
The most visited museum in the world, The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, approached BYT to collaborate on the first ever official open to the public ticketed after hours event at their Washington DC location.
I managed all production of the event including creative direction, client communication, budgeting, staffing, vendor management, bar and catering ops, talent booking and stage management, sponsorships, volunteer management, attractions, security, ticketing, site plans, setup, and teardown.
The first event in 2017 was such a success, we were asked back in 2018 for a second event, totaling 3,800 tickets sold and over 4,200 attendees.

The sold out events featured music talent from Washed Out, Moon Boots, & The Range, special Voyager Golden Record mini-music meditation sessions in the planetarium from Take 5 and Songbyrd, plus the official opening of the new interactive museum exhibition re-creating the famous hotel scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The events also featured unique sponsor activations from SKYY, PBR, & Effen Vodka, a promotional and branding partnership with the Yuri's Night organization, custom green screen floating-in-space photobooths, unique roaming performers, TED-style space talks, scavenger hunts, a midnight Ready Player One screening, and specialty cocktails and food from Service Bar, Snowing in Space, Sweetgreen, Bar Pilar & many more.
Photos © BYT Media, Inc
I co-created The Bentzen Ball Comedy Festival in 2009 with BYT and Tig Notaro. The goal was to create a comedy festival that both entertained the audience, but also treated the talent well, something that was severely lacking in the industry at the time. After bringing the fest back annually in 2013 it has attracted over 25,000 people and become known for showcasing both top and emerging talent with one-of-kind shows at Washington DC's top venues, unique performances in unlikely spaces, and plenty of surprise guests and after parties. My involvement in the festival included end-to-end production and logistics, creative direction, talent booking, venue relationships, marketing and ticketing, sponsor management, customer service, micro-site design, staffing, plus showrunning and hosting.



featuring
- Sarah Silverman
- "Weird Al" Yankovic
- Bill Burr
- Jessica Williams
- Jonathan Van Ness
- How Did This Get Made?
- Amanda Seales
- Nick Kroll
- Stuff You Should Know
- Jenny Slate
- Janeane Garofalo
- John Hodgman
- Adam Friedland
- Jim Gaffigan
- Chelsea Peretti
- Ira Glass
- Phoebe Robinson
- Patton Oswalt
- Doug Benson
- Dr. Katz
- Reggie Watts
- Al Franken
- Rob Corddry
- Tim Heidecker
- Brandon Wardell
- & many more!

"...it was really a magical weekend."
Washingtonian
"...boundlessly creative"
salon.com
Photos © BYT Media, Inc
brief
The Zeit end-to-end UX concept was a seven-week project completed for DesignLab’s UX Academy. The task was to design a responsive ecommerce web site and branding for a fictional company offering time travel vacation packages to the past.
Research
General online travel market research and a competitive analysis were conducted with provisional personas. Key findings indicated that Zeit would need to be a hybrid website that was offering a specific controlled experience, similar to a cruise, but also a unique adventure, like a safari package. The wide variety of available experiences and time periods on offer meant a large pool of potential users.


LARRY
"The flight is at noon, so we need to get to the airport by 6am..."
Age: 67
Occupation: Retired
Status: Married
Location: Hilton Head Island, SC
Archetype: The Bucket List Cruiser
LARRY
"The flight is at noon, so we need to get to the airport by 6am..."
Age: 67
Occupation: Retired
Status: Married
Location: Hilton Head Island, SC
Archetype: The Bucket List Cruiser
DEFINE
Project goals were defined, a feature roadmap was created, a preliminary sitemap was established, and wireframes were quickly sketched. A card sorting exercise was conducted remotely but did not yield any actionable items. A User flow was created for Larry detailing the process of booking a trip.
DESIGN
As a lot of flexibility was allowed in the final design, it made sense to start with low fidelity wireframes to brainstorm possible layout options. Driven by the broad appeal of the service, the potentially non-tech savy user personas, and market research, it was eventually decided that following standard UX and UI best practices and layout would be the smart choice. Any differentiation and creativity in design could be saved for the content vs the form. Responsive annotated home page designs were created for desktop, tablet and mobile as well as desktop wireframes for the trip listing page:



Next...
Before handoff, another round of usability testing would need to be completed on the new pages, especially the checkout screens and a mobile prototype would need to be created and tested as well.
All photos and images used for educational purposes only.
Official NASA Gear (
https://officialnasagear.com/) is an ecommerce merchandise store owned and operated by the NASA Ames Exchange, an instrumentality of the US Government, located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. The brand was created with the sole purpose of supporting NASA employees, with 100% of the proceeds going directly to employee morale, welfare, and recreation (MWR) activities. Impressed with the work done by Oxcart Assembly on the Launch America Space X project, they approached us with a desire to elevate the aesthetics, professionalism, and usability of their existing site to better house the higher quality products they wanted to bring in.

The original site was an unreadable jumbled mess.


The final product, Desktop screenshot

"I am very stoked at how it turned out, it's extremely professional and All looks outstanding."
- Kenneth Ashford, Executive Director, NASA Ames Research Center Exchange
Events DC
In March of 2019, Events DC wanted to create an activation at SXSW that would celebrate and elevate the District's place in the vibrant e-sports community. My goal was to customize the activation for every attendee, no matter their gaming experience level. A “levels unlocked” concept, allowed guests to choose-their-own-adventure and advance further into the activation from casual gaming on retro arcade cabinets to the chance to compete against professional players on the latest platforms, along with music performances from national acts, video game-inspired craft cocktails from Drink Co., custom LED tunnels and projections, Loot Box scavenger hunts, and playful, interactive scenic installations. Later in the year we continued the campaign in DC with a block party experience in conjunction with the opening of Drink Co.'s new eSports theme pop-up bar.
All Photos © Advoc8, LLC
All Photos © Advoc8, LLC
additional event work photos
2019 Citi Open Tennis Tournament
CNN Political Hangover Brunch
TOMS Shoes End Gun Violence Together Rally
Google Digital Africa Reception
Camp Amazon at St Judes
AEM Infrastructure Week Reception
All Photos © Advoc8, LLC
SOCIAL MEDIA
I turned a money-losing afterthought into the biggest Capital Pride fundraiser of the year that has attracted over 23,000 attendees since 2010. This co-promoted event to kick off the Pride weekend has covered dancefloors in glitter at prestigious venues like The Newseum and Arena Stage to complete build-outs of unique warehouse spaces like the Wonderbread Factory and Hechts Warehouse. For 2018 we helped turn Echostage into a new go-to destination for the LGBT crowd.
I also brought in MGM National Harbor as a major sponsor for Capital Pride. Activations included an interactive element-inspired backdrop photoshoot wall, themed drag and dance performances promoting their upcoming concerts, and a video photobooth that simultaneous created instagram-ready clips for personal use, and advertisement-ready clips for Metro ads to run throughout the weekend.
rei united outside campaign
The nation’s largest consumer co-op engaged BYT extensively in 2016 as a key partner in their east coast flagship store opening. The nearly year-long project included a number of in-house produced events such as the #UnitedOutside launch party at the National Museum of American History, the beef jerky celebration Jerky Fest, and the Wild Kitchen outdoor dinner series supporting conservation partners, all culminating in a massive six-day opening celebration at the new store.
All Photos © BYT Media, Inc.
Library of Congress & National Archives
Two institutions partnered with an outside organization to host after hours events for the first time in their history. Bibliodiscotheque, a celebration of disco culture at the Library of Congress sold 1750 tickets in under 1 minute and featured a live performance by Gloria Gaynor, while the National Archives event celebrated the opening of the Spirited Republic exhibition covering the history of alcohol in the US, featuring craft cocktails from local mixologists with sponsorship from Heineken, Budweiser, and Tanqueray.
All Photos © BYT Media, Inc.
fotoweekdc
From 2014-2017 BYT took over production of FotoWeekDC, Washington DC’s largest visual arts festival, a truly citywide celebration attracting 40,000+ visitors annually to 150+ exhibitions, programs, and events highlighting world-class photography, and providing exposure for photographers working locally and worldwide.
All Photos © BYT Media, Inc.
National Geographic Partnership
In a unique partnership with National Geographic, BYT was given unprecedented access to their entire DC HQ where I created an annual after-hours museum experience selling over 15,000 tickets since 2012. The events were a choose-your-own adventure of info-tainment for the well-read DC creative class, featuring TED-style talks from emerging Explorers, music performances and dancefloors, pop-up interactive science exhibitions, craft cocktails, and much more.
All Photos © BYT Media, Inc.
Everything else
RAGNARÖCK - A Hirshhorn Late Night
Snallygaster Beer Festival
We The Party People @ Smithsonian National Museum of American History
Into the Blue - National Portrait Gallery After Hours
Wonder At Night & Murder House Party @ Renwick Gallery
All Photos © BYT Media, Inc.
“BYT have staked their claim in the DC events scene and are quickly becoming a destination for brands and sponsors to create content, connect with consumers, and generate impressions.”
-Kevin Burke, Regional Marketing Manager, Coca-Cola
brief
Holmes Run Acres (HRA) is a small woodsy mid-century modern community in Falls Church, Virginia. When the first homes were built there in 1951, the modern architecture was a radical departure from the typical colonial and ranch houses that dominated the post-war building boom in the Washington, DC area. The Holmes Run Acres Civics Association (HRACA), the organization that maintains the community website, was looking for a refresh, as the current site had not had any significant updates since first being built in 2014.
Research Survey
As the site was maintained on a volunteer basis using the Weebly platform with minimal budget, research was needed to prioritize only the essential updates. I had access to the neighborhood email listserv, an active and opinionated group, in order to conduct an initial survey, which garnered 87 responses. Key findings included:
1) 62% only visited the site a few times a year
2) 36% visited the site before moving to HRA
3) 50% visited the site on a mobile device or tablet
4) 58% did not feel they were able to find all the information they needed

LARRY
"The flight is at noon, so we need to get to the airport by 6am..."
Age: 67
Occupation: Retired
Status: Married
Location: Hilton Head Island, SC
Archetype: The Bucket List Cruiser
The site was only partially responsive, so unsurprisingly when asked for general comments and features, mobile-friendliness was high on the list. Additionally, users wanted to see more photos of homes, get help with renovations, and have a place for general neighborhood news and updates.
tree testing
Due to the haphazard and piecemeal navigation structure of the original site with ambiguous categories such as "Resources" and grouping a number of miscellaneous items under "More...", along with the consistent feedback from users that information was difficult to find, as well as doing some market research on other neighborhood community sites, I began to craft a new IA from scratch. I proceeded to test this new structure through four unmoderated iterative tree tests with 40 individuals (both HRA residents and the general public) using two different test platforms.


Design
The original non-mobile friendly home page included a slideshow of photos which included many poorly cropped and badly lit images along with some high quality shots that were of outdated community events not relevant to the general public. It did not do the neightborhood justice. The page also utilized a vintage map as a background image, which in other contexts may have worked, but felt out of place here and in user testing actually confused someone who thought some of the map text was clickable:





NExt...
Additional user and tree testing could be completed to further refine the IA as some additional changes were made after the initial round of testing. Secondly, a case could be made to move the site to a more robust platform as Weebly has quite a of of limitations, but at this time the HRACA board is happy with the results and feels more comfortable making updates on the system they already know.
problem
The American Journal of Epidemiology published a 5,000 person study finding that higher social media use correlated with self-reported declines in mental and physical health and life satisfaction. Through the work and warnings of Tristan Harris, Jonathan Haidt, Jaron Lanier, and others along with the recent popularity of The Social Dilemma documentary, the problems and issues surrounding the attention economy have exploded into the popular consciousness. Users are now aware that their behaviors on their phone are detrimental but find it difficult to change them.
Additional research done by Adam Gazzaley, Founding Directory of the Neuroscience Imaging Center, has shown that the problem extends beyond just addictive apps themselves, but also specific behaviors such as self-interrupting and sub-optimal foraging. These detrimental activities can be countered by single-tasking and sustained attention on a single activity.
“If you're an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine.”
- Tristan Harris, Center for Humane Technology
Halt is a concept app that monitors addictive smartphone behavior such as endlessly doomscrolling Twitter and then interrupts the users with prompts to engage in more beneficial activities, both digital and IRL. The voice of the app would be aggressive and geared towards people who have self-identified that they have a problem but do not have the willpower to fix it. The app would include many customizations such as the ability to set which apps it monitors, how often it would interrupt, what type of activities would be recommended, along with maintaining statistics/streaks on usage.
The landscape is crowded with apps and software that address this problem and all of them include a standard set of features such as:
- Blocking distracting apps, websites, or locking the entire phone
- Usage tracking/stats
- Setting time limits and receiving notifications when limits have been exceeded
Four user interviews were conducted with people who self-identified as having an addiction to their phone or had certain behaviors they would like to do less of, which is the sole criteria needed for using the app.
Key Findings:
- Phone usage had increased during COVID and when working from home
- Endlessly scrolling Instagram and Facebook were identified as the top culprits
- Other activities were going down mainstream news rabbit holes, obsessively monitoring stocks, YouTube, and playing mobile games
- Two users used social media and other sites like craigslist for their own businesses but felt that they either spent too much time on that side of it or would easily get distracted by unrelated things on those platforms
- Users were engaging in these activities while watching their children, at home with their spouse, or during work meetings
- All users felt like the concept of the app was a good idea and they would be interested in using it.
- One user was concerned about privacy.

“Virtually impossible to do any other activity without your phone in your hand.”
“Absolutely addicted. I saw The Social Dilemma and it really got to me.”
- Fixing up the house / doing chores
- Tasklist/progress on projects
- Meaningful engagement with their significant others, children, friends
- Focusing on their actual job
- Reading a physical book
- Go for a walk outside
- More selective/beneficial YouTube watching or online article reading vs pop culture
- Looking at art
- Just doing things in regular/real life
SME Interview
An interview was conducted with a personal trainer/coach to gain additional insight into the tone and techniques that the app used. The primary feedback was the need to be able to “choose your coach” between positive and encouraging to drill sergeant and aggressive. Before working with a client, she establishes what style they want. It was noted the tone could always be informal and “sassy”, but the level of shaming could be dialed up and down. A second recommendation was a weekly check-in so the user could monitor their progress on the dashboard.
The three main parts of the app that needed to be designed and tested included the installation and onboarding, the dashboard and settings, and then an actual interruption with alternate task recommendations. Due to the rapid high fidelity mockup capabilities of Figma, traditional sketches and wireframes were skipped for a digital sandbox approach. A number of unsuccessful aesthetic ideas, color schemes, and layouts were experimented with and presented in group crit environments.

An interactive prototype was created and tested with five users who were observed and interviewed over two different sessions while being tasked with:
- Registering the app
- Exploring the Dashboard and settings
- Experiencing an interruption while using Twitter
- Choosing alternate activities
For the first phase of the testing, the app begins with a glitch animation of the logo, then brings the user to the registration screen (or login), requiring a confirmation code, and finally a three-screen onboarding introduction. No users had any trouble with this standard process and only minor aesthetic iterations were made to the registration process.


“We've all been enrolled in a psychological experiment for which no one gave consent”
- Sam Harris, Waking Up App
The second phase of the prototype testing process tasked users with exploring the dashboard in a more open-ended format by having them explain how they believed each section of the app worked.
They were then tasked with the following actions:
- Add a new to-do list item to the custom task list
- Change the coaching style based on their personal preferences
- View the stats page
- Pause and resume Halt monitoring services
While the tasks were all successful, the testing revealed a lot of confusion over what each section of the app was for. Once explained, everyone understood, but iterations were clearly needed.
The Dashboard was given a complete overhaul, replacing some of the irreverent wordplay with more standard label text that the average user could better understand.
The icons were also standardized across all four sections. The Pause and Resume function initially worked as an immediate toggle button, but now opened up to another screen with a more robust feature set, matching how the rest of the app flowed.
Finally, additional animation tweaks were made to transitions to better represent real-world behavior, at least as far as the Figma prototyping tools allowed.

“The difference between getting 10 likes and 20 likes, it’s all just meaningless.”
- Adam Alter, Stern School of Business
The third and final phase of prototype testing had users experience the app in action. After browsing Twitter, Halt would interrupt their session by forcibly glitching out the screen (admittedly a challenge for development, possible solution is to take a static screenshot and then applying the effect) and then presenting the user with the alternate activities. Users were asked to:
- Attempt to close out the notification
- Try out all three activities
- Check off a to-do list item
- Change settings on activities from the main notification page and detail page
This phase did not pose any challenges for users and iterations were minor. One change was removing the More and Less Like This options on the To-Do List settings, as one user correctly pointed out that if they had in fact added a custom to-do they would always want this to be available until completed.

“Human beings evolved to gossip, preen, manipulate, and ostracize. We are easily lured into this new gladiatorial circus.”
- Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic
This is the final interactive prototype, hover mouse to begin (recommended for desktop only), or launch in a
new window.
Background
Astrobotic Technology, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, was selected by NASA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) in 2017 to develop a small lunar rover architecture capable of performing small-scale science and exploration on the Moon and other planetary surfaces. In March 2018, the team was awarded funds to move on to Phase II, and under this agreement, Astrobotic will produce a flight-ready rover that will fly on Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander to the Moon in 2021. This rover will be the first derivative of a CubeRover, a spinoff called IRIS, being developed completely by CMU students
Oxcart began work on the new IRIS branding through a series of client interviews, surveys, and working sessions. While I participated and used this information to inform the website design concept, the brilliant logo and patch design was the work of Chris Logsdon.
Three archetypes were created based on client interviews and market research:
The Stargazer is a self-proclaimed "space nerd" and enthusiast. They watch Apollo documentaries, know astronomy facts, enjoy visits to the National Air & Space Museum, and have read some Stephen Hawking. The group has an enormous amount of variability though in terms of other hobbies and interests, occupations, geographical location, and marital status. The Stargazer could be teenager that loves sci-fi and video games, to a grandpa that actually watched the first moon landing on TV. What unites this archetype is their love of space.
The Student may be an aspiring CMU engineer, an existing CMU student, or an engineering student in another school. They have a lot of demographic overlap with traditional students and a lot of interest overlap with The Stargazer. Note, that while STEM generally skews male, IRIS is a female-led team and there could be an opportunity there to specifically attract female STEM students to become fans of the project.
The science blogger is a member of the media who is writing a story on IRIS. They think they just want the hard cold facts and a quick download of the media kit, but by giving them aesthetically appealing and engaging content it will subconsciously make then more enthusiastic, and accurate, in their writing.
Other potential users, whose goals will be similar to the above archetypes include:
- Friends and Family
- CMU faculty
- Aerospace recruiters
- Other lunar rover teams