A portfolio of the work of Scott Good
I have a broad background which includes artistic, business, software, and speaking/writing experience. I am both technical and aesthetic, an engineer as well as a graphic designer. The combination of these experiences and skills lets me both design and build beautiful and compelling things.
Whether those things are innovative user interfaces, compelling PowerPoint presentations, or breakthrough advertising materials, the result is always the same: a logical, usable, and organized layout; easily understandable copy; and, always, a beautiful look and feel.
Why does that matter?
Because it's not enough just to build a great product, or provide a wonderful service. It also matters how you introduce that product or service to potential customers, influencers, partners, and others.
When your momma said "first impressions matter," she wasn't just talking about combing your hair and wearing a clean shirt. The presentations we give, the advertising materials we produce, and the actual look, feel, and ease of use of the products we offer have as much to do with building acceptance as any actual features and functions.
My strength--my superpower, you might say--is being able to create products and promotional materials that speak to buyers. It's really true, looks do matter.
Graphic Arts & Photography
- Rochester Institute of Technology / BA in Printing Management
- In addition to business management topics, I focused on typography, page layout, readability, and design
- In high school, studied photography under a prodigy Pulitzer Prize runner up
Software / Computer
- Deep experience in custom web software development
- Expert in most front-end web technologies
- In particular HTML, CSS, JavaScript and related technologies
- Deep interest in UI/UX
- I build beautiful, compelling, and usable interfaces
Advertising and Sales
- Awarded the Printing Industries of America's Marketing Excellence Award, their highest honor for marketing success in the commercial printing business.
- Created award-winning advertising materials for a range of manufacturing and software organizations
- Graduate with Distinction (highest 5%), IBM Global Sales School
Speaking and Writing
- Presented more than 40 sessions on both design and technical topics at international conferences including IBM's THINK, Connect, and LotusSphere events, as well as dozens more at smaller conferences for Lotus Advisor and The View magazines as well as national, regional, and local user groups.
- Published more than 70 full-length articles on a range of web development topics including HTML, JavaScript, CSS, AJAX, JSON, Java Server Pages, and more.
- Wrote and published two full-length books (one a novel, the other on business leadership principles)
- Designed and developed all UIs for new Progressive Web Apps book (https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Progressive-Apps-John-Wargo/dp/0136484220)
Entrepreneurial
- Founded and managed a software consulting & development firm including a team comprised of more than 35 developers, administrators, and account managers
- Owned and managed two mid-sized (100+ employees) commercial printing companies
- Founded and managed a small manufacturing company focused on carbon fiber wings and aerodynamic products for racing cars
From 1993 until 2015, I was one of two owners of one of the earliest Lotus Notes Business Partners, Teamwork Solutions. These days, Notes is widely criticized for its outdated user interface and yet there is no reason Lotus Notes applications have to look bad or be hard to use. Shown here are four examples I built as far back as 2005.
Shown above and below are a variety slides from a range of PowerPoint presentations I built to promote our products during my time at IBM. Throughout, you'll find simple, compelling graphics with easy-to-understand copy.
In 2017 IBM added the IBM Connections Engagement Center (ICEC) to our list of offerings. It was a portal-like front-end for IBM Connections that offered users the ability to create and insert their own CSS and JavaScript to make the pages match their corporate standards (or just to make it look better). Unfortunately, the out-of-the-box UI that came with the product was embarrassingly bad, so I was charged with building compelling demos for the entire North American team to use.
Above and below are three examples of customized ICEC demonstration pages I created by leveraging the inherent capabilities of the platform and my own extensive knowledge of CSS and JavaScript.
IBM's Kenexa brand of talent management products had very little in the way of printed promotional materials worth showing to customers. At the request of one of my sellers I wrote, designed, and created the two flyers shown above and the 4-page flyer shown below (only 3 pages shown here).
IBM Connections Customizer was an add-in product to IBM Connections which made it possible for customers to add their own CSS and JavaScript to Connections pages to change the way they looked and acted. These examples were built as extreme examples of the kinds of changes that could be made...and were intentionally on the wild side. In both examples you can see the before and after versions of the same page.
The DQL Explorer was a joint project between Dimitri Prosper and myself from our time at IBM. Dimitri built the back end, while I was responsible for all aspects of the user interface, both in terms of look-and-feel and functionality. Built as a web-based UI using React and an IBM Notes-based database for storage and configuration, note that this is not the typical throw-anything-together-just-to-show-it-can-work UI of most proofs-of-concept. Instead, the user interface is clean, well laid-out, and easy to understand. Complex functionality under the covers is exposed as a simple, easy to use, interface.
You can watch a DQL Explorer Demo I recorded some years ago.