John Russell

Chegg's mobile products are available to customers on iOS for both iPhone and iPad, as well as on Android phones.

Our design principles were to think mobile first, and cater to a student's unique needs on mobile devices. Special care was given to optimize for specific platform traits, rather than attempt a one-size-fits-all mobile solution. Experiences are distinctly designed for each platform, yet feel like they belong to a cohesive product family.

Chegg.com is the main face of the company for its core customer – the textbook renter. That being so, the site's design needed to accomplish three goals:

1) Support the textbook renters' needs in a simple, reliable and delightful manner.

2) Introduce visitors to the company's increasing range of student products and services

3) Present the Chegg brand as it matured and evolved.

The high-level design principles were to achieve simplicity in user experience, as well as craft a students-first brand that is trustworthy and accessible, but not too mature or corporate.

Rich photography, simple visuals, intentional white space, and plain, straight-forward language were many of the tactics employed in following these design principles.

Excellent experiences are designed on the foundation of a design language that promotes a cohesive look, feel and function. This ties product offerings into a discernible family and reduces a customer's cognitive load when accessing the same products and services on different devices or platforms. My team at Chegg created a foundational design system that evolved and grew as we designed for new customers, use cases and businesses. Here is a sampling of that design system for both web and mobile.

I led the Chegg UX team in creating a complete eReader for the company's eTextbook business. We designed not only a web-based reader for laptop, tablet and phone, but also native eReaders for iPhone, iPad and Android phones. The eReader covered the basics of reading, searching, highlighting and taking notes, but more importantly was highly integrated into Chegg's other services, such as live homework Q&A and textbook solutions. My team was involved in extensive user research to intuitively understand students' needs throughout the entire process of crafting Chegg's eReader.

Acquired by Chegg in 2014, Flashcards+ is the #1 flashcards app in the Apple app store. My team embarked on a complete redesign of the app that was released in July of 2014. In addition to bringing the app inline with iOS7 standards, the user experience was streamlined and simplified to dramatically improve the customers' delight. 

Since its release, Flashcards plus has retained its #1 ranking with a consistent 5-star rating and many positive reviews

"The new improvement for the app is mind blowing...I would HIGHLY recommend this app to anybody. Great job on the update, guys!"

CBS.com is the flagship property in the CBS Interactive entertainment division. Fans come to CBS.com to watch, learn and talk about their favorite daytime and evening entertainment shows (news and sports were on separate web properties). 

During my first year of leadership for CBS's user experience, hollywood writers went on strike and brought television and film production to a standstill. With no new content being created, we were able to achieve a #1 ranking for CBS.com in video streams, minutes streamed and unique viewers – simply through a careful redesign and effective user experience.

The introduction of the iPad in 2010 offered an entirely new way to enjoy TV shows. Netflix was the early "killer app" on the iPad. CBS wanted to quickly establish a presence on this new medium.

Moving rapidly, my team designed a clean, simple iPad app to allow CBS fans to watch their favorite shows, as well as know when their shows were scheduled to air if they weren't available online.

TV.com is the biggest tv fan site with a database of tv show episodes going back to the 1940s. Competing with IMDB, Wikipedia and TV Guide, TV.com was the most active fan site before online video became common on the internet. Beginning in 2009, we began extensive redesign and innovation on TV.com to bring online episode video to the site and drive greater social interaction. My team’s design approach was to simplify and let the photo and video content lead the viewer’s eye.

With its introduction in 2010, it was clear that the iPad would be a companion and consumption device for TV. Early on, our design strategy for mobile-web was to create a touch optomized site that could operatate as a TV guide for the 21st century. With a subdued palette, the site could lead you to online video, and if that wasn't available, show you exactly where and when your favorite shows would be on. We experimented with many social features as well to keep tv watching a group activity.

Keeping tv watching social was a key priority in the TV.com product strategy. With the rise in popularity of Foursquare, we devised a check-in app for tv episodes. Once checked in, a visitor could easily see who else was checked in and chat with the group. My team designed simple game mechanics to reward loyal fans that consistently checked in while following their shows. Revenue opportunities were built into the product in the form of limited time promotions and giveaways tied to check-ins on specific episodes.

Chow.com is a site for foodies - with recipes, articles, videos, cooking techniques, nation-wide restaurant reviews and a robust community. My creative director, design team and photographer created weekly editorial content on tight deadlines. Under my direction, the team also conducted strategic redesigns and product innovations to drive toward both engagement and revenue goals.

Design principles were seductive photography paired with clean layouts and sharp, witty content.

My team designed a robust mobile site experience for Chow that presented all of the site's content. Additionally, Chow experimented with mobile apps. The first of which was an app my team created to coach first-timers through the process of preparing Thanksgiving dinner. The app would create shopping lists and schedules, and then provide step-by-step coaching of the entire cooking process.

CBS retains television and merchandising rights to Star Trek as well as the Startrek.com domain. CBS hadn’t treated the Star Trek site as a priority and it had fallen into neglect. In 2008, I paired up with one of my designers and we worked together to give the site an overhaul. It was a labor of love (we were both life-long Trek fans), and to this day, the site still follows the basic framework and visual language we set in place.

As the designer for Dreamweaver CS4, I drove workspace design and an update of the interface to the Adobe Experience Model - a cohesive design language accross the Creative Suite products. I also undertook all interaction design for new, AJAX-based development features, as well as visual design for the release. Additionally, I illustrated the pre-release splash screen using Fireworks.

"Quattro" represented a design project aimed at easing the first-time experience for new Photoshop customers. Photoshop is a complex product that caters to professional photographers and post-production artists. In order to grow the user base, a product experience needed to be devised to help customers ramp up. 

Also for the release, I drove interaction design for the integration of all of Photoshop's new 3D and animation features for CS3.