to make the communication between Drupal's backend and the mobile application frontend happen in a smooth way.
In terms of semantic web, we integrated Reuters API Open Calais and RDF to generate relevant semantic markup for site content. It's incredible the amount of semantic-enabled modules and options available in the Drupal platform. Semantic web is the research topic of my Master's thesis and I was really excited to combine the entire semantic web theoretical knowledge into a real and exciting application.
In terms of topology, we designed it in a scalable format and with a high availability distributed system architecture using Memcached for MYSQL caching and Boost module for front end caching. The reason why we decided not to use Varnish was the fact that the mobile version of the site was heavily dependent on the services module, which doesn't gain much from having an intermediary layer like Varnish in between.
Visit this project's web site »This was a very interesting project to me. The iPhone SDK 3.0 had just been released and it was very challenging to start working with a technology that at the time there was not much documentation about it.
We decided to use the brand new feature of CoreData, possible only in the version 3+ of the Iphone SDK, and it was really hard in the beginning. The MVC aspect was also very rewarding to achieve. The app uses SQLite for local storage. Core Data sits in between, fetching objects and managing all data. We built a custom Recipe's component for Joomla to handle the administration of all content of the App, which is served dynamically using a SOAP service written in VB.NET.
One interesting aspect of the web service layer was to how to main the data integrity when something was changed on the CMS (for instance, a recipe that has been updated) and how the Iphone App could reflect that, without causing too much burden for the client in terms of bandwidth usage. The solution resided not only on the Web Services layer but also on the CMS logic of changing, saving and deleting dynamic content.
Rush Hour Meals has also been ported to the Nokia OVI Store. A REST Web Service was written to allow this migration of Rush Hour Meals to Nokia (Symbian) devices. The REST Service was written using the incredible Zend Framework, in a MVC pattern environment.
*PS. It appears that the app is currently not working on the newest version of IOS (4.) Visit this project's web site »The Alpinizer Facebook Game was an amazing project. My Interactive Team came up with the concept of using a flash physics engine to bring the experience of skiing directly into Facebook and the Brand in an original and fun way.
The game grew in functionality, but we were ready for it. We designed the entire game structure using a custom MVC architecture for all the Actionscript 3 classes.We chose Box2d as the physics engine for the game, which proved to be very powerful and precise library.
Before we even started any work, we decided to create ER Diagrams for data modeling, web services and game class structure, which proved to be a very successful approach used to execute a complicate game engine in a relatively short period of time.
Creating a custom MVC REST Server API using ZEND Framework, with support for POST, GET and PUT operations was a painless process, thanks to the flexibility and clear architecture of the framework.
Facebook Open Graph API integration in PHP 5 and Actionscript 3 was used for User authentication and data.
Following agile methodologies in the product development life cycle, we made sure to release prototypes and client interaction in the early cycles of the product development effort.
Game Deployment on Amazon EC2 Server.
Visit this project's web site »This Facebook game was a real challenge because we tried to bring Augmented Reality and Face Recognition to a brand new level. For the release of the best selling author James Patterson new book "Don't Blink" we created this cool Flash based application that was able to detect when the user blinked. In front of the user, a strange character, tough guy would be staring. The objective of the game is clearly not to blink, otherwise 'you die'.
The game was a tremendous hit and got thousands and thousands of Facebook users in the first weeks of it release.
For Face recognition, we integrated a port of C++ library Open CV library for Actionscript 3 into the game engine.
Game Deployment happened on Amazon EC2 Server.
Visit this project's web site »The Concept Farm multi platform project had multiple fronts: one front was Flash and the necessity of showcasing the video capabilities of this award winning agency. The other front was to break the limits of Flash and bring the site into a cross platform, 'pos Desktop' era.
That's the reason why the site was optmized in order to render in multiple platforms.
We coded the site's frontend using Actionscript 3.0 and Gaia Framework. In the backend, we used Drupal.
The mobile version was developed using Sencha Touch Framework and JSON services.
Used HTMl5 and CSS3 markup to render the website in a much more efficient and optimized way in smartphones and tablets
Visit this project's web site »Developed an Ipad App for the Concept Farm. The app features primarily video production work that the farm has done for several clients over the last few years.
The iPad app was part of a new business initiative to send iPads over to several prospect clients and businesses with the app installed.
The app had the requirement of working offline and showing primarily hi definition videos, and that's the reason why the adoption of PList data format proved to be flexible and easy to implement.
This was a somewhat different project, since it consisted basically of building a totally functional prototype for an important and annual Estee Lauder internal conference. The project was to build a custom MVC Flash player for Estee Lauder to present in its Annual Barcelona Conference as a proof of concept in order to assess the limits and boundaries of online video content and interaction.
The constants changes requested by the client in terms of functionality were easily handled using a MVC pattern which relied heavily on the Observer Pattern as well.
Another project done for Honeywell, CCFOAM was a great project, also done during my time at Olive Media. It was a great site to do, since Honeywell already had an old CCFOAM site in place and that site was reach in Multimedia and content. The site was completely redesigned. CCFOAM's new backend was all done in Joomla CMS. Following Joomla 1.5 MVC patterns, custom modules had to be built and components adapted in order to accommodate the business requirements of the project. The UI is intuitive and elegant and makes use of both JQuery and Mootools. It was a little challenging to combine these 'two brothers' javascript frameworks, but we made it! The front page features a Flash Video Player module that had to be tightly integrated with the CMS to allow easy update by the site administrators. Also, Omniture API had to be integrated in the Flash and HTML elements of the site. SalesForce API was also used in this site. Visit this project's web site »
This project I did while working for Olive Media, a new york based Interactive agency, back in the end of 2008. It was my first project for them and the client was the Fortune 500 company Honeywell. The site was relatively easy to do and it consisted only of plain XHTML, CSS and Javascript. The design of the site is clean and intuitive. It's almost a brochure-like site. It has integration with SalesForce and Omniture API. Visit this project's web site »
Developed the following Facebook Apps for specific campaigns for The National Woman Law Center: Rally the Team and Stop Discounting Woman. The apps were developed in PHP and integrated with Facebook Open Graph API.
Install Stop Discounting Woman»Developed the site using Drupal CMS (PHP & MYSQL). Developed a custom module to manage the Flash widget content on Front Page.
Visit this project's web site »This was a microsite done for Honeywell to outline Honeywell's latest and most advanced discoveries. The microsite was built in Flash, using Actionscript 2. It has a simple and clean interface and follows the strict Honeywell standards in terms of presentation of content. Visit this project's web site »
Development of several James Patterson Facebook Fan Pages using FBML and FBJS. It was very challenging to adapt javascript scripts into Facebook proprietary FBJS, since it has some syntax nuances that are hard to spot at first glance.
We used a Drupal deployment to be the central place where James Patterson could easily manage all the information, polls, promotions and assets across his different Facebook properties and brands.Finally, we created a client for the GoodReads REST API to integrate James Patterson book ratings from Goodreads into his Facebook Page.
Visit this project's web site »Out of Hand Festival is a students contest promoted by the School of Visual Arts of New York and Giraldi Media. The objective of such a contest is to promote the production of content oriented towards small devices. In it's first year, the contest received more than 2.500 entries from 71 different countries. The Out Of Hand's system was built on top of Joomla. A custom component had to be written to allow the publication of the site to Mobile Devices as well. A video component had to be customized to integrate smoothly with the FFMPEG Library. Visit this project's web site »
Just Add food with Alsace Wines was another project that I did while working at Olive Media. This project was very challenging, since we didn't have a direct contact with the client But in the end, after around 20 rounds of design concepts and mockups, the client finally liked the site. The site takes advantage of many JQuery capabilities, to convey a user experience that is modern but not far away from the traditional aspect of the Alsace wines. The site was built on top of Joomla and it features interviews with many wine connoisceurs and specialists. Visit this project's web site »
This was an Intranet project management tool done for the Brazilian Government. The system sits on top of Joomla and we had to custom build a Joomla Component to handle all business and technical requirements of the project. Since its launch, the Intranet has being used across many different offices by different sets of users. The Intranet also has configurable workgroups and level of permissions. The user interface also heavily helped by Javascript. Mootools was the library of choice for this project. Visit this project's web site »
A Brazilian version of YELP, this startup needed a new backend administration infra structure and front end design. It's a business directory like web site and it's main motif is to allow the democratization of the Internet access in Brazil. Built in PHP and MYSQL and integrated with Google Maps API, we created an intuitive administrative interface, which supports several levels of permissions. Besides that, an special emphasis was given to the user interface, which JQuery played a big role in helping our team to achieve the desired results. Visit this project's web site »
Fiver was completely redesigned and Joomla CMS was implemented in the backend. A few flash info graphics were designed to show important and relevant data. The user interface was simple, elegant and inviting. The main Goal of the site is to explain what fiver is and get donations. The site makes usage of JQuery and Mootools for User Experience. Several other open source components are used in the site as well. Using K2 component (which holds a lot of similarities with the CCK Drupal Module), and Events and Photos gallery were deployed, to allow easy upload of bulk images galleries at once. Visit this project's web site »
A social networking site, with more than two thousand members, the site was created as a marketing campaign to promote Grass-fed beef for Lacensebeef. Originally part of Infinitive line of Marketing/branding products, the site and its user base were migrated to Joomla. One special module that proved successful was the Facebook connect module for Joomla, which made the number of members increase exponentially. Visit this project's web site »
Developed the entire site using JQuery and AJAX. The video gallery was done using Actionscrit 3 for the Desktop version of the site and HTML5 and custom javascript for the iPad version.
Visit this project's web site »Developed the entire site using JQuery and AJAX. Joomla was used as the CMS.
Visit this project's web site »Other Projects
© Isaac PT da Silva 2011.
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