portrait of me, Corey Machanic
inside my studio with two workstations

An Adaptable Service and Approach

  • Virtual Agency

    As your design director, UX and UI designer, and dedicated project manager, I lead a team of independent developers and other multi-faceted Web professionals. Together we function as a boutique, full-service, virtual agency capable of designing and developing websites for a range of clients, from small businesses to large enterprises and organizations.

  • Contractor

    I bring my design and development skillset to projects and teams of all sizes. Whether you're an in-house team looking for a UX and UI design partner, or an agency needing to ramp up resources for a large project, I can adapt to your processes and be ready to plug-n-play.

Let's Work Together!

A Reductive Methodology

  • Eliminate the excess to achieve a clean, engaging, and usable experience.

    Your digital presence deserves distinction, combining meticulous craftsmanship and intuitive usability in today's competitive landscape. Whether creating clean and immersive interfaces or ensuring seamless user experiences, I am dedicated to achieving the perfect balance between form and function.

    As a Web Design Director specializing in information architecture, user experience (UX) design, user interface (UI) design, and development, and a track record of successfully navigating diverse digital projects since 1998, I blend established industry principles with a touch of innovation tailored to your needs.

    View Samples of My Work

A Process to Craft Order From Chaos

  • Websites often lose users with an overwhelming amount of content and functionality, and poor organization. This can be the result of short-sighted planning and a lack of focus. Together, we’ll create an experience for your customers—and your business— that is fresh, comfortable, easy, and most important, valuable.

  • Research & Discovery

    Define your project's purpose, its goals, and measurements of success. Identify and understand your audience (both internal and external). We’ll be asking what's the problem or need we're trying to solve, and why is this website or Web app important to your audience and your business? These questions and answers, along with many others, will define the WHAT and WHY of our project’s requirements.

  • Information Architecture

    This is the start of HOW we’re going to design and build a successful website. We’ll begin by mapping out the content needs and functionality for your audience and your business. We’ll explore content organization, labeling, and the overall flow of your website’s experience. We’ll define content types and identify opportunities to simplify and strengthen content relationships between sections of your website. Review, test and iterate.

  • Wireframing & Prototyping

    Explore low-fidelity concepts for the navigation model, site-wide functionality, and page layouts. Create clickable prototypes to illustrate, and test interactive behaviors and the overall user experience, including responsiveness and accessibility. Review, test and iterate.

  • Visual Design & Content Development

    With all of our diligence preceding this step, we can now focus on bringing our design concepts to life through user interface (UI) design. We'll begin by evaluating your current visual language, and identifying what we have to work with and/or evolve. We'll then thoughtfully refine your content and layouts, and apply color, type, photography, graphics, and icons to enhance the overall experience. Review, test and iterate.

  • Frontend & Backend Development

    We're designers with strong development sensibilities, and developers with strong design sensibilities. We keep a close eye on the UX and UI all the way through the early stages of the design process, through writing clean and accessible HTML and CSS, through on-page animations and micro-interactions, through on-page performance, and then all the way through to a thoughtfully built content management system.

  • Quality Assurance Testing

    Every project, no matter how large or small, will be thoroughly tested on multiple browsers, devices and operating systems—assuring proper functionality, grammar, layout, accessibility compliance and performance.

  • Launch & Post-launch Support

    Launching your project is the pinnacle step in this process, but it shouldn't stop there. Successful websites and Web Apps require continuous care and attention. Even though one of the goals of a thorough and thoughtful process is to focus on immediate needs, we still need to look into our crystal ball and build a flexible and scalable solution that can adapt to changes in business or audience needs over time.

    We want to empower our clients to take control of their website’s day-to-day needs, and provide them with the tools to reduce their dependencies on designers and developers. However, larger changes are inevitable, and to better serve you, we’d love have you keep us as close to your business as possible.

Interested in Learning More?

An Award-Winning Web Design Partner

  • Webby Awards*

    2007 Award-winner (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) and 2008 Honoree (Gillette Young Guns)

  • One Show Interactive*

    2003 Merit Award-winner (Rossignol Snowboards)

  • CSS Design Awards

  • Adobe Site of the Day

  • Comm Arts Site of the Week

  • Internet Advertising Awards

  • REBRAND

  • Summit Creative Awards

  • Horizon Interactive Awards

  • FCS Portfolio Awards

  • Omni Intermedia Awards

  • MITX Awards

  • W3 Awards

  • *Notable Awards: My Webby Awards recognition was the result of my partnership with RDVO, and my One Show Interactive recognition was the result of my partnership with Tag New Media.