A little about me...

About Justin Mandell

This site is designed, coded and updated by me. I live with my dog Molly in Chicago, IL Orange County California. To be honest after this past winter (2007-08) we're more than happy to relocate to a warmer climate. I currently work for Moto.rola, Inc. as a Senior Interaction Designer in the Mobile Devices Group. As of July 2008 I'm a Senior Interaction Designer at Samusng Electronics in their R&D Lab in Irvine California working on the futrue of HDTV user interfaces.

I’m passionate about good, simple design that works. I love seeing people use things I’ve had a hand in designing without giving it a second thought... it’s a great feeling.

I put this site together as a place for me to show my professional work. Over the last 8 years, I've built a resumé and portfolio that includes work for a variety of clients, from a humble start designing small web interfaces to multi-national corporations. I hope that this site gives you a sense of my capabilities.



My Background & Experience

I started out working for a local e-commerce website New Balance Web Express in 1999. I helped grow the business from $40K a month site to well past $200K a month. Being a fairly small operation we all wore many hats just to keep things moving. It was here that I caught the bug to learn how to design. I'm very thankful for that opportunity.

Sadly the home office moved to St. Louis, MO and I decided not to relocate with them. Instead, I seized the opportunity to focus on an advanced degree in Human-Computer Interaction from DePaul University.

While working on class-related projects and in-between semesters I did freelance work. The freelance work was a great opportuntiy to put into practice everything that I was learning.

I finished my HCI degree in July of 2004 and began working for Dick Blick Art Supplies in August of that year. Working at Blick gave me the chance to take what I had learned at DePaul and during my freelance work and to apply it at a corporate level. I was given the opportunity to design several User Centered projects, from a full intranet application design to the most basic User/Task Analysis Surveys.

After receiving an email from a friend at Moto.rola about a job opening I decided it was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. As a Moto.rola employee my role was to help design the user interface and interactions for the multimedia applications. I worked with a great team of designers in the Mobile Devices Group.

As of July 2008 I transitioned from Motorla Inc. to Samsung Electronics, in so doing I've also transitioned from working on one of the smallest screen sizes in interface design to the some of the largest. So far I'm finding that, oddly enough they are both very similar when it comes to interaction paradigms.

While at Samsung I'll be responsible for creating design concepts for the future of HDTV user interfaces.

Contact Info