yawen chen

Clothing Swap Winter 2011

yawen — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 22:05:20 +0000

Jan 30, 2011 Winter Clothing Swap
New York, NY
Equipment: Nikon D90

Photoshoot: Mama Bear

yawen — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:35:59 +0000

Mama Bear BBQ

Apr 11, 2010 Photoshoot & Interview with Mama Bear (Find them on Bandcamp)
Brooklyn, NY
Equipment: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Pentax K-7

View more from the photoshoot:

Some of these photos are also featured in The Hoopla Hoop.

Blog UX/Design and Management

yawen — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:28:44 +0000

Classroom Solutions, Scholastic is a team of five teachers, blogging about their K-12 classrooms. They provide teaching tips & strategies for specific grade levels. Initial launch was August 2009. In August 2010, I was given the opportunity to lead a blog design refresh. With feedback from our teachers, readers, and our internal department editors and head of marketing, I led this design effort to address some major issues: user interface, navigation, social media capabilities, SEO.

September 2010 – Present

Role: User Experience/Design Strategy Project Lead, and Blog Management
Platform: TypePad

Responsibilities

Managed and implemented blog enhancements:
-Navigation Add Quick Links on side bar. Add links to individual bloggers in header image.
-SEO Add blog description, more relevant categories & tagging and post-level contextual linking.
-Social Media Add subscribe functionality (RSS, Facebook, Twitter,) on the side bar across all pages. Add share functionality (using AddThis) on individual posts.

Provided technical blog support and production for the teacher blogger:
-Troubleshooting platform-specific issues
-Planning and implementing blog posts
-Processing videos and photographs
-Reviewing web traffic and other analytics

The Many Faces: Illustrations

yawen — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:04:02 +0000

The many faces of my life. Others & myself illustrated. One finger on a Macbook trackpad. Spring 2008.

Event Flyers

yawen — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 17:52:00 +0000

Sosauce, Travel Social Network

Printed flyers for Internet Week 2008

Interactive Digital Scrapbook

yawen — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 17:18:35 +0000

Lissard.info

The archive of all submissions to Lissard.info

This was my first digital collaborative project. It was born out of love for my friend Melissa. We all have a love for digital, so for her birthday, I gave her a gift of an interactive digital project.

The idea is simple: Use Tumblr to create an interactive mixed-media scrapbook for a birthday. Submit anything related to the birthday lady. The response was incredible — people took full advantage of Tumblr’s submission feature and submitted posts in a variety of formats: videos, photos, texts. In the meantime, I discretely tumblr’d on-the-go with my iPhone during her entire birthday event, to document the entire birthday event. I recorded, took photos, and submitted text posts. In the end, the product was a record of new and old memories & moments of Melissa and her birthday festivities.

Special thanks to the over 20 participants and my collaborator, Joy.

Poses: Portraits

yawen — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 06:15:47 +0000

Poses: Portraits, a study in facial expression and high-contrast color.

Harriman State Park

yawen — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 05:41:39 +0000

Fall 2010 Harriman State Park, New York: The day Melissa and I climbed a mountain.

If you follow the white markings, you won’t get lost.

Women in Digital

yawen — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 04:51:38 +0000

SheSays runs monthly networking and informational events for women in the digital industry. My first event was in January 2010, a talk on developing mobile applications. I was pleasantly surprised to find so many women in the same room learning about and discussing technology. I became a regular, following every event. Eventually I met up with Ale, the cofounder of SheSays, to discuss website strategy.

This is an ongoing project to update & enhance the current website.

A Week in Montréal

yawen — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 05:27:52 +0000

I spent a week volunteering for POP Montréal, an international music & arts festival in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. I helped coordinate 3 guest lists and also worked at 3 shows. For 3 consecutive nights, I worked at the midnight shows at Espace Réunion, the POP volunteer loft space where all the volunteers gather after their shifts.

Fellow volunteers at POP

Each volunteer gets these drink tickets.

The door crew

View from where I stayed at in Mile-End.

Every morning I drink an espresso at local Cafe Cagibi.

Walk commute to "work" in the Mile-End.

STORMS. Montreal in the downpour.

POP Montreal presents: 6th Annual Puces POP DIY & Craft Fair

Farmer's market: Marche Jean-Talon

Chat Disparu: Missing cat posters

Pas de bicyclettes: No bicycles, please.

Montreal's protected bike lanes

Neighborhood flowers. Montreal is so green.

a la mangue. French-Canadian McDonald's

I eat at one of the few all-vegan restaurants: Aux Vivres

It's all good. Wall graffiti in Mile-End.

Of course I meet people who ride their bikes.

Nighttime rooftop adventures

Hanging out on the rooftop

Montreal city lights

Good night, Montreal.

Besides volunteering, I read and figured out a lot of French, found all the vegan-friendly spots (végétalien), walked entire downtown in the rain, tried 3 different kinds of Montreal beer, rode a BIXI (Montreal’s bikeshare), took many buses & metros and really familiarized myself with the neighborhood I stayed in, on the Plateau (Le Plateau-Mont-Royal).

Thanks to everyone I met along the way. Couchsurfers (for hosting me so many nights), POP staff & volunteers, the countless strangers for giving me directions. Much love to Montrealers — I hope to be back in the near future.