Sean Voisen » Projects

Projects

Yes, I stay blissfully busy. The following is a list of projects that I've worked on over the years in either the capacity of designer, developer, or more frequently, both.

Commercial and Open-Source Projects


Compassionate Communications (2007 - 2008) A joint project with Hallmark Cards, Compassionate Communications is a website built on Ruby on Rails that allows participants to send Hallmark cards to cancer patients and other individuals in need, with a portion of the card purchase price benefiting affiliated charities, like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society or Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. I worked in the capacity of lead user interface designer, information architect and developer. Visit the Compassionate Communications website, and send a few cards to those who need it most.
PayPal Desktop (2007) First exhibited during the keynote at Adobe MAX 2007 in Chicago, PayPal Desktop was joint project developed in collaboration with designers on Adobe's XD team. This AIR application performs simple desktop-based sales reporting and analytics for PayPal power users through the use of transaction search and retrieval APIs, as well as AIR's built-in SQLite database. Unfortunately, this project is not available for public use, but you can take a look at a quick video demo.
Digital Seed (2006 - 2007) Most existing e-learning systems are poorly designed and difficult to use. As lead designer for Digital Seed, my objective was to create a new type of e-learning platform that was not only ridiculously easy to use, but also focused first and foremost on supporting the development communities of practice through virtual and face-to-face interaction. The platform, built using Flash and Ruby on Rails, is designed for primarily "soft-skills" based learning courses in areas such as business management, leadership and stress reduction. Visit the project website for more information and a 10-minute video demo featuring yours truly.
Userplane Webmessenger (2006 - 2007) As a contract developer for Userplane (a subsidiary of AOL), I have worked on several chat, presence and instant messaging products, all built using Flash and Flex with Flash Media Server running the backend. Most notably, I developed the client side of the Userplane Userlist and Webmessenger, a complete instant messaging system that can be deployed on websites of all sizes. Take a look at the Userplane website for details and more information on Webmessenger.
XIFF (2002 - 2006) XIFF is an open-source (LGPL) code library for developing XMPP/Jabber-enabled applications in Adobe Flash and Flex. Basically, it allows rapid development of chat systems, instant messaging systems, collaborative whiteboards, multi-player games and other real-time collaborative software that uses the XMPP protocol. I originally conceived of the project in mid-2002, developed a series of complementary user interface widgets for the first version, and have seen it through 3 complete re-writes in ActionScript 1.0, 2.0 and now 3.0. This project is now graciously hosted and maintained by Jive Software at their Ignite Realtime open-source project repository.
Naked (SIP/VoIP Socket Connection API) (2006) System Minds Studio approached me to develop simple API for interfacing with a VoIP SIP engine over XML sockets. The API is being used as part of the Naked VoIP project.
Voisen Cooperative Website (2005 - 2006) Once upon a time I worked as a workshop facilitator and management consultant with my father, Greg Voisen. During that time I designed, developed and wrote all of the copy for this website as part our consulting business, then called The Voisen Cooperative. Though neither of us still works as a full-time management consultant, the Wordpress-powered website is still up and running.
Luminate Financial Website (2005) My office-mates, a San Diego-based financial services firm called Luminate Financial, asked me to design them a simple, elegant website. I naturally obliged.
MTCodeBeautifier (2002) MTCodeBeautifier is an open-source plug-in for the Movable Type blogging system that adds support for code syntax highlighting and beautification. The plug-in supports many major programming languages, including ActionScript, PHP, C++, Java, ColdFusion, Perl and more. Note: This project is no longer supported, but is still available for download AS-IS. Download the source code.

Compassionate Communications (2007 - 2008)

A joint project with Hallmark Cards, Compassionate Communications is a website built on Ruby on Rails that allows participants to send Hallmark cards to cancer patients and other individuals in need, with a portion of the card purchase price benefiting affiliated charities, like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society or Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. I worked in the capacity of lead user interface designer, information architect and developer. Visit the Compassionate Communications website, and send a few cards to those who need it most.

PayPal Desktop (2007)

First exhibited during the keynote at Adobe MAX 2007 in Chicago, PayPal Desktop was joint project developed in collaboration with designers on Adobe's XD team. This AIR application performs simple desktop-based sales reporting and analytics for PayPal power users through the use of transaction search and retrieval APIs, as well as AIR's built-in SQLite database.

Unfortunately, this project is not available for public use, but you can take a look at a quick video demo.

Digital Seed (2006 - 2007)

Most existing e-learning systems are poorly designed and difficult to use. As lead designer for Digital Seed, my objective was to create a new type of e-learning platform that was not only ridiculously easy to use, but also focused first and foremost on supporting the development communities of practice through virtual and face-to-face interaction. The platform, built using Flash and Ruby on Rails, is designed for primarily "soft-skills" based learning courses in areas such as business management, leadership and stress reduction.

Visit the project website for more information and a 10-minute video demo featuring yours truly.

Userplane Webmessenger (2006 - 2007)

As a contract developer for Userplane (a subsidiary of AOL), I have worked on several chat, presence and instant messaging products, all built using Flash and Flex with Flash Media Server running the backend. Most notably, I developed the client side of the Userplane Userlist and Webmessenger, a complete instant messaging system that can be deployed on websites of all sizes.

Take a look at the Userplane website for details and more information on Webmessenger.

XIFF (2002 - 2006)

XIFF is an open-source (LGPL) code library for developing XMPP/Jabber-enabled applications in Adobe Flash and Flex. Basically, it allows rapid development of chat systems, instant messaging systems, collaborative whiteboards, multi-player games and other real-time collaborative software that uses the XMPP protocol. I originally conceived of the project in mid-2002, developed a series of complementary user interface widgets for the first version, and have seen it through 3 complete re-writes in ActionScript 1.0, 2.0 and now 3.0.

This project is now graciously hosted and maintained by Jive Software at their Ignite Realtime open-source project repository.

Naked (SIP/VoIP Socket Connection API) (2006)

System Minds Studio approached me to develop simple API for interfacing with a VoIP SIP engine over XML sockets. The API is being used as part of the Naked VoIP project.

Voisen Cooperative Website (2005 - 2006)

Once upon a time I worked as a workshop facilitator and management consultant with my father, Greg Voisen. During that time I designed, developed and wrote all of the copy for this website as part our consulting business, then called The Voisen Cooperative. Though neither of us still works as a full-time management consultant, the Wordpress-powered website is still up and running.

Luminate Financial Website (2005)

My office-mates, a San Diego-based financial services firm called Luminate Financial, asked me to design them a simple, elegant website. I naturally obliged.

MTCodeBeautifier (2002)

MTCodeBeautifier is an open-source plug-in for the Movable Type blogging system that adds support for code syntax highlighting and beautification. The plug-in supports many major programming languages, including ActionScript, PHP, C++, Java, ColdFusion, Perl and more. Note: This project is no longer supported, but is still available for download AS-IS. Download the source code.

Experimental Projects


Brick Flow (2007) Brick Flow is a simple little experiment in using Perlin Noise to generate randomized isometric terrain fields. The effect, when tinted blue, looks strikingly like a flowing ocean of LEGO bricks. View this project in action.
TwitterViz (2007) When I first encountered Twitter, I immediately realized that it could serve as a seemingly boundless source of data on daily human habits and sociological trends — a real-time zeitgeist pulse, in a sense. My first project to make use of this data is TwitterViz, a desktop application built for AIR that performs simple data visualization of Twitter data. Over time, it allows the user to discover trends in his or her friends' daily activities, including answers to questions like: "Which of my friends are early risers?" "Which are night owls?" "What do they eat most often for lunch?" Etc. View this project in action or download the AIR file to try it out. (Download requires Adobe AIR Beta 3 or greater.)
Bounce (2007) An experiment in 2-dimensional physics, Bounce is simple bouncing ball desktop toy built using Flex and Adobe AIR. Simulated rubber balls appear on the user's desktop and can be thrown around the screen at random, colliding with each other, and generally providing hours of pointless fun. View the project in action or download the AIR file to try it out. (Download requires Adobe AIR Beta 3 or greater.)
NCBI PubMed Search (2007) An experiment in Flex-based bioinformatics, PubMed Search is a very simple interface for searching the NCBI's PubMed database of biological and medical information using the Entrez API. This project is no longer available for public viewing.
MX News Widget (2003) A simple desktop widget for Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets), MX News displays the latest news from news aggregators for the Flash design and development community. Note: This widget is very old and is no longer supported. To check out a screenshot and download the widget, visit the Yahoo! Widgets page for MX News.
Blangha (2005 - 2006) Blangha, a portmanteau of the words "blog" and "sangha," was a one-stop news aggregator for Zen-inspired blogs. Unfortunately, this website became too much of a maintenance burden, and is no longer available.
Checkers (2001) This is nothing more than a simple Flash-based (Actionscript 1) implementation of the classic checkers board game. Play the game or download the source code.

Brick Flow (2007)

Brick Flow is a simple little experiment in using Perlin Noise to generate randomized isometric terrain fields. The effect, when tinted blue, looks strikingly like a flowing ocean of LEGO bricks.

View this project in action.

TwitterViz (2007)

When I first encountered Twitter, I immediately realized that it could serve as a seemingly boundless source of data on daily human habits and sociological trends — a real-time zeitgeist pulse, in a sense. My first project to make use of this data is TwitterViz, a desktop application built for AIR that performs simple data visualization of Twitter data. Over time, it allows the user to discover trends in his or her friends' daily activities, including answers to questions like: "Which of my friends are early risers?" "Which are night owls?" "What do they eat most often for lunch?" Etc.

View this project in action or download the AIR file to try it out. (Download requires Adobe AIR Beta 3 or greater.)

Bounce (2007)

An experiment in 2-dimensional physics, Bounce is simple bouncing ball desktop toy built using Flex and Adobe AIR. Simulated rubber balls appear on the user's desktop and can be thrown around the screen at random, colliding with each other, and generally providing hours of pointless fun.

View the project in action or download the AIR file to try it out. (Download requires Adobe AIR Beta 3 or greater.)

NCBI PubMed Search (2007)

An experiment in Flex-based bioinformatics, PubMed Search is a very simple interface for searching the NCBI's PubMed database of biological and medical information using the Entrez API.

This project is no longer available for public viewing.

MX News Widget (2003)

A simple desktop widget for Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets), MX News displays the latest news from news aggregators for the Flash design and development community. Note: This widget is very old and is no longer supported.

To check out a screenshot and download the widget, visit the Yahoo! Widgets page for MX News.

Blangha (2005 - 2006)

Blangha, a portmanteau of the words "blog" and "sangha," was a one-stop news aggregator for Zen-inspired blogs. Unfortunately, this website became too much of a maintenance burden, and is no longer available.

Checkers (2001)

This is nothing more than a simple Flash-based (Actionscript 1) implementation of the classic checkers board game.

Play the game or download the source code.