Mark is a true advocate for the end user and a pleasure to work with. As a User Experience Solution Lead at Aon, he worked tirelessly to innovate and create solutions that met the business need, while providing an exceptional user experience. Of note, Mark is very adept at presenting his deliverable and explaining the rationale behind them. I always appreciated his explanation behind his designs as they always made so much sense and helped provide context around why the solution met all requirements. Hope to work again with Mark in the near future as he is a very bright and talented individual.
Mark always inspired me when we collaborated together on benefits web projects at Aon Hewitt. Working with Mark in his role as a Solutions Lead and Web Designer increased my engagement and got the entire user experience project team excited about work. Here are some of the reasons why:
Mark would be a tremendous asset to your company.
I first hired Mark Swindle in 2012 to help construct a website devoted to the history of crime and criminal justice in New York from 1880 to 1930. This project, Tales from the Criminal Court, Crime and Punishment in New York, 1883-1927, focused primarily on the digitization of trial transcripts from microfilm reels in the New York State Library at Albany. Other aspects of the website involved the inclusion of historical narrative on such topics as the police department, the office of the district attorney, the court system, and several infamous crimes in Manhattan.
Mark has a wealth of expert knowledge on digitization and an extensive list of contacts and both were invaluable in constructing the website. He supervised all aspects of the work, arranging for the creation of almost two hundred digital transcripts amounting to thirty thousand pages of text. My knowledge was necessarily limited–I am a historian with little expertise in website management–and Mark was the perfect manager who oversaw all aspects with enthusiasm, patience, tact, and good humor. There has been nothing in the project too difficult or too complicated for Mark and the success of the website has depended extensively on his work. I can recommend Mark Swindle unreservedly for any projects in UX, data/project management and website design.
I have worked with Mark as my UX designer, web designer, project manager, IA for over fifteen years. He was the principal designer for both my homicide in Chicago web site, Homicide in Chicago, 1870-1930 and my Florence Kelley web site, The Life & Times of Florence Kelley in Chicago, 1891-1899. It is no exaggeration to say that these web sites would not have been created without him. Given that our relationship has been a long and close one, prospective employers should call me directly: 312-503 2425. Mark Swindle is an exceptionally creative, brilliant, and hard working designer. I recommend him very highly without qualification. Take a look at the two aforementioned websites: his work there speaks for itself.
Mark first came into our group working on a complex retirement project. He quickly learned our processes and design infrastructure. Mark always asked good, insightful questions and had the user at the forefront of his designs. He was totally engaged in our projects and offered many creative solutions to challenging design situations.
I didn't want to see Mark go when his contract ended! He will be my first choice if if we need user experience design support in the future. I would love to work with him again!
My first experience working with Mark, he immediately displayed terrific skill in translating ideas to consumable, engaging, compelling web presentations. I was impressed. I was pleased--this was exactly what we wanted and needed from him (we hit the jackpot). And then he took on some difficult conceptual work with which we had struggled. Together, we made real head way against the deep, technical pushback of "this is how we have always done it" and "this is how it works". It was thrilling.
As our projects changed and we collaborated more closely, it became clear that Mark had even more to contribute. He has a business insight and organizational skills that we were able to capitalize on to save a wavering project that had lost focus and was disintegrating the team into factions. He used his substantial interpersonal skills to gain 360 buy in and engage our teams into collaboration units that produced terrific results.
Mark is deep, but he has the soft skills to be forceful and effective in a non-threatening manner. He is creative, but that's an understatement. He is creative in identifying and developing solutions. He is an artist in real life, from the way he greets the sun to how he absorbs music, to the subtle and hard and moveable way he can present the world's many facets.
It has been a joy working with Mark and I truly look forward to more opportunities to do so in the future. He looks at problems in unique ways, formulates multiple options, and works extremely well with varying personalities and competing views to obtain consensus. Further, the works HARD and gets the job done.