darrylfeldman.com

Projects I have worked on

I have had the opportunity to work on some great projects throughout my career so far and have been lucky to learn from some of the best people in the industry. I have worked for startups, agencies, consulting firms and large corporates, which has given me a wealth of experience to draw upon. The role I play on projects varies and depends on the team I am working with, but usually involves setting strategic direction, market research, business case development, developing/evaluating concepts, selling solution to board or executive stakeholders, overseeing development efforts and ongoing product management. If you would like to see more details of my career take a look at my CV.

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Here are some case studies mainly chosen for their ‘interest factor’ from a personal perspective and the degree of involvement I had.

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ShopWindoz

I founded tsoosayLabs, securing the first round of investment for ShopWindoz and then leading business and product development efforts. My role as Managing Director is giving me an opportunity to focus on the business aspects of developing and running a platform - from writing business plans and liaising with investors to negotiating deals with partners. ShopWindoz is the first product from tsoosayLabs and sets out to redefine e-commerce, enabling sellers to create a shop in a few mouse clicks and then market themselves using social networks and blogs. We developed the product in a very agile and speedy way thanks to Ruby on Rails going from concept to live platform in 7 months. We have acquired 200 shops already and got 35,000 site visits last month with very little in the way of marketing. We are currently looking for a 2nd round of investment to grow the business, and build critical mass of shops.

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FIFA Worldcup

Whilst at Yahoo! we had the opportunity to partner with FIFA to develop the 2006 Worldcup microsite to complement the official FIFA worldcup website which Yahoo! also produced and managed at the time. There was a strong commercial focus and the site needed to fully support the sponsorship and advertising deals that were in place. The result was a radical departure from the traditional Yahoo! solutions, and included blogs by celebrity footballers, extensive match coverage and exclusive video content from FIFA. We produced an outstanding solution under extreme time pressure and delivered what many felt to be the ‘next generation’ Yahoo! experience.

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Yahoo! media properties

Whilst Director of Product Development for Yahoo! Europe I was responsible for a large number of media orientated websites across Europe with a focus on the key countries, UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. This was a logistical challenge as each country had it’s own development teams, content and commercial drivers. These sites had to reflect the content requirements for each country and fully support all advertising and sponsorship deals as well as integrate into Yahoo! horizontal services such as Search and shopping. My team developed a powerful Content Management System to automate the localisation process and make the workflow manageable for both the local offices and the centralised development team. The result was increased speed to market, consistency in presentation and cost savings in terms of development and support. We successfully rolled out media properties for Yahoo! Finance, Sports, News, Movies, Games in 5 countries simultaneously.

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Yahoo! Homepage

As the Director of Product development for Yahoo! Europe I was responsible in 2004 for the redesign and rollout of the new Yahoo! Homepage across Europe. This was a challenge due to the high profile nature of the homepage (the UK page alone gets a million visits a day) and the number of stakeholders involved. We collaborated with the US team in Sunnyvale as we tested and evaluated new designs in Europe and built new content management tools to schedule advertising, maintain and update the homepage. The key business objectives for the redesign was to drive cross-network traffic, add personalisation to increase engagement and improve usability. The new homepage was a big step forward for Yahoo! and dramatically increased levels of engagement on the home page as well as driving cross-network traffic to other Yahoo! properties.

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UK Online Government portal

Working at Sapient was a valuable learning experience for me as it gave me exposure to large, complex and very challenging projects and an industrial strength delivery process. The UK Online portal and underlying CMS (Content Management System) project was a great example of this. My role as Director and Domain Lead for the User Experience team meant I was heavily involved in the larger projects and ultimately accountable for the results of my team. The key challenge facing this project was firstly to launch the OK Online portal within an aggressive timescale. Secondly, to deliver a fully operational content framework and publishing solution that met very exacting Government quality standards . Liaising and coordinating with the many Government departments involved and building out a universal set of requirements was also a challenge as was project managing the large multidisciplinary development team involved. A great deal of user research was carried out upfront which led to a solid understanding of citizen based requirements and helped framed the solution in a very user-centric way. The UK Online portal saw a 110% increase in unique site visits within 3 months of launch and also received accolades for the level of accessibility offered and site design. The content framework and technology that had been developed were then leveraged by additional Government department websites including the Department of Health portal.

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Lucent global websites

My first major project at Sapient and one where I was required to relocate to New York for 6 months so I could work closely with the client, Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent) who were based in New Jersey. Lucent’s strategic priority was to transform itself from a product centric to a global infrastructure solutions organisation. However, at the time its e-business capability provided a fragmented experience, through its use of over 200 external websites. The goal was to provide flexibility for a global audience and to collapse all infrastructures into one common platform, unifying Lucent’s online presence along a common user experience. My role as Director of User Experience was to establish a small team in Sapient’s New York office and to work closely with Lucent to develop a universal set of requirements for all countries/regions and then rollout the localised sites using the new publishing system that had been developed. The project delivered great results for Lucent who increased e-business revenue multiple times while reducing the annual cost of their external sites by over $50 million. A global enterprise architecture foundation for e-business was also established to leverage the existing infrastructure and increase these efficiencies going forward.

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T-Motion WAP portal

This was a marketing driven project for Sapient, who had already delivered successful solutions for T-Com and T-Vision. T-Motion was an offering from Deutsche Telecom focusing on promoting and providing WAP based services and content to consumers. The challenge here was to raise awareness and drive customer acquisition, with a view to increasing sales of services and added value content. I played a hands on role successfully pitching for the account and then developing a customer acquisition strategy and portal concept. The project involved running extensive workshops with the client to define the customer acquisition process and build requirements for the portal. The T-Motion WAP portal was successful in terms of stimulating interest for WAP based services and content and became an early and important step for Deutsche Telecom in their bid to establish a share in the emerging mobile data market at that time.

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BT.com redesign

I was Creative Director at Organic Inc. a large US based agency and pioneer in online media, and joined the management team in London to set up their first European office there. We successfully pitched our vision to Senior Executives at BT (British Telecommunications) and won this high profile project at a time when building a core of UK based business was critical for the company. I was instrumental in developing the winning concept and strategy and then leading the team to develop the full solution. BT had many web sites and quite rightly had an issue with the degree of consistency in presentation and operational difficulties in having varying web publishing and content management systems. We created a very flexible and modular design system to enable the migration of BT legacy content and services into a unified templating and content/application delivery system (BroadVision). The results were a unified and coherent web presence and brand for BT, while cost savings were achieved by consolidating technology and streamlining content workflows, thus reducing ongoing support costs.

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Eyestorm

Eyestorm was a new startup with the idea of selling limited edition and original art by contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst on the web for the first time. The original founders were well positioned to make the business a success one being an established art dealer and the other an ex-senior executive from Getty Images. They invited Organic to pitch for the project and were impressed by our vision for their site. We were soon engaged in developing the business idea further and collaborated with the founders very closely to create the new brand, market positioning and site concept. Acting as Creative Director, I led these efforts and built a trusted relationship with the client. This was a challenging project as we were essentially creating their business from scratch and also had to move quickly to enable ‘first mover’ advantage for them. We successfully brought their beta online in 10 weeks which was a major achievement for all parties, in addition eyestorm were very satisfied with the solution and felt the site we created exceeded expectations. Our solution was highly innovative for it’s time and included a unique browsing tool called ‘delve’ which enabled users to explore art in a new and immersive way. Artists were supportive of Eyestorm and were happy to collaborate on exclusive web content and agree to distribute their highly sought after works through this new channel. Eyestorm extended it’s offering and opened up real world art galleries in London and New York. The site won Organic awards and recognition as an innovator and an expert in online branding. I personally found this project to be one of the highlights of my career, as the subject matter was of high interest to me, I enjoyed working with the client and the results we achieved were ground breaking.

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Quip!

Quip! were another fledgling startup that hired Organic to develop their new brand, market positioning and site concept. Quip! was essentially a reseller of low cost international calls and needed a strong brand and proposition to compete in an already crowded commodity based market. We developed a strategy which firstly leveraged the web to attract and acquire new customers for the service and then secondly enable self-service functionality to keep operating costs low for the business. Again time was the key challenge and we built their entire online business in a couple of months. As Creative Director I was hands on creating and implementing the brand and online strategy, in addition I developed marketing campaigns to support the acquisition process.

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The Carphone Warehouse online store

Whilst Creative Director at Clarity I had an opportunity to develop the first online shop for The Carphone Warehouse, who are one of the largest retailers of Mobile phones and services in the UK. This was an ambitious project and we set out to define a best practice for online retailing which was just emerging in 1998. Charles Dunstone the CEO of The Carphone Warehouse was heavily involved and was keen to build a web presence that reflected their core company values, being consumer-centric and impartial to any given product or service. The solution was technically complex as we developed a dynamic package builder tool which enables users to create their own unique mix of handset, network and tariff which integrated into their existing sales back office - this was a first and pioneered what has become standard now on most e-commerce sites.

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Railtrack online timetable service

This was another pioneering project which helped establish Clarity as a leading new media agency at the time. Railtrack were transforming themselves into a more customer-centric organisation and wanted to provide a new service to provide up to date train information to travelers using their train network. The solution had to be simple, usable and integrate seamlessly with their legacy data and back-end systems. I was responsible for the defining the solution and functionality and overseeing development work. Within the first year, the Railtrack site received over 14 million timetable enquiries. The site exceeded Railtrack’s expectations, enabling them to provide a beneficial service to their customers whilst positioning themselves at the heart of the railway.

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Which University on CD-Rom

Which University on CD-Rom was my first large-scale multimedia project and was a highly rewarding project as the main objective was to enable potential students to make more informed decisions about their further education choices. I was hired by Hobsons (a subsidiary of The Daily Mail Group) in Cambridge as Head of New Media and with a remit to establish the first multimedia department of it’s kind within the organisation. Once the team was in place the challenge was to acquire UK Universities onto the system and develop bespoke multimedia content for them, including video and audio content. Our solution integrated the bespoke multimedia content with the UCAS course directory database providing prospective students with a wealth of information regarding University life and course content. The software was developed in the US, which meant I had to travel and liaise frequently with the team there to communicate our user interface and functional requirements. We attracted most UK Universities onto the system and provided thousands of schools with computers with the software preinstalled. The feedback from students was highly positive with many claiming the quality content and convenience factor was critical in them finding a course, and University that matched their requirements.

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