Carl R Nelson

experience.

experience.

experiences resonate with people socially, somatically, and mentally.

interact.

interact.

interactions pull people deeper into exploring and sharing.

study.

study.

study the world constantly, explore ideas new and old.

About

About

I work at the intersection of design, context and action. I focus on creating experiences which reflect our interaction with the everyday world. With a background in phenomenology and pragmatism as a Philosophy student at Concordia University combined with a decade of teaching and performing as a professional dancer my work reflects the embodied human experience.

I learn from every project and draw upon many disciplines. That keeps me constantly curious about diving deeper. My current fascination is how design can guide behavior by encouraging better choices, facilating the learning experience and shaping experiences that encourage deep real world connection.

I co-founded the award-winning email newsletter, NOLAlicious. I maintain a strategy and design consultancy that is virtually located with clients throughout the U.S. and Canada called Pardon My Content.

I live in San Francisco, CA where I tackle user experience and interaction design problems daily. I am also leading UX design at Grub.ly, a startup that is creating a platform to bring the underground dining experience to everyone.

Read my clippings from around the web here. I am also a professional dance instructor.

Resume

Resume

I am a philosopher with a designer’s toolkit and an entrepreneur’s grit. I strive to create experiences that influence people’s lives and choices for the better. My work extends beyond the edges of the page, beyond the pixels on a screen, and past the objects that we use every day into our interactions and experiences with the world and each other.

the person

• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Disciplined and driven worker.
• Constantly curious learner and experimenter.
• Multi-disciplined creative.

the experience

• Design Consultant & Entrepreneur 2007 to Present

  Designed and hand-coded client-facing websites for non-profits and small businesses. Consulted with startups on UX. Sketched and created wireframes and user flows for web and mobile applications. Designed pixel-perfect UI mockups for web, mobile and iPad applications. Developed an eCommerce platform for streaming web-video. I have worked within agencies as a contractor, externally as a consultant to startups and small businesses, and launched my own products.

• Professional Dancer & Instructor 2004 to Present

  Choreographed performance and competition pieces for solo, couple and group dances. Designed and developed syllabi and curriculum for studios and instructors. Directed artistic vision for a dance studio. Managed and marketed studios, classes and personal brand. Created one of the pioneering blogs and news resource in the Lindy Hop community.

• UX Designer at Grub.ly 2011

  Grub.ly is a startup that is creating a platform to bring the underground dining experience to everyone. Designed a mobile context focused web platform in a small fast paced startup environment. Made product level decisions that influenced the core features and functionalities of the application. Led branding and identity discussions. Created user flows, sketched and wireframed the application interface, designed pixel-perfect mockups for production.

• UX/UI Designer at faberNovel 2011

  faberNovel is a French Innovation Design agency. Concept sketched & designed user interfaces for mobile and web applications. Created interactive wireframes in OmniGraffle. Designed pixel-perfect UI mockups in Photoshop. Performed user research. Sketching user task flows, and tackled complex interaction problems

• Co-founder at NOLAlicious 2009 to 2011

  NOLAlicious is an award-winning email newsletter that served the New Orleans native and expat community with weekly highlights on local businesses, restaurants, events and activities. Designed and concepted an award-winning email newsletter. Sketched, designed and coded the design of the website. Tracked funnel analytics to improve conversion. Managed a production team of writers. Created, edited, and wrote content. Implemented social media and email marketing strategies.

• Principal at Pardon My Content 2010 to 2011

• Co-founder at LindyHopVideo.com 2009 to 2010

• IT Support & Mac Specialist at Cossette Communications 2008

the skills

• Design: Interaction design, experience design, user interfaces, wireframing, user workflows, storyboarding, sketching, prototyping, user research, identity & branding, user personas, user research, user testing.

• Development: HTML & HTML 5, CSS & CSS 3, jQuery, Javascript, PHP, WordPress, git.

• Software: Adobe CS 4 (Photoshop, Illustrator), OmniGraffle, Office Suite, Keynote.

• Entrepreneurial: Product ideation, design & management, market testing, sales funnel, project management, client & stakeholder interviews, proposal and brief creation.

• Content: Content strategy, storyboarding and messaging, copywriting, content inventories & matrices, page tables.

• Marketing: Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Email, Social Media, SEO/SEM.

the education

• B.A. in Philosophy at Concordia University 2004-2007

• Mechanical Engineering & Physics at Rochester Institute of Technology 2001-2003

the extras

• Volunteer @ Service Design Network Conference 2011

  Organized and ran the Unconference section of the conference.

• Panelist @ TribeCon 2009

  Making Yourself Uncomfortable: How To Rawk a Community

Portfolio

Portfolio

• Ideation
• Research
• Planning
• Design
• Development

Projects

Projects

These are projects which I've been a founder or co-creator of.

• 
• 

  NOLAlicious

  NOLAlicious was an award-winning email newsletter venture in New Orleans.

  It is a finished project that I co-founded with Taylor Davidson and Sloane Berrent in December 2009.

  When the three of us arrived in New Orleans we realized that there was no digital weekly that served up curated picks around things to do, where to eat, what sites to see, and so on. There were many blanket classifieds full of hundreds of listings but wading through it was a struggle for ourselves and, thus, most likely many others.

  We built NOLAlicious with this need in mind. At first we were merely a splash page with a sign-up box and eventually we iterated through a failed destination site idea into a well curated e-mail newsletter that grew to over 1500 subscribers. We retired the project in January 2011.

  Visit the website at NOLAlicious.

• 

  LindyHopVideo.com

  LindyHopVideo is a membership site for dance instruction and event videos.

  DVDs are expensive and wear down with time, YouTube videos are uncertain and often unprofessional. Two big problems we identified when looking at instructional and event footage within the Lindy Hop dance community.

  To solve this problem we envisioned LindyHopVideo.com as the “Netflix of lindy hop video on the web.”

  We built quickly using WordPress. Developed a simple theme and implemented an e-Commerce solution that also handled membership access and payment. We optimized the content production workfow, and used feedback to iteratively enhance the UI. I have since retired from the project.

  Visit the website at LindyHopVideo.com.

• 

  Lindybloggers.com

  Lindybloggers.com was a joint venture multi-author blog

  Co-founded with Alain Wong. We were both writing about dance on our own blogs and decided to create the goto resource for news, reviews and interviews in the Lindy Hop community. We created Lindybloggers to fill the need in as yet under/unserved market.

  Built on WordPress, we managed a team of writers who were established DJs, instructors and dancers within the Lindy Hop and Swing Dance community. We created a regular editorial calendar and developed an overall strategy for the purpose and goals of the website.

  Alas, we were too early to the party and have since moved on to other ventures.

  Visit the website at Lindybloggers.com

Contact

Contact

Find me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.